J and B YACHT ULTRA CARIBBEAN SAILING AND OTHER TRAVEL ADVENTURES: PROVIDENCIA AND SANTA CATALINA TO SAN ANDRES, COLOMBIA

Thursday, March 12, 2015

PROVIDENCIA AND SANTA CATALINA TO SAN ANDRES, COLOMBIA - MAY 2014

MAY 2014

After an amazing adventure in the Colombian islands of Santa Catalina and Providencia, it was time to take advantage of the weather window and head to their sister island, San Andres. After a great sail, we arrived at the reef entrance. It was a little scary considering there were countless wrecked boat all around it. EEK! We trust our chartplotter, but we trust our eyes many times over more, and under the bright sun and crystal clear water, we picked our way through! We donned our headsets, which we have dubbed "The Marriage Savers", since it helps prevent alot of yelling back and forth and one or the other of us, getting well, SUPER TICKED OFF AT THE OTHER ONE. JoAnne was on the bow, reporting back to Bill, who was at the helm, turn starboard, port, etc. to avoid the coral heads. We cannot stress enough how important it is to practice reading the water. The different shades of the water are telltale signs of the different depths and hazards. To complicate it even further, different bodies of water read differently, for instance, we have seen many times, water that is 50 ft. deep, but so crystal clear, you can see the bottom, that you would swear it was 10 ft. deep! We made it safely through the reef and passed the cays and made our way to the anchorage. The anchorage is not known for the best holding, so we will put out extra chain that is attached to our beloved 40 kg Rocna anchor. We will dive it to, to be sure it is dug in. We get settled, grab our boat papers, and head in to meet Renee at the Yacht Club. He is the agent that we must use to check into San Andres. We already have our tourist card that we received for here from Mr. Bush in Providencia, but additional paperwork is needed when we move island to island and port to port. The paperwork goes smoothly, we enjoy an ice cold Club Colombia beer and we are on our way to explore. We walk around the center of town.

On the way to San Andres, we again had the autopilot glitchy and it was on and off. Mostly, off, so yes, we are complaining again. :) ULTRA steers like a bathtub, so manually steering hours on end, it quite exhausting. But, good news, here in San Andres, we are now in a more commercialized place and we have access to some much bigger hardware stores that sell more than just a few cans of WD40, PVC pipe, bags of cement and some nails. We are surrounded by many, and each sells all different components that we need, so we visit all of them, several times. We finally located enough stuff to rig it until we can get our new autopilot that we have ordered and Dreamcatcher is bringing home with them to Bocas del Toro. After Bill took some satellite tv cable, some aluminum tape, some heat shrink and a few more additional steps and PRESTO, we can begin the recalibration of the unit. It still fails, but not as much, just 80 percent of the time, instead of 90 percent. Turns out is is the fluxgate compass that is bad.

After many days of working/rigging on the autopilot, we decided to take the day off and go for an all day bike ride complete with chilling on the beach and beach combing. We even had a little helper that noticed what we were doing, and after watching us from afar, he ran over and began picking up seabeans with us. hundreds and hundreds. We know he thought we were crazy, he has seen them all his six years on this earth, and did not quite understand, but was an amazing hunter. In turn for all of the fun we had hunting seabeans with him, we rewarded him with popsicles, juice and a dip in the community pool. so fun!

We stayed in San Andres until we got the next weather window, and then began our way towards Panama. We island hopped along the way. We have been in some extremely remote places along the way. There is nothing, but islands and nothing else for miles and miles. So no wifi or internet of any kind. We are behind on our blog, but it has been worth it to see these remote places and share the adventures with all of you. One that sticks out in our minds, it the sea turtles that we saw along the way. They were the size of a Volkswagon. HUGE! We look forward to sharing all of that with all of you with our next post! We sincerely appreciate you following our blog and we hope that you enjoy it! We love to hear your comments!

THIS IS BEER AND COKE MIXED TOGETHER. LET'S JUST SAY IT IS AN ACQUIRED TASTE. IT WAS NOT OUR FAVORITE, BUT AT LEAST WE TRIED IT.

OUR EXPERT HUNTER THAT IS 6 YEARS OLD SHOWS UP

TO HELP SEARCH FOR SEA BEANS!

MY HERO, BILL, RIGGING THE AUTOPILOT!

THEIR CHARTPLOTTER DID NOT WORK TOO WELL. THEY LANDED ON THE REEF

FUN PARTY THAT WE WERE INVITED TO WITH KATIA AND HER CREW BEFORE WE DEPARTED PROVIDENCIA!
SHE SINGS LIKE AN ANGEL!

OUR AMAZING SAN ANDRES FAMILY! WE WERE SO HAPPY TO FINALLY MEET
OUR PENPALS FROM SAN ANDRES. WE ARE TRULY BLESSED! :)

THE FIRST BATCH OF SEA BEANS WE FOUND ON THE BEACH, THE DAY BEFORE
EASTER, IN JUST 20 MINUTES.
WHEN WE TOOK THE ALL DAY BIKE RIDE, WE FOUND 200+ AMAZING!

SPECIAL DELIVERY FROM OUR FRIEND, DANE! HE COMES OVER TO VISIT WITH HIS NEPHEW AND BRINGS US AN AMAZING SURPRISE! FRESH RED SNAPPER! YUMMY!

YES, WE ARE CONTINUOUSLY THE MARK, FOR THE SAILBOATS
FROM THE YACHT CLUB.

WE TOOK THE BUS WITH DREAMCATCHER AND OCEAN STAR TO TOUR THE ISLAND . WE HIKED SEVERAL MILES THAT DAY AND IT WAS A GREAT WAY TO SEE IT!

THE RED TIDE (WELL PURPLE TIDE) IS ALSO HERE IN SAN ANDRES, AS WE ALSO WITNESSED IN THE MANGROVES OF PROVIDENCIA

COOL CRAB MADE OF CAR BUMPERS!

FUNNY, BLUE BELL ICE CREAM...... GOOD ICE CREAM, BUT NOT AS GOOD AS THE REAL BLUE BELL THAT COMES FROM BRENHAM, TEXAS! THEY CAN COPY THE NAME, BUT NOT THE QUALITY! :)