06/05/2012, Providencia, Columbia
Monday, June 4. I called Mr. Bush this morning on the VHF and told him that we wanted a zarpe to leave “early early” Wednesday. He asked what our destination would be and I told him “Bocas del Toro, Panama.” “OK,” he said, “You be at my office tomorrow at 10:00 and I will have everything ready for you. Just bring your passports to stamp. You don't need anything else. I have it all ready.” Although I have enjoyed meeting the Port Captains and Migracion officials in other countries we have visited – especially fighting (in Spanish) with the Port Captain in Guanaja about my zarpe and winning – I must admit that having an agent, as Columbia requires, sure makes it quicker and easier. And Mr. Bush is much more than just an agent. He really is an ambassador for the cruisers. He helps them in any way possible, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The other day he called me on the VHF to say that a women was down at the dinghy dock with my laundry waiting for me to pick it up. When I said it was not mine (We take ours to Miss Barbara and pick it up at her house.), he said that the women only knew that the man's name was Mark and he thought that had to be me. I told him that one of the other boats also had a Mark, but I couldn't remember which one. He put out a general call over VHF and eventually united owner and laundry. That is the kind of thing he just does – because it needs to be done, not for pay or tips. He considers helping the cruisers in any way possible as part of his official job. It is what he does and who he is. Would that there were more “Mr. Bush” in the world! Although we did not have to go in to town to meet with Mr. Bush, we did go in and try to buy more fruit. The selection was pretty bad, but we did get another melon, some limes and a couple mangoes. We met Lorenzo & Joyce in town and agreed to go hookahing after lunch. It is still blowing 15-18 so we will need to stay in the lee of the mountain, but there are a couple small patches there that we have not explored. Too shallow to really be worth a tank, but they can use the hookah with us. At first it looked like it was going to be a boring dive – lots of algae on the coral and quite shallow, but as we progressed around the patch, it got deeper with more interesting architecture to the coral and better fish. We saw several very large midnight parrot fish and a couple other large parrots that were not midnights but I'm not sure what. There was a very large scrolled file fish - 2 ½ ' which is about as large as they get. Then we saw the sea snake! It was about 3' long and maybe 1 1/2” diameter and rather than swimming, it crawled along the sea bed like a snake. Its mouth opened and closed like a moray and its gill pouches bulged with each gulp. None of us had ever seen anything quite like it. It didn't seem very concerned about us, but for some reason we all kept our distance from him. He eventually slithered across the sand and into a hole. Later I learned that it was a “Gold Spotted Eel” and quite harmless. The coral patches were not all that big so we circled back and forth over them a bit. When I saw another eel I thought it was the same one, but, no, this one was bigger and when I surfaced to determine our location, it was on a totally different patch of coral. Strange. Two examples of an eel I have never seen before on the same little patch of ocean. We also saw a lobster – one of the very few we have seen here. After the dive, Lorenzo & Joyce invited s over for pizza. We brought our own beer and wine (they do not drink) and brownies for desert. It was a very enjoyable evening and we ended up showing them lots of things about Bocas – approaches, anchorages, restaurants, etc. They are going to wait for calmer weather to leave (they don't want the wind we need), but may catch up with us in Albuquerque or certainly in Bocas.
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06/04/2012, Providencia, Columbia
Sunday, June 3. In the original forecast, today was supposed to be even calmer than yesterday, but it wasn't. The wind was howling pretty well, though the anemometer only showed 15 kts. Certainly would have been a great day to sail to San Andres, but of course we had not cleared out yet. Deb was doing the dishes when the pump made that “you're out of water” noise. Sure enough the gage read empty. How did that happen? I knew I used about 20 gallons cleaning and pickling the watermaker yesterday, but the tank was more than ½ full then. That gage must be REALLY non-linear. Well, I didn't feel I could call Aurelio on a Sunday to get more water. (Providencians, like most Latins, are quite religious and Sundays are reserved for church and family.) I remembered that Lorenzo has said that they had plenty of water (2500 gallons!) and he would give us 100 if we wanted, so I called him on VHF and he readily agreed. “Just raft up on my starboard side and we can run a hose over.” We placed fenders and dock lines and prepared to weigh anchor, but when we got to the 100' marker on the chain, there was no kellet. I could not believe it fell off again. This had a carabiner with a double hasp and a strong spring. How could it have come loose? Well, it did, but the anchor was still set and so it shouldn't be too hard to find if I just follow the 100' mark back and forth across the sand. We were only in 7-8' so it should be easy, right? WRONG. I swam back and forth for over ½ hour and never saw it. The sand bottom is powder soft and undulating with fine grass (not turtle grass). There was no trace of the kellet. Discouraged, I gave up and we motored over to Eileen Farrell. I approached the big steel shrimper with some trepidation. The wind was still blowing pretty well and it was swaying at anchor. I had to time it right and put the bow close enough to toss a line across without actually touching. It went better than expected. Deb got the line across first try and once that was secured, I drifted and powered back to secure the stern. Then we ran a hose across and filled the tanks. The gage jumped immediately to ¼ – there is the first problem, then rose fairly smoothly to Full, but the tanks took another 5 minutes or so to fill after the gage read “Full.” So more in the tank than Full and none below “1/4”. We need to be careful as this will need to last us back to Bocas. There was too much wind for the hookah so we had pina coladas with a life jacket drill behind the boat and then pizza and a movie. I'm still pissed over the kellet. I'll make another, but I have no idea how I can secure it so that it is reasonably easy to put on and take off yet won't fall off. Deb thinks maybe a short pennant would help. Maybe. The first step will be finding more lead and making another.
