Rounding Pirate Corner to Providencia
The trip from Belize to Providencia, a Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua, was approximately 3 days rounding the corner where Honduras and Nicaragua share a border. In the last 8 years, there have been some reported ‘attempted’ piracies. Actual, suspicious and attempted activity is all reported to the Caribbean Crime Network and is symbolized as red skulls on the app we use to make friends and get local tips from other cruiseres, No Foreign Land.
For example, only one year ago about on our track (100 miles offshore), a cruiser traveling in stealth mode (no lights, AIS, etc) reported being followed by a fishing vessel that was following them and getting closer. When the cruising boat changed course, the fishing boat followed. When they tried to use VHF to contact a buddy boat, the fishing vessel jammed the communication by clicking over them. Within one mile, the fishing boat increased speed and aimed directly for the cruiser. The buddy boat (with whom they were communicating over satellite) issued a pan pan and the cruising yacht activated their Iridium SOS alerting the USCG and others. The cruiser increased to maximum speed and turned out to sea. Finally the fishing vessel ceased their pursuit.
So. Generally speaking, the best way to avoid piracy is to stay way off shore. Most pirate boats are not big and don’t have good engines. The farther out to sea, the less likely they will be there and to make pursuit. Our plan was to stay roughly 100 miles off the corner, in spite of it being an uncomfortable ride straight into wind and waves, and to also “go dark”. But we did have the main sail up and it was a bright moon, so we were still pretty visible even without running lights. AIS is the satellite tracking that most cruisers and ships have - we can see each other and if you click on a boat’s AIS detail, it tells you the name of the vessel, their distance from you, the direction they’re heading, speed, closest point of contact, etc. So by turning that off, if there was a “mothership” or someone monitoring the area, they wouldn’t know we were there unless they actualy saw us.
We also had something of a plan of what we would do if we were followed and if we were boarded. Keep in mind, our discussions were completely in code so as not to worry the kids. Do the kids and I hide? If so, we decided where (starboard hull behind the black water tank, hidden by life jackets). What would we give them? We had cash ready and some old electronics. What could we use to keep them from boarding? Zig zag maneuvers, trail floating lines in the water to foul their engine…. All interesting ideas and even with all our planning, we honestly weren’t really sure. Luckily, it wasn’t an issue and we made it to Providencia without incident, although Gus did report sighting a fishing boat on the last night that seemed to follow for a while but was never within 2 miles. (As of the time of this writing we did not have the number one weapon that we have now - a big water pump whose primary purpose would be to get water out of the bilges, but it also acts as a huge fire hose and would be nearly impossible to breach).
Perhaps this is the time to answer the question everyone wants to know - do we carry guns or weapons on board? No, we don’t. First of all, it’s very American to even think of owning a gun. Most people in most parts of the world don’t own guns and the police in the UK don’t carry guns. It’s also more likely guns will incite violence rather than stop it. And most importantly, perhaps, is that we want to travel the world being curious, not confrontational. Moving on…
Providencia and San Andres are two islands situated in the west Caribbean that are actually part of Colombia. San Andres is the big sister, more of a tourist destination with resorts and resources. We only stopped at Providencia, which we circumnavigated in about an hour in a 4wd vehicle and which remains largely decimated since the hurricane in 2017. The water is beautiful with so many shades of blue and apparently some incredible diving. But the land is not only very rustic Caribbean, damaged buildings and torn up vegetation are everywhere.
We stayed about three nights and met another boat, SV Aloy, with Illy and Rene’ on board. They joined us for a dinner one evening and Rene’ is a certified dive instructor so he generously offered to give the kids a lesson and take them for a dive off the boat. It was fun to get to know them and Jordan loves diving. Rosie had some trouble equalizing this time, so we hope this wasn’t her last dive.
We had been encouraging the kids to swim off the boat (per usual) until Illy and Rene’ informed us that apparently there is a tiger shark that hangs out in the bay in the evenings. We’ve heard and talked about a lot of sharks since being in the Caribbean and the Bahamas particularly, but I hadn’t heard much about tiger sharks. I looked them up—they can reach up to 5 meters, are lone predators, and are second only to the Great Whites in recorded fatal attacks on humans (though still exceedingly rare). Well anyway, we stopped swimming in the bay and when the weather calmed down, we took off for Panama where we would spend the foreseeable future.
The most interesting part of Providencia was that we made it there without incident.
