Spanish Water - General Info
Description:
Spanish Waters is a large irregularly shaped lagoon about 6NM southeast of Willemstad on Curacao’s southern coast. This is the anchorage that visiting yachts must go to for first clearance into Curacao, not Willemstad.
The port of Willemstad is a commercial port where commercial size vessels and tugboats sail in/out which could lead to unnecessary damage of small pleasure craft due to heavy wash. Furthermore, the majority of the quays inside St. Anna Bay are ISPS certified. Therefore, pleasure craft are not permitted to berth at neither the eastside nor the westside of the St. Anna Bay.
All small pleasure yachts should proceed to Spanish Water anchorage area.
All authorities are still based in Willemstad (for clearance and anchoring permits). However, a new combined office for Customs and Immigration will be opening soon in Spanish Water. See Clearance for more details.
The well-protected bay has been active with mariners since early in its history, excavations show the Arawak people, the first inhabitants of Curacao settled at the mouth of the bay. Later the bay was of strategic importance to Spanish and Dutch conquerors and you can still visit Fort Beekenburg at the head of Caracas Baai.
Surrounding the bay are many homes and resorts and the bay itself is often busy with windsurfers, dinghy sailors and kayakers. Visiting boats are required to anchor only in the designated anchorages. The only exception is during storm warnings when boats are given permission to move anywhere in the sheltered bay.
Cruiser Highlights:
Active cruising community; dinghy dock with free shuttle buses to town; provisioning; chandleries; restaurants and bars; tourism options; kids activities including sailing and windsurfing camps; nearby beaches; fuel water and propane; and good access to marine workers.
There is an online Facebook group for Curacao Cruisers.
There is a WhatsApp group for Spanish Water.
Entrance Notes or Cautions:
The rocky shoreline can be tricky with strong trade winds and the entrance is difficult to spot with breakers everywhere. The narrow opening has no markers, there is a sandbank on one side and rocks on the other. Definitely not to be attempted at night.
Be cautious when in the water, many high-speed boats zoom through the anchorages.
Position:
12° 03.72’N 68° 51.18’W (Entrance to lagoon)
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Related to following destinations: Curacao, Spanish Water
Port Navigation
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I would like to know all the fees and charges for clearing in and anchoring on Spanish Waters but the “Fees” links do not work. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks, Lauri
Hi Lauri,
Thanks for alerting us to the broken link, which I’ve now fixed. All Formalities sections, including fees, can be found by clicking on the “list” icon in the blue bar at the top of the country page.
Curacao fees can be found here – https://www.noonsite.com/place/curacao/view/fees/
Hope that helps,
Sue
Reported by the Caribbean Safety & Security Net:
DATE: 2018-11-28 14:00
Country Name: Curacao
Location Detail: Spanish Water
EVENT: Attempted theft
HAND: 1
Stolen Items: none – not successful
SECURED: Locked
DETAILS: A dinghy was well locked to the dock at the Pirates Nest from 1-4 PM while owners were ashore to check out. When they returned they found one side of a link of the 10 mm stainless steel chain had been cut through with bolt cutters, and incomplete cuts were made on the other side of the same link. The yacht departed early the next morning, as planned. A report was made on the VHF net.
Reported 15 September:
Be careful with stuff in Spanish Waters now. Two guys on Seadoo water scooters are stealing dinghies, motors etc. Our dinghy was stolen from the boat in the night, another locked dinghy was stolen from the dinghy dock – so security was probably sleeping. All in 3 weeks.
Editor’s Note: This comment was recovered following technical problems with the site, so, unfortunately, we have lost the name of the cruiser who posted it, however, the Caribbean Safety and Security Net have reported a number of dinghy and outboard thefts here in September 2017.
Curacao Yacht Club
Curacao Yacht Club can handle one or two transient boats. We inquired ahead of time and reserved a spot. Paid about $1/ft/day for our cat.
They aren’t used to cruisers and don’t monitor their VHF, so when you come in, you have to scream at the fuel dock guy to find out where you should go. Note that the water pressure is quite high; we blew out our hose a few times!
They have trash and parking but no laundry or showers. Wi-Fi is weak, but we were able to boost it to acceptable levels. Sometimes it would drop, so we covered ourselves with a SIM Card from the DTS store in town, which gave us sweet LTE speed at a penny a megabyte.
Overall, the folks at the Yacht Club were nice and our kids enjoyed the giant playground and sand pit as well.
A note on Spanish Waters: Dick from the Yacht Isis no longer provides Wi-Fi, as mentioned in some cruising guides. The poor guy hasn’t done it in years!
Finally, I would recommend Porto Medico by the airport, Dr Allaart, for outpatient medicine. He is kind, speaks multiple languages, and has experience in travel medicine/cruisers.
Melinda Burnett, SV The Amazing Marvin, http://www.burnettsahoy.com
Posted on behalf of Paul and Andy Atkinson of SY Talulah Ruby 111:
Seru Boca Marina
Whilst the marina is out of the way and quite a long dinghy ride to buses, shops, bars etc. I would recommend this marina as the perfect place to leave the boat long term or during the hurricane season.
We left our yacht, a 57 Jeanneau, this year from June to September and had fantastic service from all the staff and new manager, Robert Vandenheuvel. He inspected the boat on a regular basis emailing me a report fortnightly, and at $11 per ft per month, it´s quite a bargain.
The marina is set below a large hill and in the mangroves so very well protected. The marina is part of The Santa Barbara Plantation resort so security is also very good.