Cabo Gracias a Dios and Vivorillo Banks

End of April, beginning of May

The passage around Cabo Gracias a Dios was probably the most discussed aspect of our Caribbean route. The continental shelf off Honduras and Nicaragua extends hundreds of miles offshore and sprouts various cays, banks, ledges and reefs. Sailing vessels are particularly vulnerable, as the strong easterly trades and a mild current set you directly onto a lee (downwind) shore. The entire area is littered with shipwrecks, ancient and modern. Historically, shipping has avoided the region, if possible, and these natural obstacles kept the Spanish from ever establishing full control over the region in colonial times. Heading north from Colón in spring, it's quite difficult to manage the deepwater route in a small sailboat due to the Trades, so most cruising boats choose one of several paths through this treacherous area.

Armed with GPS, fairly accurate charts and diesel engines, modern sailboats are in significantly less danger than their predecessors. Still, if the weather is bad or you have a mechanical failure, this is a lousy place to be. We crowd-sourced three basic routes:

Route	Advantages	Disadvantages
Miskito Channel	- Shortest Route - Protected From Waves	- Inundated Shoreline - Coral Heads - Unlit Cayuca Traffic - “Pirates”
Edinburgh/Main Cape Channel	- More Downwind - Some Wave Protection	- More Obstacles than Gorda - Longer than Miskito - Some Traffic
Gorda Bank/Cay Gorda	- Fewest Obstacles - Very Little Traffic	- Longest Route - Exposed to Waves - Hardest on the Wind

Click, then "View Image" for Hi-res

We do not have a chart plotter and were relying on large scale paper charts, passed on to JUMBLE by the crew of ALKIRA. As a backup/sanity check in tight areas, we have CM93 vector charts, viewed with OpenCPN. The Miskito Channel is very popular with powerboats because they are able to run the entire channel in daylight, spotting coral and other hazards by eye. Very few sailboats are fast enough to do this and JUMBLE is no exception. While we met two crews who had run the Miskito Channel northbound in sailboats, the consensus was that the Gorda Bank was a safer route. The Edinburgh Channel seemed to offer few advantages except as a sort of compromise route. Some very cautious rumor-mill types also mentioned sporadic piracy along the Miskito Coast by local fishermen. Most documented incidents have involved boats already aground or anchored.

I could devote a whole post to the SSB (Single-Sideband Radio) addicted "klatcher" sailors. These are generally older, slow-moving crews on very well equipped boats with a plethora of gadgets to stay in contact with everyone and everything. JUMBLE is positively primitive by comparison. One such sailor expressed disbelief at our lack of an SSB radio, as if not having one was irresponsible. For those of us on a budget, new rigging is a better investment.

Back to the matter at hand. Given our navigational capabilities and my chickenshit attitude towards shallow water, we elected to deal with an upwind sail and waves, rather than risk the reefs and fishing/narcotics traffic. JUMBLE would be running in 30-60' water over the Gorda Banks, so it was important to have a good weather window. Even relatively small waves can 'feel' the bottom in water that shallow and become steeper. When sailing upwind, choppy waves kill boatspeed and increase leeway (downwind drift).

JUMBLE experienced two days of 15-20 knots NE and ENE, becoming less than 12 knots E when we reached the banks. The weather was much more pleasant than our trip to San Andres. The first day, we clawed upwind for a clean angle to Cay Gorda. It was pitch dark at 0200 when we turned west 2 NM from Cay Gorda, trusting in our charts and GPS. JUMBLE cleared the Pigeon Cays and the south end of Vivorillo in daylight and anchored in 20' of sand off Boga Cay.

Tiny JUMBLE viewed from the abandoned fish plant

Vivorillo might have been our most enjoyable stop. For most sailors, this is a roadstead on the way to Roatan or Guanaja, but it was a refreshing idyll for us. For about ten days, we swam, fished and read in almost complete solitude. Two fishing trawlers came through and one fisherman in a panga stopped by on his way to Cayo Caratasca. We were alone every night and most days. The bank is situated about 40 NM from the mainland and has very little dry land, but extensive reefs. Unfortunately, I failed to get any underwater photos. The first few days, we were getting the lay of the reef, spotting nurse sharks, barracuda, rays, turtles, cuttlefish and all kinds of fish. By the time we were ready to take some photos, I'd been eaten alive by sand flies on Boga Cay. The bites itch worse than mosquito bites ever could and I had a few hundred on my legs. I swam around with several shallow, open sores for a couple days and things started to look pretty bad, so I was confined to the boat thereafter.

