The queen in stride

Photo blog since we have a fast internet connection

South wind, no wind = HOT

First the wind turned to a south wind and then the wind stopped completely. It was boiling hot in Puerto Ferro. This is actually not a puerto at all but more of a bay. That meant even less wind. The bay is surrounded by mangroves and that usually equals mosquitoes. Shaggy (Jacques in Holland, Chuck in the US, Shaggy in the Caribbean) does NOT like mosquitoes.

Ria was in the lucky position of having a Breeze booster attached to one of her windows. Smart thing really. The back bunks where Mark and I sleep with the kids have two tiny windows that we have to close every time it rains and gets more humid. We had a couple of painful days until the wind sort of came back.

Helena

Puerto Ferro via Bahia Icacos

We had now decided to leave the Culebra area and return to Vieques. On the way, “Mark the Barracuda Man”, had a bite. A big one it sounded like. When we pulled up the fish, once again an uneatable barracuda, a big bite was taken from the fish. This was according to Joel and Noah of course taken by a shark!!!

As we where leaving we passed by Punta Mark!!!

Two thirds of Vieques was until recently used by the American Military as ammunition experiment grounds. That is luckily no longer the case and the land has been returned to the people of Vieques. Unfortunately large parts of the land is contaminated by unexploded ammunition and you are not allowed to go on land. When we tried to anchor in the beautiful Bahia Icacos, a gentleman very politely told us to piss off. Since we where hoping to snorkel around a small island with a reef, we disappointedly decided to continue to Puerto Ferron the southern side of Vieques.

Helena

Culebrita, photo blog

Boat visit, the sailboat without a mast

On Culebra we spotted a sailboat without a mast and were of course very curious about what could have happened. On Culebrita the very same boat was anchored right next to us. Mark saw that the man was fishing and subtly swam over and asked what fish he caught and what had a happened to their mast. He also invited them over for a beer. Since we had had thirsty Dutch people over the evening before, we did not have an abundance of drinks left, and therefore hoped they would not be that thirsty. 

They were retired Canadian military (=very young) relocating to the homecountry of the Captain, St. Lucia. The mast had broken during a storm in the Bahamas. In addition to this mishap they had also lost three anchors on the way and now had a very sturdy anchor. Since this anchor was very heavy the last thing that broke was their anchor chain…. They where hoping to get a new mast on St. Croix and they had to pick travel days with low wind. They had been on the way for about two years.

Helena

Boat visit, scavenging Dutch man

On Culebra we hooked up with two other Dutch boats. One couple was on their way to Canada via Bermuda…. Hans had just spent 31 days to cross the Atlantic from the Canaries, all by himself. No wind. The other couple was a bit younger and this Dutchman had picked up his very nice American girlfriend on the island of Bermuda. He had a hobby. In my opinion this must be a very Dutch hobby. He had managed to equip large parts of his boat, build by himself, with pieces he had found on deserted boats or boatyards along the way. The boat was running on bio-diesel. He collected used cooking oil from restaurants along the way and had installed a self-made filtering system (starting with just a t-shirt) and created his own fuel on the boat. The collected oil was transported on to the boat on a canoe!!!

Helena

Animal Life

As we walk around looking for a place large enough to play a bit of football, we spot a baseball field. When we look over the wall, what do we see??? A baseball field filled with a hundred or so sheep. LOL. Not exactly what we expected but I have to admit that it makes sense to use animals instead of a lawnmower in a place where grass is scarce.

Later in the evening as we where having dinner at the Mamacita restaurant located along the canal on Culebra what comes swimming in the water if not a rooster. This was obviously not that common as all the staff took out their mobile-phones.

Another evening as Mark was washing up a pot in the water we hear snap and two fishes came and tried to catch what ended up in the water. They moved exactly like sharks. The day before the boat next to called us on the radio to tell us we should get the kids out of the water since a bull shark was getting closer.

Helena

Culebra with some fantastic snorkeling

Since Friday we are now on the Island of Culebra. Our first stop was anchoring next to the reef at the entry of Ensenada Honda. First snorkeling trip was on the inside of the reef and although that was nice and we saw some stingrays, the snorkeling outside of the reef was absolutely fantastic. The water was crystal clear with corals separated by white sand and the amount of fishes was spectacular. To Noah's joy we even saw some YB-fishes (black-yellow). The evening was very calm and we had our first night without any breeze. Bloody hot.

Helena

On Lady Hawk we have our own Queen

Isabel Segunda

This is the capital on Vieques. I really like it. It is a really small town clearly made up of people living there and not for tourists. The shops have things you would need if you lived there and not things boaters are looking for, such as sun cream, long-sleeved sun protection for the kids and fun things we could attach to the dingy. In the evening we had a delicious dinner at a place obviously frequented by the American expat community on the island. We heard no Spanish.

Helena

Fishing success

After having spent a lot of time with his fishing rod, Mark used a new technique of trawling a lure as we left Palomino for Vieques. And he was successful!!! If size matters, he was very successful (according to Mark, size does matter).
He had to work quite hard to get the fish out of the water since it was a quite a large one. It measured to one meter (40 inches). Now the question was what kind of fish was it? Could we eat it? Would it taste good if we ate it?

