Sail for the Caribbean down Nicaragua’s Great Lake reenacted

Six sailors are reenacting an expedition organized 464 years ago down the so-called Dubious Strait by Spanish skippers Adolfo Calero and Diego de Machuca who sailed through Nicaragua’s Great Lake en route to the Caribbean Sea.

With that goal in mind, the Pirate Lorraine sailboat left the environment-friendly Brisas del Lago Hotel from the Asese Seaport in Granada, some 28 miles south of Managua.

The new-age explorers expect to wrap up their adventure in 35 days –including their way back to port- taking account of the fact that they plan to call the same places where the two Spaniards stopped at.

Daniel Flakoll is the mastermind of the reenactment together with other derring-do sailors, including a woman. The original voyage occurred on June 24, 1539.

Out of 130 men who sailed back then, only 9 made it through and went down in history as the discoverers of the Dubious Strait, now known as the San Juan River.

The crew will take advantage of this opportunity to shoot footage for TV-made documentaries and reports, most of them based on freshwater sharks and other marine life species, such as the sawfish and the gasper (both blacklisted as endangered species) that dwell in Nicaragua’s Great Lake.

The Cocibolca or Freshwater Sea –as it was dubbed by aboriginal locals and Spaniards, respectively- comprises a surface of over 5,000 square miles and harbors roughly 300 islets teeming with superb beauty and lavish vegetation.