Anna Standing on the barrier reef

Wide Angle of the anchorage

I've discovered an excellent drink combination for tropical weather. It's more than a drink, it's a way of life:

Step 1: Rise at 9am or whenever the heat forces you from the cabin
Step 2: Shamble under the cockpit shade and recline. Remain still for awhile
Step 3: Brew sour, stove-top espresso, drink full strength
Step 4: Immediately wash down espresso with ice-cold MGD (substitute any weak, fizzy beer)
Step 5: Continue the brewing-drinking cycle until about noon
Step 6: You are now prepared for your day

Seriously, it tastes amazing and gets your mind right. I haven't thought of a good name, any ideas? "Caribbean Coffee"? Any name with "Bomb" is no good: this is a mellow beverage.

The Fauna

The Flora

The Birds

Very Stinky

The morning of our arrival, a Honduran trawler stopped by, said hello and clearly checked our boat name. A few hours later a large panga with half a dozen armed men came blasting into the anchorage and circled around us. I say "armed men" because their uniforms, while obviously military, were very piecemeal. Most of them wore ski masks or bandanas. The officer stood out as he was alone in having a complete, tidy uniform. Ballasted by the aforementioned beverage, we watched their approach with curiosity, greeted them and showed our papers. All was well, it was the Honduran Navy. The officer told us that they'd spend the night on the larger cay and to let them know if we needed any help. We asked if they had any weather information, but no dice. They kicked around the island for a couple hours and left before nightfall. I don't know if it was the sand flies or boredom. Most likely, they were looking out for us, at least halfheartedly.

Vivorillo and the surrounding cays have a problem with squatters and smugglers. Many are poor fisherman harvesting conk and fish from little cayucas (canoes, traditionally dugout) and waiting for larger 'mothership' trawlers to pick them up. Sometimes, these trawlers don't pick the fishermen up and they have to forage until another boat comes by. We gave three of these guys a ride back to their mothership in exchange for a few ponds of conk.  Above all, the islands are plagued with drug smuggling, you might stumble into something or someone.

"As in Panama, the Honduras' islands of Cayos Vivorillo, with little police or military oversight, are a regular Caribbean drug transit point. The area has more than ten little islands and sandbanks, which form part of the province Gracias a Dios on the border with Nicaragua.

According to the United States government, up to 80 percent of the cocaine that transits Mexico goes through Honduras first. Over the last few months, drug traffickers have changed their routes in order to bring drugs into Honduras and then to the United States. This is part of what the United States labels the drug triangle: from Colombia to Honduras to Mexico."

Article on Narco-Islands

Squat on Boga Cay

Small Forest on Boga Key, tons of bugs

Conk and Coral

Floating trash washes up on the windward side

After a week and a half, we were running low on food and anxious to make it to Isla Mujeres. The weather had other plans and we got slammed with a Norther, making the anchorage untenable. We quickly threw our shit together and got JUMBLE away from the reef. Within an hour, 2-3' waves were breaking a few hundred feet away and the wind was building. It turned into a fun sail and forced us to visit Guanaja. More on the Norther and Guanaja in the next post.

San Andrés

Sometime in April

Our first real taste of the Caribbean was a sour one. JUMBLE had been moored or in flat water for over a month. We weren't prepared for the short, steep seas that the Western Caribbean is famous for. This was a lesson in picking the right weather window.

For 44 hours we had wind just forward of the beam, seas from 6' to 10' and sustained winds from 12 to 25 knots, some gusts in squalls. We left the Chagres around noon and had milder conditions the first day. By midnight, the wind picked up and the waves became unpleasant. JUMBLE ran an 85% jib, mizzen and double-reefed or furled main. It's hard to describe the difference between the mild, long period 8-footers we've seen in the Pacific and the short, square waves of the Caribbean. The wind never died, but blew from NE and ENE all day and night. There was some lightning, but no rain. The moon made no appearance.

I took few pictures in between chucking

I discovered that you can easily poison yourself with dimenhydrinate (original Dramamine). Seasickness wasn't much of a problem in the Pacific, but I've had good results with meclazine (Less-Drowsy Dramamine) in the past. All we were able to find in Central America was dimenhydrinate. We didn't look hard enough, I think.

Anyway, I felt wretched by the first night watch and went through the puke-recover-puke cycle for the rest of the trip. This sucked, so I tried dosing with dimenhydrinate to get things under control. The pills were poor quality and would dissolve, with a godawful taste, quickly, so I had a hard time swallowing them without another bought of retching. A quick, stomach-settling, dose of Jello right after a vomit session was glorious and I would recommend having some on hand if you have a refrigerator on board. Not only does Jello provide a little hydration, but it helps avoid that lousy empty-stomach feeling that goes along with not eating or sleeping. Eventually, I lost track of how much dimenhydrate I was taking due to of lack of sleep and uncertainty over how much actually made it down.

