Late in the evening, in darkness, on the 28th of December we hear a ship hailing the Providencia Port Captain requesting a pilot. A pilot?! The channel in here is too shallow, and the one commercial dock is too short for a ship needing a pilot to dock, yet he calls again. Someone finally replies telling him that there are no pilots. A few minutes later we see three enormous spotlights high in the air. Seaocean has entered the anchorage. We hear them drop the anchor just outside the channel behind us. This should be interesting.

The following morning one side of the commercial dock is cleared and Seaocean pulls up their anchor and heads for the channel. She looks pretty empty, with the majority of her bottom paint exposed and her prop just below the water. Shortly after rounding the last set of buoy markers we hear them call again, they've run aground in the channel. In addition to there being no pilots, there are no tugboats here. Several lanchas motor out to see if they can assist but none have the power needed. The anchor is dropped again. The cargo holds open and the multiple day process of transferring the goods from the ship to shore via lancha begins. Very large, heavy white bags are placed in a lancha which then slowly makes its way to the dock where a yellow CAT Excavator / Bucket lifts them one by one onto the dock. There are at least four lanchas going back & forth.

The morning the cargo transfer is complete, she lifts the anchor and while lighter than when she arrived still finds herself aground. Engines rev, the bottom churns. After an hour, she's managed to get turned around, pointed in the outgoing direction but not any farther on her way. The water in the anchorage around this toil has gone from clear blue-green to a cloudy beige as the bottom is churned up and dispersed with the current. A few hours later a second plan is put into action; the addition of three lanchas closely circling the cargo ship to create a wake to roll her back & forth and perhaps temporarily lift her off the bottom while powering forward. While entertaining to watch, it also fails to get her moving. They finally quit and the water starts to clear.

We thought they would use the night high tide to leave but Seaocean is still here the following morning (2 Jan). Once again they rev the engines, this time forward then reverse, and go no where. We are surprised we haven't seen someone dive the bottom to see where she's stuck nor dropped the anchor in one of the lanchas and have them drop it in the water several yards ahead so that they can use the windlass to pull her forward as the engines push from behind. Hmm. When the fast motor catamaran Sunsation arrives from San Andres, a fairly regular service between the two islands, the captain calls Seaocean on the VHF to ask his intentions. The reply is that he has no steerage and no engine, which really means she's well and truly stuck.

We hear additional VHF radio traffic from them in the afternoon, they're transferring something between the cargo holds. This must have done the trick as by late afternoon they're moving. We can feel the collective sigh of relief from those on Seaocean, the Port Captain's office, and those of us sharing the anchorage.