We left Costa Rica's Bahia Santa Elena and were soon in Nicaraguan waters making for Marina Puesta del Sol, about 145 miles up the road. Sailing was good for the first 6 hours; we sailed 4 miles offshore with winds aft of the beam 15 to 23 knots and a low chop. There was some smog from something burning onshore – possibly stubble and brush from sugar cane fields but we were close enough to shore to see Volcano Olmetepe in Lake Nicaragua through the haze. We also spotted 3 yellow-bellied sea snakes and many green turtles, all migrating southbound. Nothing makes a person more optimistic about environmental quality than to see lots and lots of sea turtles all around, all paddling with serious looks and great determination. What they and the sea snakes wanted in Costa Rica, I will never know. Good luck with Customs, is all I can say.
At night, the winds became lighter and more variable as we moved to 8 miles offshore. We've always kept a greater distance offshore at night or any other time visibility is limited because it gives a crew more time to react if things go wrong. Nothing went wrong this time, and our distance offshore enabled us to avoid 4 fishing pangas and a total of 5 southbound cruisers, all of whom hugged the shoreline. 'Way out where we were, there was no vessel traffic at all, nor fishing nets nor floats. What we did encounter all night, however, were many small groups of leaping, tail-slapping dolphins who left trails of green-glowing bioluminescence everywhere. What fun that was.
We noticed that since we'd left Balboa, Panama, 16 days previously, sailing northbound between 5 and 12 miles offshore, we'd had some kind of a fair current between 1.4 and 3.4 knots the entire 821 miles in to Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua. Conclusion? Given that we saw southbound cruisers traveling this area at night but staying only 2-3 miles offshore, we assumed it must be some kind of strategy. It may be that southbound cruisers have better luck with the winds and currents close to shore where conditions permit it; in contrast, northbound cruisers may have an easier time of it a few miles further off. YMMV.
I don't know about people who visit Nicaragua by land, but for cruisers? Nicaragua's people and especially their government officials are very, very hip. The cool officials who work the Corinto area are the same cool officials who check cruisers in and out of Aserradores (Marina Puesta del Sol) a bit further north. When I presented my skimpy, noncompliant paperwork to the Nicaraguan Immigration/Customs/Port Captain team as they were checking us in at Puesta del Sol, they simply asked me why I had no zarpe from Costa Rica. I told them that we had been unable to, ahem, "complete" our check-in with Costa Rica. They hardly batted an eye and asked for no details. I guess that ours was not the first sailboat they'd ever seen coming out of Costa Rica without the right paperwork. They just asked a final question: what had been our most recent port of call before we'd been to Costa Rica. I told them Balboa, Panama; and just like that, that wonderful Immigration/Customs/Port Captain team tidied up all our documentation and made us legit once again in the eyes of all bureaucrats everywhere.
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