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06/03/2012, Providencia, Columbia
Saturday, June 2. Deb was having a hard time waking up this morning so I said, “No problem, take as long as you want. I have some boat jobs to do and we can go diving this afternoon instead of this morning.” With that, I crawled into the port engine room to remove the ETD from the watermaker one more time. I've done this enough I should be getting good at it. I did tie the hatch open this time – last time a gust of wind blew it down on my head. If it hadn't wonked me on the head, it might have shut all the way and latched me inside until I could get Deb to let me out! Anyway, I got the ETD out and then hooked up for the “pressure relief recirculating”. Then I went down in the port aft berth and cleared the mattress and got down to the intake pump. I could not get the hose off the pump, so I took the hose off the intake strainer and used that to attach the new intake hose that would go in the bucket of solution. I fed the discharge hose from the ETD and the pressure relief hose down into the bucket as well. With this setup, I ran cleaning solution through the whole system for an hour and then rinsed it for another 15 minutes. Then I changed it to overboard discharge and flushed the system. Finally I ran the metabisulfate “pickling” solution through the system and disconnected the ETD and sealed the membrane in the pickling solution. Now I just have to decide if I try to carry the ETD back to the US and ship it from there or just ship it from Panama. Don't have to worry about that until we get back. For our afternoon dive, we went with Lorenzo & Joyce out to the North side of Santa Catalina where I had remembered some nice coral that we did not dive because of an abundance of the tiny jellies that we did not realize at that time were not stinging. Today there were only a few of them. Initially the coral was covered with algae and disappointing, but as we went further along, it became much healthier and more interesting. The fish were nothing like yesterday's (I have NEVER seen anything like that!), but were good. At one point I had two angels who were so interested in me that I backed up onto the sand and just sat there and let them swim around me for several minutes. I could swear they were looking me in the eye! The we found a fish trap that had an angel and a queen parrot fish in it. Deb & Joyce were determined to free them and attacked the trap with abandon eventually prying up on edge enough that the fish could swim out if they were smart enough to try. I felt ambivalent about the whole thing. After all, this was somebody's property they were destroying, but fish traps are illegal so.... In any event, by the time we swam back by the trap on our return, the angel had gotten out but the parrot fish was still inside. Maybe eventually she will smarten up too. We turned back when Joyce & Lorenzo's tanks were half gone. That seems to work well. At these shallow depths, they are getting a bit over an hour out of each tank and that is a long enough dive anyway. On the way back, Deb & I swung over to the red nun #4 and looked at the reef that it guards. It looks pretty promising and I think there is a drop to a channel on one side, maybe a wall, maybe not. We'll see tomorrow. Tonight is the crowning of Miss Providencia. Can you believe that the candidates are 14 & 15 years old? And look like their clothes came from “Sluts 'R' Us”? Oh well, Columbian culture. We didn't go.
