Media Luna, Nicaragua (2016)

Sunday, April 17, 2016

015-8.270 N
082-41.310 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

This blog is coming to you from the middle of nowhere; from a place officially known as Media Luna. In Spanish Media Luna means half moon, which describes the crescent shape of the reef system. We're anchored on a bank about 70 miles off of the shore of Nicaragua and are behind a submerged reef system with only a few small cays dotting the horizon. There's only water for 360 degrees. As this picture shows, it's just a shallow spot in the middle of the ocean where we could drop the anchor and try to get some sleep. This breaks up the trip to the Vivario cayss into a 130 nm overnight passage to Media Luna and then a 55 nm day sail to the Vivario cays.

We departed from Providencia on Saturday at 4 PM and arrived here at about 12:30 PM on Sunday. Initially we had 3 boats traveling together, but Sojourner's engine began overheating a few hours out and they decided to head back to Providencia to repair it. We offered to go back with them, but they told us to keep going on.

The forecast winds were in the 11-13 kt range, but instead we had 8-10 kt winds from behind the beam, which dropped the apparent winds to even less. As a result we had to motor-sail until around 2 AM when then winds finally picked up to the predicted range and we could sail.

The passage itself was unremarkable. We had waited for a weather window where we had easterly winds and the seas were down from their normal 6-8' range. Probably the biggest event was when we passed a coral bank where fishermen were working and 2 panagas with 3-4 men in each raced towards us from a couple of miles away. There's lots of talk about security issues in the area, so this was concerning. However, all that they did was to wave, take our picture and ask where we were going. Now, were they just being friendly or were they checking us out? We'll never know, but Sue & I have had this happen in other areas and we suspect that we're just the only entertainment in town. We also had a large navy ship shadow us for an hour or two, which was a good feeling to know that they were in the area.

From here we'll depart for the Vivario cays, which are 55 miles distant.

-- Geoff

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For the cruiser:

The DMA charts for the area are amazingly accurate. For some reason some of the guide books make this area sound very dangerous. We simply plotted a course from the seas buoy at Providencia to the W of Bokel cay, then around the W end of Media Luna then anchored on the NW end of of the reef.. Our approach was:

15-02N/82-40W
15-08N/82-42.5W
15.08.27N/82-41.31W (anchorage)

We dropped the hook in 17' in a bright sand area. We had to re-anchor and even then it didn't feel solid, but with the light wind forecast, we weren't too concerned. Later when we snorkeled on the anchor,we discovered that the sand spot was just a few inches of sand over flat, dead coral. The prior time that we had been here we had found a spot with good sand, but not this time.

The reef in the immediate area around the boat is dead and uninteresting. However, if you swim out to the outer reef, it's much more alive with nice coral, nurse sharks, turtles and even sone nice sized snappers.

Log ID: 2273