(yang posting #3 � The Papagayos)
Captain John Rains recently published a magazine article entitled 'The Two Terrors of the Pacific Coast'. He was referring to the Gulfo de Tehuantepec with its famed northers (aka, Tehuanta-peckers) and the Gulfo de Papagayo with its famed Papagayos (aka, second-hand Caribbean trade winds). The title probably sold a bunch of magazines, and put a few people off going any further south than Zihuatanejo. While both areas, at times, can have storm-force winds in excess of 50 knots, both are well understood weather and geographic phenomena and, therefore, predictable and avoidable. In theory.
Option 1: Don't go near them between November and April. Of course the rest of the year between May and October you have the East Pacific hurricane season. What's a cruiser to do?
Option 2: Wait for lulls in the winds and dart across the affected areas! While the Tehuantepec can be staged and the most dangerous section darted across in a mere 24 hour window (lull), the Papagayos have been described not so much as a weather phenomenon, but rather a way of life. But we'll get to that later.
Option 3: Ignore the whole thing. There are plenty of cruisers (mostly those from countries fronting the North Sea) who just cross the Tehuantepec without regard for the wind or sea conditions. If I'd learned to sail in the North Sea, I suppose I'd think of 40-50 knot winds and 20+ foot seas as minor annoyances as well.
Well, we're option 2 sort of cruisers, so we caught a 5-day window for the Tehuantepec. Ended up motoring the last half (2nd day) in glassy seas. OK, one down, one to go.
Fortunately for us, the Papagayos were starting up late this year. Once they start they don't quit. They are the Caribbean Trade Winds having crossed the Caribbean (providing Heather and Zack a component of their lovely BVI vacation) and ended up on the East shore of Central America. But because Nicaragua is basically flat and has a huge lake (lakes also tend to be very flat geographically, have you noticed?), the Trade Winds just keep on going across into the Pacific.
We got to beautiful and serene Marina Puesta del Sol on a Sunday. The Papagayos were expected to be quiet until Friday night. So we first planned to leave on Thursday morning with some new friends. But we weren't quite rested and had 'a bad feeling' about the window, so we passed on that departure date.
WRONG! Our feelings let us down. Would have been a great passage. But we had a great time in the marina and made some new friends and saw an extra part of Nicaragua. So we started watching the weather closely looking for the next lull. According to www.weatherbuoy.com, the next lull would come on Monday into Tuesday. 10-15 knot winds coming directly off the land. Ahhh, visions of a fast beam-reach or close reach danced in our heads. So we checked out and departed early Monday morning. All morning was beautiful as predicted. Virtually flat waters with 12 knot beam winds. Ahhh (again), this is the cruising life! Then 15. Then 18. 22. 25. 28. And finally 32-35 sustained. But not beam or close reaching, virtually on the nose which meant that we were bashing nose first into 6-foot rolling seas. Ceilidh's bow rising up on one wave, then crashing down onto the next peak, or sometimes crashing down in front of the next peak and burying her nose in the wave. Both options bringing our forward motion to a virtual stop.
The normal auto pilot couldn't adjust fast enough to avoid getting us all turned around in the conditions. So we hand steered for an hour or so and then tried the wind vane (wind direction) option on the auto pilot and found that it kept us going in the right direction 95% of the time.
Near sunset we were nearing Puerto Sandino and some friends told us about some mooring balls they'd hooked onto for a couple of days with the Port Captain's approval. Puerto Sandino is named Puerto Somosa on the official charts, but the dictator(s) Somosa has officially been declared a bad guy so he's now losing those delightful dictatorial perks (like naming parts of the country after yourself) collected while he was alive. Sandino was an early 20th century revolutionary from whom the Sandinistas take their name, but the revolutionary and the political party existed decades apart and never had a connection. We hooked up to a mooring ball and breathed a sigh of relief. The Port Captain then calls and asks if there is a problem: No, we're just looking for a night's rest. Is it OK? Next thing we know, a panga comes along side and we're boarded by the Port Captain, Immigration, and the Navy with a semi-automatic rifle. No problem ... you're no one down here unless your entourage has at least one semi-automatic weapon or sawed-off shotgun. You get used to it. I think receptionists need to bring theirs along on the initial job interview as well.
