Rum - the Univerasal Language at Chinchorro Bank

Thursday, March 13, 2003

018-40.140 N
087-23.820 W

Ahoy from the beautiful Chinchorro Banks off of Mexico!

Just imagine being anchored and scanning 360 degrees along the horizon and not seeing any land. Well, that's where we are and its really quite an amazing sight. You can really see the earth curve everywhere you look. We're anchored off the west side of the Chinchorro Banks and the nearest land is a small island about 6 miles away. As you may recall from my last post, the Chinchorro Bank is a kidney shaped atoll about 26 miles long and 9 miles wide.

While we were at Cayo Norte, which is a small cay at the north end of the atoll (Cayo Norte, get it?) we were visited by the military. It was a very professional visit and they informed us that we were only allowed to spend one more night there as this was an ecological area. This is a major departure from what the Rauscher cruising guide states and what other cruisers experienced in the past. Not speaking much Spanish we really couldn't find out why. Anyhow, it was no big problem. Interestingly enough they didn't want to see our papers to see if we were checked in.

That afternoon we decided to snorkel in the "Coral Gardens." It was a several mile dinghy ride out to them and when we got in we were quite disappointed in what we saw. The coral wasn't in very good shape and the only fish that were there were small. We did see a nice sized nurse shark. Perhaps the reason that they're discouraging boats from anchoring there is to give the coral a chance to recover. I don't know. I'm sure that some Mexican official has an answer...

Later that afternoon we decided to circumnavigate the cay in the dinghy. We were puttering around it when we saw three military guys out in the water. They waved us over and gave us 3 large conch. They tried to give us more, but we declined. We thanked them and returned to the boat and grabbed a bottle of Venezuelan rum that we carry for just this type of occasion and we went back and gave it to them. They were ecstatic and I suspect that if we had wanted to stay another night that they just might have let us...But we didn't and the next day we moved around to the west side.

The reefs which make up the banks are submerged, only coming to within several feet of the surface. Thus you can only anchor there in settled weather. The first location that we dropped the anchor at turned out not to be usable as there was a considerable southerly (!!!) swell which was probably caused by some strange current. We moved a few miles north and tried to find some place to drop the anchor. That's tough as there are coral heads everywhere. We moved after our first attempt had the chain draping across a coral head. We anchored in 35' of water just behind a small patch reef and had clear sand all of the way back. Alegria was going to be coming in after dark and we scouted out a spot for them and dropped an anchor with a float on it to mark the spot. They got in at around 7:30 and we had them over for dinner.

During the day there had been a local fishing boat working the inner reef. Late in the day they anchored near us and I noted that they had a huge pile of conch in their boat. I mean 4' high! They sat there, cleaned them and then tossed the shells into the water on top of the reef...Later we snorkeled the inner reef and only saw a single conch. These guys had stripped the area clean. Very sad. What was nice was that the bottom, starting at 40', is covered with tiny little eels who pull their heads back into their holes as you approach. If you make a noise it's like watching a crowd doing a wave as they disappear.

The next day Sue, Steven and I did a shallow dive near the inner reef. There were only small fish and the fish were very afraid of humans. Clearly they've been hunted big time as when they saw you, they hid in the coral. Very sad. The next day Steven I decided to do dive to see if there was coral deeper. Unlike the atolls in Belize where you have steep coral walls, the bottom here is sandy and slopes away at maybe a 30 degree angle. As we headed down we found a noticeable current going out and south. We headed into the current and quickly discovered beautiful coral loaded with lots of large fish. At one point we had 3 large Eagle rays with 8' wing spans circling us. WOW! Clearly the locals don't fish the outer reefs. What a find! And on top of that the bottom is covered with huge conch. I mean covered. Right under the boat we picked up a dozen large conch. We had planned on moving back to Cayo Norte to shorten the next days trip, but instead we stuck around for another dive later that afternoon.

Alegria doesn't have many provisions aboard and was really excited at the proposition of fresh conch and grouper. Steven had never cleaned a conch before and was thoroughly grossed out at the process of knocking the hole in the shell, cutting the muscle away, pulling the slug out (ew!), cutting the head and eyes off (BIG EW!) and then cleaning and peeling them! That was funny to watch. He also got to try his hand at filleting a grouper. Let's just say he needs a lot of practice. We did have a conch-fest aboard Alegria which consisted of conch Cervichi, conch fritters and curried conch over rice!

The wind and seas picked up that night so the next day we headed off to Bahia del Espiritu Santo, but that's a post of another day. Until then!

-- Geoff & Sue

P.S. Oh, we're testing attaching photos to posts. If this works this is an (illegal) photo of Cayo Norte taken from the mast in the "No Photography" zone!
Log ID: 346