We were on the mooring in Chatham Bay by about 8am. The island is lush and green and we see waterfalls coming out of the steep sides of the island. Nearby, we see the Undersea Hunter, one of the liveaboard dive boats.
Soon after we arrived, one of the Park boats came by and said they wanted to schedule a time with us to do the park briefing. They suggested in the afternoon, like 2pm, to give us time to recover from the trip. But Dave was raring to go, and said we'd be ready in an hour.
So we piddled around cleaning things up on board and stowing sails, etc. They did not come back at 10.
Finally at noon we called in on the VHF. When we asked if they spoke English, they said 'momentito' and a minute later a very young-sounding girl named Maria came on the radio. She is a park volunteer who speaks English.She didn't seem to have a definite time, but she was trying to be helpful. Apparently the main ranger station is around in Wafer Bay, and that's where the briefing is scheduled out of. She said we could come ashore and hike over to Wafer Bay, if we wanted to.
That seemed like a better option than sitting around the boat waiting for who-knows-when to get our official park briefing. So we got our hiking stuff together and went in in the dinghy. Maria and her boyfriend Daniel, who is also a volunteer at the Park, met us on the beach and helped us carry the dinghy up to the high water mark (we forgot to put on our expensive, heavy dinghy wheels).
Then Maria guided us up and over the mountain on the trail to Wafer Bay. It was a pretty strenuous hike for coming off a 3-day passage!! But the views of the bay from the top of the mountain were pretty spectacular.
The ranger station at Chatham Bay is very small and run-down looking. There is a group of volunteers here that are working on the beginnings of a plan to relocate the Chatham Bay station to a location higher up on the hill.
But the Wafer Bay station is very well appointed, including a hydro-electric plant fed by a waterfall and dam. Maria told us they even had internet and wifi there.
One of the primary missions of the park is to keep it a fishing-free preserve. In this mission they seem to be succeeding. They patrol around the island out to 12 miles, and confiscate any fishing equipment and escort the fishermen out of the park. They showed us a warehouse of fishing line they have confiscated--huge rolls of 500-lb test shark line. They have taken some of it and have built an impressive-looking suspension bridge over the stream where the hydro plant is, completely out of confiscated fishing lines and floats.
The suspension bridge led over a stream to a Hydro Electric machinery building. We talked Maria into showing us inside.
When we finally met up with Isaac, the Ranger who was supposed to arrange the briefing, he said it would be much more convenient to do the briefing in the morning. Apparently the English-speaking ranger who was supposed to brief us, was off on a hike (we had passed her going the other way with a group of divers off the Sea Hunter dive boat, which is on another mooring near us in Chatham Bay). So now our briefing is scheduled for 8:30 this morning.
When we asked Isaac about diving, he said he wasn't sure he could arrange it!! The park rules require a park escort for any diving, and they only have one guy here now, (Tito), and it seemed like there might be some scheduling problem with Tito. So we will see what we can work out. I guess one of the most important rule is to have a surface escort, and with just Dave and I here, I'm not sure they'll let us dive without it. It would be a real bummer to come all this way to one of the best dive locations in the world, and not get to dive. So I'm sure we'll work something out.
Even just diving off our boat here in Chatham Bay would be interesting. The visibility is about 50' and on a quick snorkel to check the mooring, we saw lots of life--even a couple of small sharks.
The other problem we may have is the weather. From the best I can discern, winter cold fronts from the Caribbean spill over into the Pacific this time of year, creating some local wind events known as Papagayo winds. There is a big Papagayo forecast that may reach this far out, and change our wind direction to one that would make Chatham Bay untenable. So we need to get an updated weather forecast and make a plan for what to do when it comes. There are 2 other bays at the island we could anchor at, if needed, depending on which way the wind blows.
A third problem we are having is that Chatham Bay, at least right now, is open to a 4-5 foot ocean swell. It was bad enough when we were pointed into the swell yesterday, but last night about dusk, the wind switched around some and left us sitting most of the night sideways to the swell. We have been rolling like a b-tch all night--to the point where Dave opted to sleep in the salon. Even now, we are still sitting sideways and rolling nearly gunnel to gunnel.
All we need to do to fix this problem is set a stern anchor of some kind. But we're waiting to ask the Rangers what we're permitted to do (either hand set an anchor in sand, or take a long stern line back to the next mooring behind us.
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