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06/02/2012, Providencia, Columbia
Friday, June 1. This morning, Lorenzo & Joyce took us to the dive site they had gone to yesterday. They used tanks and we used the hookah. The site was about 1/3 of the way around Providencia island (as opposed to the much smaller Santa Catalina we had been diving around.) and then about ½ mile off shore. We eventually found the dive site – marked by an orange fuel jug – but it had a boat on it. Anchoring our dinghy in 20' seemed unlikely to succeed, but Lorenzo said he had plenty of chain and we could tie off to him (he had a hard dinghy that was more like a panga). As we got to the site, however, it was obvious that their dive was over and they were exiting the water. We just waited a few minutes and the the buoy to ourselves. We dropped about 20' on to a sand bottom. The reef ran out at an angle rising maybe 10' to its top which was covered by soft coral. The walls were mostly rubble with some live coral structures, but the FISH. It was amazing. Huge schools of fish that you could swim through the way you usually can little bait fish schools, except that these were schools of grunt, snapper, school master, chub and more. Usually the schools had one fish predominant with others mixed in. The fish numbered in the hundreds for each school! Swimming through them you would be surrounded, but none of them actually bumped you – they separated for you and closed back behind. Many pairs of angle fish and one large Queen Angel. We saw several electric rays hiding on the bottom and several spotted moray eels in crevices of coral. It was really a spectacular dive. We followed the reef until Lorenzo was ½ through his tank and then worked our way back. Running out a ways from the ridge, I spotted a flounder on the bottom and irritated him to where he fluttered and turned bright blue around the edges. We saw a large scrolled file fish who allowed very close approach. There were many different grouper and none seemed as wary as grouper usually are. Lorenzo & Joyce were certainly right – the site was really nothing much in terms of coral, but the inhabitants were unbelievable. By the time we got back, it was 1:30; three hours had elapsed and we were starving. After lunch we went in to town to see what fruits or veggies the boat may have brought. The selection was pretty sad. Maybe they won't get the new ones on the shelf until tomorrow. We did get a nice avocado, some limes and tomatoes, and a melon, all of which were good. At the bakery we got a loaf of “integral” bread that weighed nothing but was the best there was. We also got a baguette (also quite light) to go with the spaghetti Deb was making for supper and two “dulce” turnovers for breakfast. It was really hot in town and by the time we returned to the boat, we both needed to soak in the water to cool off. The water really doesn't even feel cool when you dive in, but if you stay in long enough you begin to equilibrate and cool off. We were going to go in for happy hour, but decided against it and just stayed on the boat. June is apparently the Columbian equivalent of Spring Break and lots of college age kids arrived yesterday and today. They had a tower of speakers set up in the plaza by the dinghy dock and had what was either a really poor live performer or a karaoke who had more enthusiasm than talent. About the time we were ready for supper, we also heard what sounded like the sound track of an old movie blasting from the general direction of Bamboo. We couldn't see any screen or lights to indicate a movie, but it was loud enough that it had to be coming from some type of PA system, not just a TV turned up loud. In an attempt to cover both that and the “music” from shore, I put on our “Original Jazz Masters” CD fairly loud. It was only moderately successful, but close enough. We enjoyed our dinner. Fortunately both forms of entertainment ended quite early and we were able to get to sleep without problems.
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06/01/2012, Providencia, Columbia
Thursday, May 31. I like slow mornings. After juice, coffee, and another delicious mango for breakfast, I changed the fuel filter on the port engine. (I had had to change the starboard one underway as the engine was stalling.) It, too, was quite clogged. Glad I have plenty of spares. Then I filled the dinghy gas tank from the jug. I have an extra tank as well, but I will refill the jug before we leave to be sure we have plenty for exploring around the Albuquerque Cays. Deb wanted to get some more “fish tail” seed pods for a craft project, so we took dink around the point to a sandy beach that provided the closest access to the path out to Morgan's Head where she had found the pods originally. We collected a whole bag full in no time. As we were finishing, three other dinghies – from the three other boats in the harbor whom we hadn't met – arrived to walk the path. We exchanged greetings and “Do you know..?” finding we did, indeed, have a few friends in common. The cruising community is really quite small and everyone is connected somehow. After lunch we went on another hookah dive, just the two of us. Lorenzo and Joyce had gone on a two tank dive that morning with a local guide. They were real excited about the first dive – feeding lion fish to sharks! - and told us that the second dive would be a perfect place to hookah – about 20' with lots of great fish. We may go there with them tomorrow, but today Deb just wanted to do a short dive and not go far in the dink as it was a bit rough out so we just dove on the reef on the leeward side of Santa Catalina. The coral was heavily covered with algae (or whatever it is) but, especially in the deeper sections, the architecture was great with lots of caves and canyons, arches, and swim-throughs (but watch out for the hoses!) There were lots of fish too. I even got a trunk fish interested enough to keep swimming back to look at me. Big schools of tangs and even a school of small chub. I is weird, you usually see big chub, but these were juvenile, the first we had seen. We had agreed to meet Lorenzo & Joyce at Bamboo for happy hour, but when we got there Orville said, “No cervesa.” The truck hadn't come today and he was all out. But he promised us enough for a good happy hour tomorrow. We returned to our boat and I made Deb & I each mojitos from the new batch of mojito juice I had cooked up this morning. Steaks on the grill and nearly fresh broccoli. Hopefully we can get more veggies tomorrow as I think the boat came today.
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