He explains that he's taking us into the port. Would we please follow the panga? Sure. (?) In the now dark. Hope, with her magical ways, managed to convince the semi-automatic guy to shoulder the weapon and hold a flashlight on the 3M reflective tape on the panga driver's life jacket. All I had to do was follow the bouncing panga ball in the darkness. We have a keel depth of 6.5 feet. At times in the marked channel I saw 6.6 feet on the depth sounder. Once inside: please approach that 12-foot tall solid concrete wall (wharf), unlit, and put ceilidh along side in the shadows. Hell, I could barely see the bow pulpit let alone the wall. And don't plan to swing smoothly along the wall, there's a steel tug 6 feet in front of where you have to stop and an anchored panga 10 feet behind. So just steer in at an almost 90 degree angle and turn at the appropriate last moment.
All I can say is, thank the gods for adrenalin. The concrete wall didn't suffer a scratch, neither did the tug, and neither did ceilidh. I couldn't fall asleep for a few hours, but that's OK.
We got checked in. They moved us off the wall to be tied next to the tug ... all the boats tied at the wharf were protected by at least a dozen very large tires (for very good reason) and, damn, we forgot our tires! What were we thinking back in San Francisco? They were very helpful, concerned, and mindful of our situation.
And please, no photographs? asked the guard politely with the ever so polite semi-automatic rifle cradled in his arm.
The next morning we get checked out and were told we could use the mooring ball for a day or two. Told by the Port Captain (this is an important detail). We followed the tug out the channel, which was a good thing because the tug draws 6.5 feet and the captain knew where the REAL channel was, not just the panga shortcuts. But as we picked up the mooring, the Harbor Master (note the title change?) called: What are you doing? When are you leaving? You're already checked out!
Seems the tug with the Port Captain was going out to check in an oil tanker anchored off shore and the mooring balls were going to be used by barges to offload the oil. We were in the way. Puerto Sandino may not be much, but it is home to an electrical generating plant of which there are not enough in Nicaragua. So off we go to face another day of Papagayos after mentally making plans to not be moving another inch.
The morning wasn't too bad and friends encouraged us to keep on going to the 'No Name' anchorage rather than less desirable intermediate anchorages. So we pushed the throttle ahead by a couple of hundred rpm's and burned a few extra dinosaurs. We got in just after dark and did our first nighttime-in-a-strange anchorage anchoring. Then collapsed.
One boat left the next morning for the next destination, San Juan del Sur. They had 20 to 40 knots of those delightful Papagayos. We left the next morning, lulled by friends who said it looked like it would be 10-15 to them. WRONG! and they weren't using weatherbuoy.com.
So we're finally here in San Juan del Sur. Great little resort town. Lots of international gringos (we were speaking Spanish to a French cruiser to communicate, weird). Friendly locals. The Papagayos are still blowing, but who cares? It's a way of life for us ... now ... almost. We may even miss them when we get to the middle of Costa Rica. (NOT!)
One good piece of news? Our wind generator was designed and built in Trinidad specifically for the Trade Winds. It must recognize the Caribbean air as it is keeping us charged up all night long, every night. A first since we've started cruising.
Another piece of good news? Ceilidh is even stronger than we've come to know, better handling in conditions we haven't experienced, and we have more reserves and strength than we thought. It's all about learning out here.
Last piece of news: We met a cruiser who has settled in San Juan del Sur and is writing a cruising guide on Central America. To his knowledge we're the first cruising boat ever to be allowed into Puerto Sandino.
maps.google.com fun ...
Marina Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua
12.625100N, 087.342100W
Puerto Sandino, Nicaragua
12.182600N, 086.785683W (mooring ball)
12.201267N, 086.764600W (12-foot wall)
No Name Anchorage, Nicaragua (the cruiser name for the place)
11.505233N, 086.174267W
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
11.256350N, 085.879200W
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