By the second night, I was hearing the occasional voice out in the cockpit. The squeaking of the self-steering would turn into an insistent nonsensical phrase or greeting: "Hello, Susan! Hello, Susan!" or something like that. These mini-hallucinations matched my usual 10-15 minute cockpit check, so they weren't very distressing. Anna was feeling better and offered to take longer watches. I didn't want to do this. It was better to keep at least one of us reasonably fit and I wasn't sleeping anyway. Between leeway and the wind veering north occasionally, we were getting pushed inside our rhumb line to Providencia, our intended destination, and I was becoming concerned that we wouldn't make San Andres. We toyed with the sails and self-steering, navigated through Cayo Albuquerque and Cayo Bolivar and raised San Andres in the early morning of the third day, with dolphins swimming us in and lighter winds. Anna noted my big pupils and was concerned, but I was already feeling better.

Not much left of this one

One of the more intact wrecks

The entrance to San Andres harbor is extremely well buoyed, with half a dozen visible wrecks to keep you alert of the barrier reef. There were a few cruising sailboats and many fishing trawlers in the shallow (5'-10') anchorage. The water was crystal clear. We watched JUMBLE's anchor dig into the bottom. Our preferred stop was Providencia, a less-populated island 50 miles further north and east, but San Andres was good enough. We made 220 miles in 44 hours, close reaching: good time for JUMBLE. We swapped tales with an English crew on a Beneteau 50. Their instruments recorded gusts in the mid-30 knot range. Half the crew jumped ship and the owners abandoned their plan of making it to Grand Cayman. So, all in all, we didn't feel too bad about getting our asses kicked.

San Andres is an cool place. It's a good rest stop if you're northbound in the Western Caribbean, but its real popularity is as a tourist party/duty-free shopping destination. The vast majority of the tourists are mainland Columbian, with a fair number of Europeans. The facilities and entertainment are not up to first world standards. For broke sailors, this is awesome. The islanders are friendly, there aren't a bunch of posh megayacht or cruise ship saps and it's all very casual. If you wander around the residential areas, things look as run-down as anywhere in Central America, but without the vaguely threatening vibe you sometimes get. Cocaine and weed are supposed to be a major draw for tourists. San Andres is an intermediate point for cocaine on its way to the USA and there's a local Rasta culture with close ties to Jamaica. Apparently, both drugs are dirt cheap and the discotheques run all night, but we didn't indulge, nor were we propositioned.

Hotels and shops on North End

We rented an ATV one day and had a blast

Most of the traffic is scooters, golf-carts or motorcycles

Wading in-between watering holes, paddleboats for the timid

Nice platforms over the sharp coral on the west side

Tranquil west side of the island

We played pool most nights at Club Nautico

San Andres islanders were mostly Raizal (English-speaking, Protestant Afro-Caribbeans) until the last few decades. They're now a minority due to immigration from the Columbian mainland, which began with the building of an airport in the 1950s and the promotion of the island as a tourist destination. We only dove the eastern reefs, which are damaged from constant anchoring and very picked-over; however, the western side of the island is much less busy and sheltered from the 24/7 trade winds. Supposedly, the diving there is world-class. On either side the visibility is amazing and the water warm. A wetsuit is entirely optional, but a thin wetsuit beats sunscreen.

Glamor Shot

Your shirt's on backwards

Trawler Wreck

Reef stuff

Anna being cool

Tiny Lobster

After several days R&R, we headed for the Vivorillo Banks, over the treacherous shoals, banks and currents of the Miskito Coast.

Atlantic Panama

April 2nd to 17th? First part of April

After offloading our volunteer crew, JUMBLE spent several days at Shelter Bay Marina. Other crews had warned us about Shelter Bay. It's quite nice: there's a boatyard and even a workspace with some decrepit shop tools for owners to do their own work. The trouble is, any attempt to get work done in Shelter Bay is undermined by the marina's isolation from Colón and the sultry weather. The folks in charge have this all figured out and provide decent showers, a pool and air conditioning in the cocktail area.

For most of the day, sailors with A/C hide in their boats, while the rest of us loaf around under whatever shade we can find. Cocktail hour is most of the day. In the evening, it's impossible to walk down the dock without meeting some new people. Before you know it, you're sat in an unfamiliar cockpit drinking rum, lousy beer or boxed wine for most of the night.

"Tomorrow", you tell yourself, wondering where the day went, "Tomorrow, I'll get to those projects"

Marina

Yard

Hazardous Cargo Anchorage

Crews from all over the world converge in Shelter Bay, preparing for or completing a Canal transit. Most were headed to the South Pacific. Of course, JUMBLE was going the wrong way. The Trade Winds were howling when we arrived, so we needed to kill some time before heading out into the big, bad Mar Caribe.

