Since leaving the Panama Canal we have sailed on a North Easterly course, roughly following the coastline of Panama and Colombia. Most of the day we spent crossing the Columbia basin; that curve in the land near the cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla. As all the ships keep roughly the same distance from land, we had a lot of opposing traffic today, meeting ship after ship going to the Panama Canal and coming from areas on the North side of South America. Ships going to Europe and North America follow other routes, as they have to get out of the Caribbean Sea by sailing somehow around Cuba. There are various “gaps” to use for that and we will be using the Windward Passage later on, located between Cuba and the Westside of Haiti. First we will visit the port of Oranjestad on Aruba.

This area around the Colombian Basin can be a real blow hole. The trade winds that blow through the Caribbean Sea follow the angle of the land, and then turn more to the South West and often increase in force while doing so. Only when closer to Panama the wind veers away from land (that strange crooked curve that makes up Panama) and the wind looses it velocity. We are going against it and thus today we enjoyed the full brunt of it. Not bad weather, just very windy. There is a weather front moving through the Southern Caribbean Sea at the moment as well, which accelerates these winds even more, and that will make it a breezy day tomorrow in Aruba.

carribean_sea_current_map Above Panama we have the current with us and as soon as we come closer to Colombia it goes opposite.

The wind has another effect and that is that it enhances the West current that is already flowing here. The regular trade winds already create a steady flow of the predominantly western current above Colombia and if the wind increases in velocity it flows even stronger. Something that is not very nice for our fuel consumption as it reduces our speed and thus the engines have to work harder to keep up. The fact that there is a counter current above Panama, offsets the challenge a little bit but still we spend more time here with the current against us, than with the current with us.

We saw something interesting in the early evening; three ships sailing in tandem, pulling sonar equipment behind them. The Statendam was called while still over 10 miles away with the request not to approach any closer than 6 miles behind the lead ship, as the tow was strung out that far. We were also requested to stay at least 3 miles to the North or South. They were pulling an array of floating objects all with lights on it. No information was forthcoming but a set up like this normally indicates that they were doing sonic measurements of the sea bottom and that normally means: looking for oil. Now deep sea drilling is technically not that difficult anymore, deep sea area’s are explored (the Colombian basin is over 1,500 meters deep here) that were never considered to be feasible in the past.

I am not that familiar with these sonar explorations but the way it basically works is that pulses are being sent to the sea bottom and the angle under which they bounce back (hence the long tow array, needed to get the right angle) tells the scientists something about the makeup of the seabed and the sort of rock under it. If the tests indicate that the rock is a composition that might be favorable to hold oil deposits a test drilling will take place. However deep sea drilling is so expensive that oil company’s first want to have a good indication that there might be oil, before they invest xxx million dollars in the actual drilling.
In the near future we might see more of these oil explorations vessels who will call for a safe passing distance and then we might have to do zig sagging all the way to Aruba as a sort of standard route.

I expect to be at the pilot station of Oranjestad Aruba at 05.30 hrs. and to be docked about 45 minutes later. The weather looks good, mainly sunny but it will be extremely breezy, not to say very windy.