Providencia for three more days?

Burr, it's a chilly 78 degrees this morning. We actually pulled out a few fleece blankets last night. The strong cold front that penetrated the region 4 days ago is still producing strong winds steady around 25 knots with squalls bumping the winds unto the mid 30's plus. It's really unusual to have strong North winds for this many days. Snorkeling is out as the water is really stirred up and cloudy, walking around the islands is out as frequent rain squalls to 30+ knots and blowing sand is no fun. There is an internet cafe on shore that seems to be closed more than it's open and when it's open it's so painfully slow it's more like being caught in a spiders web than than surfing.

Every morning we tune our SSB to Chris Parker our Caribbean weather router in hopes of a more favorable forecast for future. The wedding is now 30 days away and we still have 525 nautical miles to sail to Belize. Lots of last minute preparations in Belize and I still need to fly to Florida for five days at the end of the month. Checking our log book I see we've now been here for nine days and we are getting anxious to move along. The next weather window is still three days away and then we have a minimum of three sailing days to Belize which only leaves me one week of wedding prep before I need to fly to Miami.

The good news is we are tucked into a very secure anchorage behind Catalina Island and Providencia Island. The anchor is sand with excellent holding at 13°22.8470 N 081°22.3572 W in 2.5 meters of water.

When we arrived we dropped two anchors. Our primary is a Spade A100 with 120' of 5/16" high test G4 chain on a long anchor bridal and as back up a Fortress FX37 on 12' of 3/8 high test chain and 120' (deployed of 200+ feet) of 3/4" three strand nylon rode. The Spade anchor is incredible. Even though it's a little small for my taste (it came with the boat) it's performance to date has exceeded my expectations. We are in the market for a Rocna 55 pound anchor and more chain, but it's pretty hard to get an anchor outside of the USA or Panama without paying exorbitant shipping and potentially duty.

Uploaded some 20 pictures of our limited land travels of Providnecia so read on for more.

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