Cuba, Archipielago los Canarreos, Cayo Hicacos and Cayo Campos – The land of giant lobsters

The humans managed to get us out from behind the reef on the south side of Cayo Rosario with out incident. As they had been snorkelling and fishing in and around the coral heads at the entrance, I sure they knew where they were going this time, unlike when they came in!

We said goodbye to our anchorage between the cay and a reef and headed to another anchorage much the same. The anchorage off Cayo Hicacos is also found by entering a break in the reef and feeling yourself along until you find shelter between the Cay and the reef. Some times I think the humans are crazy. Cuba is not well charted, their Garmin chart plotter is useless and their depth gauge has ‘selective hearing’. Luckily they have a good guide book (by Capt.Cheryl Barr) and they bought that tablet with GPS attached in Puerto Rico, because Navionics seems to cover Cuba better. Still, they do choose the ‘maddest’ anchorage to try and get into.

Cayo Campos is the most popular anchorage in the immediate area. The entrance to the anchorage is wide, free of any obstructions and deep well within reach of the beach and ranger station. But access is only from the North side of the cay, not from the barrier reef South side. So why didn’t the humans go there? Well they gave me two reasons. First they are lazy, second the boat is too deep at 2m. To understand what they mean, you would need to look at a map of the Arhipielago los Canarreos on the south coast of Cuba. If you did you would see a long chain of cays that stretch from Cayo Largo in the east to the giant island of Isla Juventud in the west. All of these cays are protected by an almost continuous coral reef off the south coasts. This protects the cays from the fury of the Caribbean Seas and creates lovely lagoons and beaches on their south sides.

Now there is only one break through the reef deep enough for a vessel that draws 2m and that is half way along at Canal del Rosario. So you have to decide by then whether you want to travel down the exposed south side of the cays or the sheltered north side of the cays. For most people, it is a ‘no brainer’ and they duck through to the north side. But my humans always have to take the ‘path less traveled’. Their logic is two fold. First, all the best lagoons and beaches are on the south side of the cays. Who wants to anchor off the boring mangrove side of the cays. I love beaches, so I kind of have to agree with them a bit there. The weather is settled and there are some lovely breaks in the reef that lead to rarely visited lagoon anchorages. Here the water is clear for snorkelling and the reef offer a profusion of fish and lobster. Travelling along the south side of the Isla Juventud is also much shorter with a lovely beach anchorage on the furthest south western end for a stop over. The northern route around the Isla Juventud is much longer, requiring multiple stops and all mangroves.

The only trouble with traveling along the south side is the reef breaks are not marked. You really need settled weather and a good look out to find the channels through, and weave your way into, a sheltered spot behind the reef in the lagoons created. The rewards are great though. In the anchorages here in the south facing lagoons the humans have been coming back with buckets of Hog fish and Snapper and the biggest lobsters I have ever seen. They swear that they are just swimming up to you or crawling along the bottom in very shallow water.

Of course, in this ‘land of plenty’ something has to go wrong. The depth gauge, that has been suffering with ‘selective hearing’ has finally gone ‘deaf’. Of course it had to do so…at the worst possible moment. Just when the humans were ‘feeling’ their way over and around some shallow sand and weed looking for a spot with a bit more depth to anchor the gauge went mute, and this time refused to ‘speak’ again. Now you may remember that the depth gauge did this about the same time last year, and then miraculously started working again. So the humans should have been prepared for a reoccurrence. This is the one time, I have to give them credit for doing this right for a change. They stopped the boat, by dropping anchor where they were, and dug out a back up hand held depth gauge they purchased back in the US. They stuck in the batteries, tested that it worked (in a bowl of water) and cable tied it to a boat hook. The scene was right out of ‘the ages’. Imagine centuries ago a deck hand dropping the lead line and calling out the depth to the helms man. It was a lot like that. And I am embarrassed to say they even have a lead line as a back up.

Now obviously this is not the best way to proceed in Cuba waters where most navigational aids are inaccurate. So lobster harvesting is seriously curtailed by repairs on the boat. First the humans thought it was the depth gauge brain (receiving unit). The spare part ‘junkies’ had purchased a new head unit in case the original failed. They hooked up the sending unit (transducer) to the new unit and ‘presto’ it worked. Lovely! Lots of splicing, siliconing and fiddling and the new unit was fitted in place of the old. Problem solved right? Wrong! Of course once they had it all put back together and sealed shut it stopped working. That is when they realized it was not the brain. Everything apart and what comes out of another closet, but a spare sending unit. I told you they are spares ‘junkies’. Even customs shakes their head when they see how much junk they have packed on here! They hook up the sending unit to the brain and presto, it works on both the new and old unit.

Big problem! You can not replace a sending unit while you are in the water. They fit through a hole in the bottom of the boat. They send a signal to the sea bottom that is sent to the brain through a wire and translated. You need to have the boat lifted out of the water, remove the old unit, fit the new unit and seal it well so no sea water can enter. Not a job that is going to be done here in the isolated cays off the south coast of Cuba. But do not fret. There is a solution. My humans made friends with a lovely couple in Florida who had found a solution to the sending unit failure problem. Ed and Cheryl Carter, from sailing vessel Slowdown (see www.sailblogs.com/member/sailingslowdown.com), described to them a way to get around the ‘hole in the bottom of the boat’ problem. They suggested that the sending unit could transmit through the fiberglass hull if fitted flush. They suggested making a pipe, out of plastic, and fitting it onto the hull. Filling the pipe with mineral oil, to decrease evaporation, and drop the new sending unit into it. To help, Ed cut the humans a piece of pipe with the hulls internal slope cut off the end, to keep the sending unit straight up and down. Lots of 5200 adhesive, cursing and swearing to run the wires through the boat and up into the binnacle, and presto, new depth gauge!

It is so nice to know before hand if you are going to run aground. Why the humans did not sort it earlier, I will never know. With the last of our time here the humans brought me to Cayo Campos to meet the wardens and see the group of macaques monkeys living here. A large male stood guard over the group which included several females with babies. They were curious enough to let us get close enough for photos, but shy enough to go running when they thought you were moving into ‘their safety zone’. The passage between Cayo Hicacos and Cayo Campos is only 1 nm but is very shallow in spots. The humans managed to stir up a bit of sand getting back to the boat.

To finish off their visit the humans brought in a few lobster almost as big as me. It seemed a shame to eat such big beautiful creatures….only for a minute….then it was yum yum! How many dogs get served lobster for dinner? Yah, I am spoiled! Well all this tame weather is supposed to change for a few days. The wind is meant to clock around and there is a threat of nasty rain squalls. I am going to get the humans to move some where a little safer.

Tell you more later.

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Photos, charts and information we added once we got internet. Use link below:

Review of Southern Cuba Part 2 -including the pictures you missed