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

Boqueron to Guanica

After a very good night sleep, the next morning we had to tackle the immigration issue. Several people had told us that you could check in in Boqueron. Dennis from our buddy boat Magic came in the morning with his dinghy to tell that he had tried several times, but they really wanted to send him to Mayaquez, he asked if Jacques could give it a try, but he also got a no, so in the afternoon the four of us took a taxi to Mayaguez. 

They drive a little bit wild here on very small roads. (Not as bad as in the D.R. because there you had a lot of small motorcycles, who function as taxis, mothers with two children and a big bag of groceries on one of these “taxi’s” was rather normal, really scary!!!!!!). After we were completely legal and back at the boat it was time for a big nap, we were still enjoying our feeling of accomplishment having come this far. We anchored there for three days, visiting the village, doing laundry AND I got a haircut!

The tactic of sailing the south coast of P.R. is that you leave very early in the morning, when the winds are still calm and arrive around ten in the morning in your next anchorage, before the trade winds start blowing, directly from the east (where you need to go). So we did just that and arrived in Parquera at around 9:30 am. (Paul has birthday, but there is no internet here, still congratulations). After a nap we re-anchored, because the winds had really picked up and we had a peaceful day on the boat.

Next day we went into town, you walked that in 10 minutes! Eat an ice cream, the most wonderful treat for a boater, and tried to find an island where a lot of monkeys supposed to live. We had a wonderful dinghy ride through all the channels of the mangrove islands, but did not see or hear any monkeys, although Jacques tried to call them and made a lot of monkey moves….(you know, playing Tarzan!!).

We are now since a few days in the Bahia de Guanica, we did not go to town, but anchored of the Cayos de Cana Gorda (Gilligan’s Island). The island is originally called Cayo Aurora for a woman, who at age 40 escaped misery and mistreatment at the worker’s barracks of the nearby La Bellena farm and swam to the island, where she lived a Robinson Crusoe live and became quit old. None of the books tells exactly how old, but I would say "go girl!!!"

Ria

Bahamas to Puerto Rico via Turks & Caicos and Dominican Republic

We stayed about a week at South Side Marine in Provo. This marina is managed by Simon Anderson and his wife Charlyn helps out. They are extremely helpful with rides to downtown, etc. Every night we had happy hour and met many interesting boaters. After the barbecue I went to the boat by myself with my hands full of half empty bottles, etc. and slipped off the boat and hurt my wrist pretty badly. The next day we went to a clinic to have an X-ray made which fortunately showed no fracture. I am still very handicapped at the moment of writing 3 weeks later and Jacques has to do the household things.

We crossed the Caicos Bank to Ambergris Cay with the wind on the nose but had a restful night at the anchorage. The next day we shortly stopped at Sand Cay in the Turks Islands but the swell was too large so we went on to the Dominican Republic. We had a good night sail and arrived at Ocean World at 8 a.m. The next day we went on a tour with other cruisers to Puerto Plata and visited the local Rum factory, a cigar “factory” and some other shops. Friday we went to the casino at Ocean World with dinner and dance show. Saturday was the national holiday because of the liberation from Spain 62 years ago. We watched the parade and also made a visit to the very very poor Haitian part of town. On Sunday we had a meeting with other cruisers at the pool to discuss the strategy to sail to Puerto Rico across the Mona Passage. Three of them left the same day but we found it better to wait another day.

The second half of the trip from Ocean World to the Mona Passage was horrible, 17 hours with high waves, we planned to anchor half way, but that was not a good spot at all and we decided to go to Samana. Half way one of the motors stopped, we put up the sails, because with one motor we would not have enough power against the waves and the wind (between 16 and 20 knots). That also meant constantly tacking. After the motor had cooled off Jacques tightened the water pump belt, but after 15 minutes it stopped again. We were hoping that after rounding Cabo Samana the wind would be with us so we could sail into the harbor and luckily it was. 

