Cayo Sal Cuba

Dawn at the entrance to Cienfuegos

After 9 full days in port the 0500hrs start on Saturday 2 March came as a bit of a shock to the system.  But, in company with Nomadica we were headed for Cayo Sal, about 60nm from Cienfuegos and if we wanted to arrive in good time before dark (so that we could see our way into the anchorage, find a good patch of sand to drop the anchor on and keep clear of any coral heads) we needed to start before dawn.  So a pre-dawn start it was.  Leaving the anchorage and making our way to the northern end of the narrow entrance channel was uneventful but as we reached the channel we could see on AIS that the small cruise ship that had been waiting outside the entrance had now taken on its pilot and was heading in.  We continued into the channel but held off in a shallow area as the cruise ship, the MV Hamburg, approached, not wanting to impeded her entry to the port. Morgan, who speaks fluent Spanish, later told us that the Guarda Frontera and the pilots were talking on the radio about the 2 yachts that were leaving but we obviously kept sufficiently clear for all concerned to be content.

The fishing fleet returns (and a small cruise ship has just entered the harbour though this fleet)

With the MV Hamburg clear of us, we continued towards the sea, only to meet the local rowing fishing fleet returning from their night’s work.  We couldn’t help wondering what the crews of large(ish) commercial ships think when they meet these fleets (and the fleets of fishermen floating on truck tyre inner tubes at Santiago de Cuba) coming into or out of port.  From our perspective, we wove a course around them and waved and called ‘buenos dias’ to those we passed.

Dolphins having fun playing with BV

There was too little wind to sail for the first 4 hours or so, so we motored and were joined for a time by a pod of dolphins who had fun playing in BV’s bow wave.

Reaching along under MPS and mainsail

When the wind eventually made an appearance, we expected it to keep on rising to about 15kts and so initially set just the main and genoa.  However, Nomadica set their cruising chute and, on balance, the wind looked to be staying steady at about 11kts, so we joined them and set our MPS too.

The direct route to Cayo Sal cuts across the entrance area to the Bahia de Cochinos, the Bay of Pigs.  Given the history of the place, it is perhaps understandable that the Cuban authorities have slapped a ‘prohibited to navigation’ zone across the bay and it’s entrance, which we needed to take a slightly dog-legged route to avoid.  Despite the red writing on the charts, we still saw a surprising number of sails to the north of us inside the prohibited area.

Anchored off Cayo Sal – look, no mangroves (and note the lone palm tree just to the left of our port shrouds)

We arrived at Cayo Sal at 1620 about an hour after Nomadica and anchored, as recommended by the cruising guide, off the lone palm tree.  Cayo Sal is very different to the other cays we had so far visited.  It has no mangroves, just the one palm tree and appears to be mostly rock covered by a thin layer of soil and scrub.  Cheryl, Morgan and Gael went off for an explore in the dinghy (still in search of sand!) and reported that there were a couple of beaches around the corner to the east but that the swell was running too high for them to get ashore for Gael to run off some energy.  So instead he practised exploring and climbing in a different cockpit whilst his parents enjoyed sundowners on BV (and occasionally made a rescuing lunge in his direction).

Nomadica heading off to Cayo Largo

In the morning we waved goodbye to Morgan, Cheryl and Gael.  They wanted to move on to Cayo Largo so they had the opportunity to spend a little time there before they had to exit Cuba at the expiration of their visas.  We hoped that we would get to see them one last time before they headed south to Belize.

Having waved Nomadica off, we spent the rest of the morning underwater scrubbing BV’s bottom.  It was a long, tedious job as we’d not fully tackled the job since before arriving in Cuba and she’d been sat still for a week or more in each of Santiago de Cuba and Cienfuegos.  But, eventually, the job was done and so we moved onto cleaning the interior and some of the deck areas too.  Cleaning, like polishing is a never-ending and seemingly nugatory task, but it needs to be done.  The one big job left to be tackled though, were the brown spots on BV’s deck from Santiago.  Something for another day.

But we couldn’t spend the whole day cleaning so, in the afternoon, we jumped in the dinghy and headed off to find the beach.  The one we found is a lovely little beach, actually on a tiny islet just east of Cayo Sal. We were fortunate in arriving at the right state of tide.  Had it been much higher, as it would have been when Chery and Morgan visited the previous day, the beach would mostly have been underwater and, by the looks of it, there would have been quite a viscous wave pattern set up on the beach due to the run of swell and current through the cut.

Blowhole in action

We beached the dinghy and scrambled cautiously across the sharp rocks to a blowhole that was putting on a good display – just the right state of tide.  From our ‘vantage point’ on the top of the islet [Ed:  wow, all of about 6ft high!] we could see the remains of a couple of yachts wrecked on the eastern end of Cayo Sal and one further east on the islet.  A sobering thought.

Our beach

Beach explored we took the dinghy to the other end of Cayo Sal where it seemed from  the chart as if there should be some good snorkelling.

Right: Large woodlouse-type creatures just above sea level on one of the rocks

And there was.  The west end of Cayo Sal is steep too with a deep, but narrow, channel between the cay and one or two small islets.  We anchored the dinghy in the lee of Cayo Sal, just shy of its western tip and snorkelled to the cut and across to the islets.

There was a reasonable current flow in the channel and, in the protection of the islets we saw large shoals of small fish, all taking advantage of the food coming in on the current flow.  The water was clear and there were plenty of interesting corals and fish to look at.

As we returned to the dinghy, snorkelling close in along Cayo Sal’s southern shore, we came to a small inlet and there, basking on a ledge was a large lobster and half out of holes close by were 3 others!  Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get the surf-bathing lobster on my first attempt, so I then spent about 20mins getting it out of the hole it had tried to escape into.

Larry one of 4 on the reef 

But it was bagged in the end and made an excellent dinner for us.  We had hoped to have the place entirely to ourselves for the evening and we did….until 1700hrs, when 4 charter catamarans turned up.  But there’s enough space for 5, and more, at Cayo Sal.  We just wondered if they, like us, would all be heading west the next day.

Cayo Sal, Cuba