Cayos de Dios
31 May 2016 | Cayo Sal, Cuba
Mark
Yesterday was a 6 hr motor sail to the East. Initially,the wind was from the NE as predicted, but a bit stronger. We motored down the leeward side of Cayo Largo and cam around to head E. With the main up and both engines, we were able to make 4-5 kts on course. As the day progressed, the wind clocked S and died. My motored the last several miles. Cayo Sal is the largest of the Cayos de Dios. It is barren sharp coral (locally known as "diente de perro" - dog's teeth) with a single palm tree sticking up. It is supposed to have little wild life ashore, but abundant lobster and fish below. As we were approaching, we saw another boat - looked like a power cat - anchored about at the tip of the main island, so we chose to anchor further W to have more privacy and also to be nearer where it appeared the better snorkeling would be. The anchor grabbed immediately in the white sand in 14' of water. As always we let out 100' then the kellet and then the bridle. We were anchored. Changing into a suit, I dove off the bow for my first swim in Cuban waters. The water was amazingly clear. Will was concerned that he got too much sun yesterday, so he and Sandy stayed on the boat while Deb and I explored in the dinghy. What a disappointment! The 'other boat' turned out to be a wreck that must have gone aground in a Norther. The island has good protection from the typical trades - NE to SE - nut none from the N. Anyway, it had been there a while and was totally stripped. On the 'beach' was the deck of a 30'+ monohull, perhaps from the same storm. Bits of the hull were scattered around. The beach itself was also a disappointment. It was only a small strip of sand with very foul water on the other side - almost a salt pond that filled with sea water on very high tides and then evaporated, but this one had all kinds of slime growing on it. We did see interesting tracks in the sand. It looked like lots of bird tracks interrupted by these straight lines like someone dragged a stick across it. When a good sized iguana scampered across in front of us dragging its tail, we solved the mystery. The beach was, however, littered with huge lobster shells. Most must have been 5 lbs or better. Now if we cn find where they came from .... Back in dink, we decided to explore the W tip of the island where the chart showed many coral heads in 2-3 meters of water - perfect for snorkeling and maybe lobster. Except we never found the coral! We ran dink all over the area and only saw widely scattered small coral heads - nothing worth the swim. Even cruising close to shore, we could not see anything very interesting under the overhanging ledges - nothing that looked like a lobster hang out. We did see a really cool blow hole that shot water 10-15' into the air. Back at the boat, it was gin & tonic time. Maybe tonight we can barbecue as the weather was pretty calm. Until the squall arrived. We had noticed dark clouds building to the N, where the mainland would be, but the sudden gust of wind took us by surprise. Soon it was blowing 20+ kts with much higher gusts. As the book says, there is not protection from the N. But our anchor held well and the squall only lasted a half hour or so, but the wind never dropped back to the calm it was before, so the pork chops got cooked on the stove instead of the BBQ. The next cay is only ~1 hr away so we will check it out this morning. If it is good, we will stay, if not we should have time to continue on to the next one.