Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

 

4/24/2015  We arrived in Puerto Rico at Puerto Real and checked in over the phone. We took a slip at Marina Pescaderia. We dried out the cushions and washed the bedding and clothes that had gotten soaked coming out of Samana. We washed all the salt off the boat and got some rest. We found a nice bakery in Puerto Real and some great donut-like pastries with guava in them. Yummy!

4/26/2015 We left Puerto Real and sailed to an anchorage just north of Cabo Rojo on the southwest tip of Puerto Rico. Had a great sail on port tack making 5.9 knots. We had to anchor three times before the anchor set. Then we spent a very rolly night at anchor. One of the worst we've had. We were really glad the weather held so we could leave the next day.

4/27/2015 We left at 0600 to try to make it as far as we could before the winds switched back to the East from the nightly northeast. Getting around Cabo Rojo can be tricky with the winds accelerating around the Cape. Many boats have blown out their sails because the wind is much calmer on the west side and they aren't expecting the wind sweeping in from the East when they round the cape. We had read our "Bible" carefully and had the sails reefed before going around the cape. We had to sail into the East winds along the south coast of PR so we motorsailed all the way to Gilligan's Island. We tried tacking under sail alone but weren't making any progress. All along the south coast of Puerto Rico, we had to watch out for sargasso weed. It is a type of seaweed that would float on the surface in big bunches. SOmetimes areas as big as a small lake would be in our way. We tried to avoid it as much as possible but sometimes we just had to motor through it. Several boats we know had problems with the sargasso clogging the seawater intake and causing the engine to overheat. Fortunately, we managed to avoid that issue. Gilligan's Island was named by locals who would party and picnic there on weekends and one of them supposedly looked like Bob Denver. Anyway, it is a little park with nice swimming and snorkelling. There is a little river that runs through the mangroves where we snorkeled with the current pushing us gently along. We snorkelled with Dave and Sherry from Mythago. We got back to the boat and had just pulled the dinghy up on the deck in preparation for leaving the next morning, when Dave and Tanya from S/V Dea Latis came over in their dinghy and said there were Immigration officers on the shore of the mainland wanting to talk to us. They offered to take Greg in to talk to them. So he went in with the boat papers and talked with them. Apparently, in the small town areas along the coast, they don’t even have boats so they walk out to the coast and look for boats with their binoculars and then call them and have them come in. We had not heard them calling us on the radio because we were out snorkeling. They told Greg he was there illegally and that we had not checked in. Fortunately, we had written down the check-in number they had given us when we called in in Puerto Real and Greg gave it to them. They checked it out and agreed we were legal. They explained that they were not on the \computer system there and didn’t have our info. What a hassle for something that should be so simple.

Cayo AuroraPark AKA Gilligan's Island

Looking out toward the reefs

Looks like Greg is having Sargasso weed for lunch

Underwater life in the mangrove river at Gilligan's island

Look at the size of these mangrove roots. No wonder boaters tie up to them for storms.

4/28/2015 We again pulled up anchor at 0600 and made it to Ponce by 10:30. We took a slip in the marina because we had heard that the holding wasn’t too good in the anchorage. We booked a slip for a week because we wanted to explore the island from here and the rates were cheaper by the week. However, the ground under the docks is contoured such that our boat and Mythago were in slips that have a constant surge. It was HORRIBLE. It was so bad, we were getting seasick at the dock! The laundry facilities were terrible, we weren’t allowed to use the pool and the showers were only passable. We did our re-provisioning, made a trip to San Juan to get a new laptop computer at Best Buy, visited Old San Juan and bought new dock lines and some other things at the West Marine. We left the marina after only 4 days because we couldn’t stand the surge and had worn through 3 dock lines and worked a cleat loose! We were tied up like a spider web and had several other cruiser friends help untie us and get us off the dock. Mythago and we left on 5/3/15 but Tehani, Lequesteau and Jump stayed there. They were on another dock that wasn’t so bad.

Nice restaurant in Old San Juan

Architecture reminds us of the French Quarter

Very steep road going down to the sea

Monument of something or another in Old San Juan

Cemetery below the fort that looks out over the sea

 

5/3/2015 We motor-sailed on a close reach to Salinas in about 4 hours. The Salinas harbor was so calm and comfortable after being in Ponce. We anchored in Salinas for 11 days waiting for the East winds to calm and give us a chance to get over to the Spanish Virgin Islands. We enjoyed Salinas while we were there. We met a couple in their 80’s (Dick and Jane) who had just recently sold their 37' sailboat and decided to settle in Salinas. They come into the marina there and play dominoes twice a week. They taught us how to play their version of (Grenada rules) Mexican train dominoes. We used the marina facilities for laundry and showers and met several other cruisers. We rented a car and took a trip up the East coast to Fajardo where there is a big West Marine and of course, bought more boat stuff. But we also went to the El Yunque National Rainforest, the only one in the U.S. We hiked 3 different trails there and saw beautiful flowers, waterfalls and birds.

