One mistake and we almost got stuck with our vessel in Chacachacare Bay

We spent the afternoon in Chacachacare Bay, in Boca Grande, midway between Venezuela and western extreme of Trinidad and Tobago. There we did some hiking to see the “ghost village” and explore the ruins of what is now an inhabited island. No water, no electricity, so we had to provision it all.

The story around the island is interesting. The first one is that it is a haunted island because of the spirit of a woman that has drowned in the island. Some say there are some more spirits that come visit her in the cemetery that lays almost underground on top of the hill. The real story takes back to 500 years ago when the Spanish left the island. The next main story was when it was the assembly place for the Liberation war in 1813. The last and more recent one was when it was a leprosarium colony from 1922 to around 1984 under the care of nouns.

Tales and stories apart Chacachacare is a magical place. A place to be with no crowd, no noise, only the sound of the nature. The blissful silence and the perfume of orchids spread around the inhabited bay and make the environment very inviting. All that only 30 minutes away from the Marina where we were. We went there with our boat neighbors, explored the island and had a great lunch together in our boat. When we thought everything was done, our friends started to head back and we stayed fixing the last details. What could happen?

Chacachacare shallow waters, watch out!

Juliano was taking out the anchor on the front and I was watching the depth and taking care of the wheel. The depth was around 12 meters and then the gps stopped working and I didn’t know what depth it was anymore. In the mean time something went wrong with the anchor on the front and Juliano got distracted with it. By the time the gps turned on again we were on 5 meters and I started screaming. Of course at this point the sky was gray, it was almost rainning, there was a lot of wind and we were dragging. In matter of seconds I saw the depth coming 5, 4, 3 and 2 meters. When Ju arrived we were in 1.80 and the boat got stuck ( we need 1.85 depth). I entered inside with the kids and saw our friends already gone. What would we do?

After some minutes we managed to get out of the place we were stuck and leave. Scary, scary but all fine. We came back with a little rain and one big experience.