Providencia, Colombia (2016)

Friday, April 15, 2016

013-22.812 N
081-22.428 W

Ahoy from Providencia, Colombia!

We're now located in the beautiful island of Providencia, which is located about 120 off of the coast of Nicaragua and is about NNE of San Andres. We motor-sailed here on Wednesday, with light winds out of the E. Normally you just have to bash your way into the wind and seas, but we waited for a good weather window where the seas were low and the wind was at a good angle so that we could actually have the sails up.

BlueJacket, Best Day Ever and Ohana departed San Andres at 05:45 and made our way through the extremely well lit channel and then turned toward Providencia. It was a bumpy ride at first with the currents interacting with San Andres causing funky waves, but it soon smoothed out. The current, which was predicted to be with us, turned into 0.8 kts of current against us. We dropped the anchor at around 3:30, but Ohana, who had tried to sail most of the way (and eventually gave up) pulled in just before sunset.

We were quite surprised to find about 12 boats anchored here. The next morning 4 of them departed for Mexico and another 4 came in. I hadn't realized how much of a destination this is for boats transiting this coast. The anchorage itself is very large and well protected and the town is delightful. If you want to give an award for great use of colorful paint, Providencia would win it!

Providencia actually consists of 2 islands: Isla Providencia and Isla Santa Catalina. Providencia is the largest of the two and has a road which circles the island. Isla Santa Catalina is connected to it via a colorful pedestrian bridge and only has walking paths. From what I can tell, the only part of Santa Catalina which is inhabited is the southern section which faces the main harbor.

There isn't a lot to do here, but one of the favorite things to do is renting motor scooters and driving around Providencia. I'm not exactly sure how far it is around the island, but I'm guessing 14 KM (9 miles), but there are some side roads that we took, which probably added another couple of miles. What they lack in distance, they more than make up in beauty. Sue & I and John Terry from Best Day Ever rented 3 motor scooters for 4 hours for 90,000 pesos (that's about $9 each) and had a great time touring the island. One of the things we quickly discovered, is that you have to share the road with more than vehicles...

Just like San Andres, they have beautiful white sand beaches and when you have white sand under blue water, the colors are amazing! To complement that, they've painted the structures in beautiful, bold complementary colors which just pop against the blue water. It's a visual feast for the eyes. How would you like to wait for a bus with the above view?

It wasn't all fun and games. John's linear drive (this is the part that turns the rudder) on his autopilot started acting up. I've personally seen this issue before and knew that it was just going to get worse, and that could be very dangerous for him as he's single handling his boat for the next several segments, which includes some overnight passages where he needs to sleep. Luckily we had the exact spare that he needed, so he swapped out his failing unit for one that I had rebuilt a few years ago.

Picking the right weather window to transit this coast has been my top priority. The last time that we did this in 2002, it was a rough, wet, fast ride and Sue didn't want to repeat that. As a result I've been carefully watching the weather to find a window where the winds are sufficiently easterly so that we can sail without being too close to the wind and have the toe rail in the water and the seas are low enough to make it a comfortable ride and keep the cockpit dry. That window is today.

From here we'll make an 130 mile overnight passage to Media Luna, which is literally a submerged reef system near the Nicaragua/Honduras boarder. We'll depart at around 4 PM today and we should arrive there at around noon tomorrow. You can track our progress by clicking here. We'll literally anchor in the middle of nowhere, with no land in sight. However, the reef will break down and seas. The next morning we'll depart for the Vivaro cays off of Honduras and we should arrive there late afternoon.

Since there are security concerns in this area, we'll be sailing with Best Day Ever and Sojouner, who we knew from Shelter Bay and was waiting here for us to transit together.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser:

The main channel is very well marked, with many more buoys than appear on the charts. Approach the first red/green directly from the sea buoy.

Do not make the turn into the anchorage until you're about 50 yards/meters from the last green as there's a patch reef located near the point at 13-23.484N 081-22.778W which can be very hard to see in the afternoon sun.

We used Mr. Bush to clear in/out. Call him on VHF 16. Our fees were the same as we paid in San Andres ($50). Another boat which had 3 people on it and didn't go to San Andres paid $180 to clear in/out!

While on our ride, we ate lunch at Deep Blue and had a fantastic meal. It's located just NE of town.

Log ID: 2272