Heliconia with a giant snail

Our Tarzan and Jane imitation  

Beautiful  "alligator skin"leaf

Flowering part of a palm tree

Water dripping down the tiny ferns on a rocky cliff

Greg's leaf hat --all one giant leaf

Left the south entrance of the park and driving to the north, we passed one of Greg's old Navy haunts, Rosie Roads

View of San Juan form the Park

El Yunque, the peak on the left

On top of one of the old towers

La Mina, one of the waterfall trails we hiked

Along the Mina trail

Gigantic roots

Ferns growing on the trunk above weird root system

Mina Falls

At Mina Falls

Porcelain rose

Flowering part of a palm

Dave, Sherry and Liz Ann on the Mt. Britton Tower trail

Halfway there! Our third trail in one day and it was steep.

Atop Mt. Britton tower

Mt. Britton tower

We had planned to do a zipline trip At El Yunque but after the fiasco in the marina in Ponce, we ended up spending our $$ on dock lines instead

We met Jean, who owns the local cruiser bar next to the marina, Sal Pa'Dentro, and is the SSCA port captain. He let us do a potluck in his bar and sat down with us and helped us plan our route out of Salinas and over to Culebra, giving us benefit of his local knowledge. His bar is only open Thursday thru Sunday but is open for cruisers only (for drinks only, no food) and to use his free wi-fi the rest of the week. How nice is that?

Planning our trip across the south coast of Puerto Rico

Jean adds his local knowledge

5/14/2015 We finally got our weather window and left Salinas at 10:15p.m. to take advantage of the night time shift of the wind to a little north of East so it wouldn’t be on our nose the whole way. Even so, we had to motor until about 2:30 in the morning when we put the mainsail up and motorsailed until we were on the north coast of Vieques. Then we headed northeast and were under sail all the way to Ensenada Honda on Culebra. We went around the reef and took a mooring ball near Ensenada Dakity, arriving at our anchorage just after noon on the 15^th of May, about a 14 hour sail altogether. Culebra and the other Spanish Virgins are really pretty and we would have liked to spend more time there but we were already feeling pressed for time as our insurance requires us to be south of 12.5 degrees by June 1 in order to be covered in case of a named storm. We knew we wouldn’t make it to Grenada by then but we wanted to get there as soon as we could within reason. Somehow during the sail from Salinas to Culebra, our cockpit fresh water faucet got bumped and a trickle of water was leaking the whole time we were sailing to Culebra. It emptied the fresh water tank. Lesson learned: turn off the water pressure switch whenever we have the engine running (because we can’t hear when it comes on) so it can’t pump the tank dry.

5/16/2015 We had planned to leave early this morning but had to wait a bit for a squall to pass and then pulled out about 0830. We headed over to Brewer’s Bay on St. Thomas, USVI. We got into some squalls about an hour outside of Brewer’s and had to lower the main and then anchor in the rain. Several boats split up on this part of the voyage and only Lequesteau and Sandra Louise came into Brewer’s Bay with us. We anchored near S/V Frolic, Greg’s good friends from his Navy days. We had been talking to them over email and the radio and finally were able to catch up with them. We had last seen them in Newport, RI early last summer and before that in the Bahamas last Spring. They have been sailing in the Caribbean for the past several years and we had a get-together on their catamaran with several other boats and picked their brains for the next part of our travels. The next day, Carl and Leslie acted as our tour guides and took us to several places on St. Thomas. We got rained on again but the locals were thrilled with the rain as it has been extremely dry here.

5/18/2015 We motored most of the way to Maho Bay in St. Francis Bay on St John, USVI. We had a current pushing us along near Christmas Cove but then on the other side of Current Cut, we had 0.7 knots against us. It was a tricky passage through there. We Anchored with Lequesteau in Maho Bay on St. John and had a great swim. The water here is clear and calm. The prettiest we’ve seen since the Bahamas.

Maho Bay, St. John, USVI

Caroline (S/V Lequesteau) on the beach at Maho Bay

Lequesteau on a mooring in Maho Bay

5/19/2015 We hated to leave Maho so soon, but we had to move on. We sailed over to Leverick Bay on Virgin Gorda, BVI and took a slip at the marina. We had to check in so we caught a cab to Gun Creek to the immigration office and checked in there. We needed fuel and the slip fee included 100 gallons of water which we couldn’t even hold that much in our boat but got what we could use. We had a great meal at the restaurant upstairs at the marina here. We didn't get to see much of the Virgin Islands because we were trying to get south for hurricane season. We got a good night’s sleep and prepared for our next crossing: the Anegada Passage.

Looking out on Leverick Bay on our cab ride to check in at Gun Creek

Filling out the paperwork to cjheck in and out since we only stayed one night

Going out for a nice dinner

Fancy restaurant at Leverick Bay Marina