We spent the first week blitzed most of the day. You really have no choice in the matter. The marina is situated away from the city proper, which is probably a good thing because Colón is a dangerous place, with 40%+ unemployment and rampant street crime: not the kind of place to walk around with a fanny pack and camera.

Anyway, the marina basin and its buildings are all remnants of Fort Sherman, an extensive US military base operated from the 1912 until 1999. Anna and I really enjoyed tramping around the jungle and abandoned buildings. The Panamanian government is maintaining the grounds and security in a few areas. On the road to Colón, some of the unprotected buildings have been looted and damaged beyond repair. Deeper inside the base, the weeds are clipped and there's ersatz patrols from the military. One poor guy seems to sit alone all night burning coconut husks, presumably to keep the bugs away. Otherwise, a few other soldiers drive around the crumbling roads in a beat-up Mazda panel-van. I think there might be some potential for nature tourism in the surrounding area, if the buildings are fixed up, similar to what's been done at the marina.

Chapel

Much friendlier than the bats

Old Magazine

What did you expect?

Monkeys everywhere, very vocal at night

This area was just foundations, but extensive

Fort Sherman was originally built to defend the Canal Zone and several large coastal artillery batteries were erected coincident with canal construction. Coastal artillery became obsolete during WW2, but the base remained. Fort Sherman found its true calling as the Jungle Operations Training Center (JOTC) in the 1950s. The terrain around the base is beautiful, with a mixture of canopy jungle, marshes, some hills and, of course, coastline. Fort Sherman was the only US military installation at the time situated on actual jungle, so it was a valuable asset for training both US and allied (mostly Latin American) personnel in jungle warfare. From what I've read, the training provided at the JOTC proved valuable, especially during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange was apparently tested in a mysterious area called the "drop zone". Descriptions from news articles and veteran's sites weren't clear enough for me to pinpoint this area on the ground or Google Earth.

Lots of leaf litter

Anna for scale

Battery Baird

The wall extended a ways into the jungle

Small Doorways

Note termite nests

Spalling is everywhere in Central America

The JOTC and US Army School of the Americas, located at nearby Fort Gulick, were somewhat controversial. The stated goal of the School of the Americas was to provide "anti-communist counterinsurgency training” to US- allied Latin American troops. Torture techniques were part of the curriculum and famous graduates are a cuddly mix of dictators, cartel enforcers and junta-types. Relocated to Georgia, the school is now euphemistically named the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"

Trees dwarfed the structures

Creepy kennel

Agouti

This area was casually guarded, the gate was usually unlocked

Funny names for this part of the world

JUMBLE left Shelter Bay after about a week to wait out the winds at the Chagres River, a 10-15 nm sail, but only 6 miles from the marina as the crow flies and still part of the former base/American Zone. The jungle is high and thick. We were unable to get any radio communication with folks in the marina, even at that distance.

The Chagres River has a somewhat narrow entrance over a bar. I'm still cagey about those kind of entrances, especially in moderate conditions, but it went OK. Commanding the hilltop are the ruins of Fort San Lorenzo and the village of Chagres, depopulated in the early 1900s for the Canal. The fort was established by the Spanish in the late 1500s, but was attacked several times and rebuilt. The Chagres River provides water for the entire Canal and is dammed 7 miles upriver. The entire area, once part of Fort Sherman, is now part of the San Lorenzo Protected Area. The river is quite deep past the entrance: 35 to 45 feet. The current is sluggish and the water brackish at the surface, salty otherwise.

Chagres Approach, note breaks on Lajas Reef

Safe water under the fort

River Entrance

Fuerte San Lorenzo

"Hey Ya'll"

Cloud shows every night

We had a great time at the river, staying for almost a week. It rained every night, but the bugs weren't bad. Ants, termites and a few giant wasps would fly aboard occasionally, but few mosquitoes and no sand flies. I chalked this up to liberal pesticide use by the US military, but apparently most jungles aren't that terrible for mosquitoes and sand flies. Beaches, marshes and mangroves are another story. Howler monkeys and all sorts of birds kept up a background soundtrack. Crocodiles prowled the shores at night. You could spot their eyes glowing red with a flashlight. None seemed very large and we didn't see any during the day. We were apprehensive about swimming for the first day or two, but got over it. Overall, we did a ton of reading and a little exploring.

Rowing the shallow side creeks

Ambitious palm

Gatun Dam Spillway

When JUMBLE finally left, our forecast was a week old and we were in for a treat.