Puerto Oscoses to Nianega

Hi everyone,

We spent two nights at anchor in Puerto Oscoses.  Nice quiet place.  Yesterday we went for a dinghy ride with the Ceruleans  to explore an indigenous shelter.  Lots of shoal areas around the periphery of the bay.

Cerulean and Zen Again in Puerto Escoses (Port Scotland)

Fishing platforms on the east side of the bay

Zen Again, Cerulean, Avanti & Pacifica at anchor

Around dawn this morning it started to rain, accompanied by impressive thunder which literally shook the boat.  Didn't see any lightning.  The rain was pretty heavy - at least 75mm in 3 hours.  Mother nature's water-maker filled our tanks and jerries in 15 minutes.

Downpour

Despite the thunderstorms we managed to run the Escapee SSB Net.  Two member yachts are at sea and it was good to record their positions and hear 'all well aboard'.

Early this afternoon all four of us weighed anchor and headed NW along the coast.  There was no wind so we motored under a still overcast sky.  We passed two river mouths which were spewing out the rain in chocolate-coloured water, 'spiced' with twigs, branches and small trees.

Departing Caledonian Bay

Entering the river outflow

Anchored of Nianega

Our overall track and graphs are shown below, followed by the Depth Graph for the passage.  Note the three sudden shoal depths shown...

Overall Track

Graphs

Depth Profile

By combining the time of each shoal depth with our track we plotted them as waypoints in the two chart excerpts below.  The arrival shoals may be ledges vice isolated outcrops since sv Avanti encountered them too.  The charts are from the 4th edition of Eric Bauhaus's excellent book "The Panama Cruising Guide".  We have a paper copy.  These shoals may be shown in later editions.

Departure Track with UNCHARTED 3.5m SHOAL

Arrival Track with UNCHARTED 3.5m SHOALS

We compared Bauhaus's charts with Navionics and there's no comparison - Bauhaus wins hands down.  Navionics's SonarCharts are a little better than Navionics-proper.  However it appears they've crowd-sourced data from where everyone goes and interpolated from there - very inaccurately.  Few of the shoals are shown in Navionics because no-one goes there.  Beware!

After arriving we were welcomed to the anchorage by a three-man delegation in a dugout canoe.  Very welcoming.  They asked for a US$5 anchoring fee, pencils for the kids and a snack for themselves - all gladly given.  Reminds us of fun times in Indonesia - ten years ago.

Our visitors also invited us ashore tomorrow.  We declined since we contracted Covid shortly before leaving Colombia.  Basically a bad cold since we're vaccinated and triple boosted.  We're isolating aboard until well over it.  Glad it wasn't like our first encounter in London before either lockdowns started or a vaccine was created.  For me that was a fortnight-long headache with a bad cough.

Trust all's well where you are!