After we arrived to Isabel Segunda we took the dingy to go on land and showed the fish to some fishermen. After some impressed sounds when they saw the size, they confirmed our suspicion that it was a Barracuda. Large Barracudas are poisonous and really should not be eaten. Bummer for Mark.

Helena

Palominoto

Early in the morning we took the dingy to the ultimate kitch island of Palominoto. It has a bunch of palm trees in the middle and is surrounded by sand. This is exactly what you envision when you think about the Caribbean. We spend an hour there completely alone body surfing on the waves until some other boats arrived. This was paradise.

Helena

Isla Palomino

Is this paradise or what? By lunch the kids had already been snorkeling three times and taken several dips in between. Palomino is an island owned by a hotel in Fajardo so every hour or so a boat brings hotel guests and other paying visitors over from the big island. This means that they have toilets!!!, showers!!!, a bar!!! and a restaurant. However we mainly stayed in and around the boat the get used to the new routines and swimming as much as possible.

Joel and Noah can be very creative when it comes to playing. They used the dingy attachment device when they jumped in the water. In combination with an arch bomb it makes for quite a splash when they come into the water.

A new concept was also introduced to us: salsa boats. This means that large speakers are installed on a motorboat and that in order to be heard one needs to speak very load. 

This does not end when the sun goes down when all other boaters go to bed and could go on throughout the whole night. Since Palomino is a very short boat ride from Fajardo, we experienced quite a few of those boats. Ria has prepared us for that if we spend the weekend in Culebra we will experience the ultimate salsa boat night.

Helena

The stinking boat crowd is joined by the stinking flight crowd

We have now, after 21 hours of travel, finally arrived in Fajardo Puerto Rico. It is nice. It is very nice to be here. Our dreaded five hour stop-over in Newark was very smooth and we even managed to look at Bayern Munchen – Manchester United. The kids managed to sleep on the flight from Newark to San Juan but I, even though I could lie down and stretch my legs, had to listen to Puerto Ricans “talking.” Slightly louder than the average discussion level in Switzerland!!!

Today’s attack plan to fight the jet-lag included a couple of hours in the “El Yunque” rain forest. That was a very special experience. Green and lush with more tree species than all other American forest reserves combined. We heard the national pride, the tree frog “coqui.” Since we arrived from Switzerland we where more impressed by the root systems of the trees than the waterfalls unlike the rest of the visitors. 

We have now filled the boat with food for the next couple of days and a very happy Helena even bumped into a Clark’s outlet. Just like the one in Pleasant Prairie. We are now waiting for the Pizza that Mark and Chuck are picking up. Tomorrow we will figure out how seasick we get and take the boat to Isla Palomino.

The mosquito spray we brought will not be needed. We have been informed that each t-shirt has to be worn for three days before it we are allowed to wash it.

Guest-blogger Helena

Stops on the way

Ponce was next, the anchorage was full so we went in the marina, was a little expensive, but we had showers and that was nice. We rented a car and tried to find a place to store the boat over the summer. In Fallardo the answer was still no, but there was a place in Salinas that could do it. We tried very hard to find downtown Ponce, but other than all the outskirts we could not get in the right direction and only things like this happen.

Coffin Island, very nice anchorage, swimming and snorkeling.

Salinas, the place where we have now decided to store the boat during the summer, to get to downtown you had to walk a few miles, so we visited only the stores and restaurants in the near of the harbor

Cayos Caribes-Boca del Infierno, here we anchored between the mangroves and waited for the wind to go down because we wanted to go from here direct to Vieques. We left on March 25 as soon as the sun came up and arrived at Punta Arenas around 3:30. The beginning went very well, then we had a few hours of high waves and wind, but the last hours were very much okay and were happy to have conquered another hurdle. Magic had arrived a few hours earlier and had a bottle of champagne cold to celebrate our arrival in the Virgin Islands; we did so at sundown on the beach. It felt really good!! (till we got chased away by a lot of sand flies.

Esperanza was a cute little town, I bought a book on Vieques at the historical Society and that was an eye-opener, the military have really behaved very badly on this island, practically until now

Puerto Ferro FANTASTIC, we had of course read all the books about the luminescent bays Puerto Mosquito and Puerto Ferro and wanted to explore the phenomenon. At 4 a.m. when the moon went down we dipped into the water and the water lighted up and sparkles stayed on your arms when out of the water. Like tiny fireflies. Because the entrance to these bays is very narrow the bio luminescent algae cannot leave the bay and gather in large quantities so that they become agitated when the water is stirred. It was a great experience.

Ensenada Honda. This bay is bordered by mangroves and not good for snorkeling so we left after the wind calmed down and went to Salinas del Sur. Until 2003 this bay was a navy training area for bombing and we were not allowed to go onshore because of the presence of unexploded bombs. Jacques pulled the boat close to shore to clean the bottoms of a thick layer of barnacles and other growth. He saw a projectile sticking vertically into the sand and this one was clearly a bomb that didn’t explode.

After a couple of days we sailed to the Island of Culebra and went to town to buy groceries and go online to download the latest weather forecasts.

Ria