Isla de la Juventud - Docking
Siguanea
The Marina Siguanea was built before the Cuban Revolution in 1958, as was the hotel El Colony just a few miles to the north. Both were intended to serve the luxury tourist market and to that end, an airport was built in Siguanea, now unused. Today the marina is used primarily by charter boats for sightseeing, fishing and diving tours operating out of the hotel. Both are rather isolated and are surrounded by mangroves.
The marina has good depth inside, but the entrance channel only has a maximum depth of 1.5m. Leave the approach buoy, which is red and white, to starboard. Once inside the marina, the draft increases to 4-5m on the north side, just beside the Guardafronteras base, and shallows towards the southern side.
It is possible to anchor here with good holding in muddy sand 800m NW of the marina channel entrance. This anchorage, however, can be rather exposed. Yachts anchoring outside the marina can land at the dock in the marina.
There is an old bus that brings the hotel and marina employees to work every day. This can be taken back to Nueva Gerona for shopping trips, approx. 45 minutes.
Last updated: August 2018
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Related to following destinations: Cuba, Isla de la Juventud
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Craig and Joanna Pollak of SV Rambunctious took a 2-week cruise from Havana along the West coast of Cuba to Cayo Largo Del Sur (see their report dated July 2018 in the Related Reports section). This is an extract from their report about Isla de la Juventud:
We headed for Nueva Gerona on the Isla de la Juventud and covered the 45NM by 4 pm. We started off close hauled to avoid the shallower waters of the Bajo de la Cucina on the north side of the Cayos de San Felipe islands, before bearing off a bit and heading towards Nueva Gerona.
This supposedly is a quaint, beautiful old town, which can be used (if given permission by the Guarda Frontera) as the first re-provisioning stop when travelling West around Cuba from Havana. The Guarda Frontera agent in Maria la Gorda had called ahead to Nueva Gerona to alert them of my arrival in 2 days, so I felt relatively confident they’d let us in.
If not, we had a spot to anchor near the mouth of the Las Casas river, which leads 1.5nms to the town, so we knew we were covered in any event. In the 300nms we had travelled since departing Havana, this was going to be the first grocery store we could visit.
Unfortunately, the Guarda Frontera officer I hailed on the VHF gave me an immediate “No. This is not possible. The next place for despacho is Cayos Largo del Sur. Do you understand?”
Oh well.