After several tries we were on a mooring ball and were immediately visited by “Joe” in a little motor boat. “I will help you with everything, I speak good English!” He went away letting us guess what would happen, he was back in five minutes with three other guys, he suddenly was in need of a driver, than there was a helper and two guys from the navy, we had to fill out paperwork again (we had already checked out in Ocean World but this was an other entrance, he explained.) After they were done Joe wanted to know what we thought about some gifts!!!! I played dumb for a little while but we had read enough about this to know we had to give them something, so we had to open the wallet again. After we sat down we were thinking this is it! We were so tired, did not even eat and at seven we both were in bed. But you see what a good night sleep can do for you, now we are on the most difficult passage of the whole trip, the seas are smooth, only some swells, the moon is nearly full and we enjoying the trip very much.

It is 7.00 in the morning in the Mona passage and I have slept at least four hours, we are still going smoothly and are about halfway! Our buddy boat is about 4 miles ahead of us and will soon be out of our radio reach. We should have the radio checked because people can easily hear us, but we can not hear them, is a little frustrating. About midway the wind got stronger but we could still motor sail. Then when we came in the near of Isla Desecheo and were boarded by the P.R. Coast Guard who checked our bilges for drugs, holding tank system and safety equipment. We couldn’t find the flare Jacques bought in Miami so we got a warning. Later we found the flares. 

Then when we were about 10 miles from Boquerón we almost hit a large tower of which the light was not working. I immediately wanted to put my life vest on and at 11 p.m. we entered Baya de Boquerón after 31 hours where we anchored between some boats without anchor lights so that was a little challenging. We took a well deserved arrival drink, did hi-fives. We had conquered the Mona!!!

Ria

Rum Cay to Mayaguana

We left Rum Cay at 8 a.m. on Feb. 10 to sail the 140 nautical miles to Mayaguana. It was an overnight sail and turned out to become almost 180 miles because we had to tack during the night and following day despite the engines running. But we made it in one piece, arrived at 2 p.m. on Feb. 11 and are now anchored in a large bay inside the reef on the south side of Mayaguana. Jacques had not slept at all (except for perhaps an hour) and when we were done with all the anchoring chores and he sat down to drink his arrival drink, he nearly got sick from tiredness. I sent him to bed for two hours, I would wake him up, but I also fell asleep on the couch, but at six we had dinner and a nice evening listening loud to our favorite music.

Somewhere during the night we passed the tropic of cancer, that’s where the sun is at his highest point during mid summer, so we are getting south.
After a good night sleep, we feel back to normal and are already planning where we will stay in the Turks and Caicos.

It is blowing 20+ knots and therefore we stay on the boat because of the chop. We plan to clean the fridge box and to read. Tonight the wind will shift to the NE and the water will be calmer to dinghy the half mile to the Abraham’s Bay settlement to clear out of the Bahamas. On Thursday we went to the customs office to hear that we had to come back on Friday. We used the wi-fi facility of the Batelco phone company which was a wall outside of the building being the only spot to receive the internet for E-mails and weather forecast. We also went to the local restaurant and had a pretty untasteful meal. 

Friday night had 50+ knots (80 mph, 95 km/h) winds in the NE Bahamas, a record low pressure for February. Fortunately for us it was only about half at Mayaguana. For peace of mind we put out a second anchor and did anchor watch. Saturday it was still blowing 20 knots but it will likely subside on Sunday when we stage to the SE corner of the island in order to cut about 20 miles off the trip to Providenciales (Provo) in the Caicos Islands and leave after midnight to Sapodilla Bay.

Ria

Conception Island to Rum Cay

We had to leave at one time, so when the wind called we left Emerald Bay on Sunday Jan 31 to go to the north point of Long Island. The wind was fantastic, coming nicely abeam and we went 5.5 to 6.5 knots. Because it went so good we decided to go on to Conception Island. After 4 hours of fantastic sailing the wind said it is enough for me today and we had to motor sail the rest of the way. We were a little short on time, arrived at about 5 o’clock, which is a little late to have good light to see the coral heads in the water. When we were already on our obligatory arrival drink, two young men who were snorkeling around, told us that our anchor was not in the sand, so we took the anchor up and again down about twenty meters further.

The next day we went for a walk on the ocean side of the island, was a real adventure, on some places we had to use a rope to climb the rocks! After a peaceful day doing nothing we left on Wednesday to go to Rum Cay, where we are now.

We are in the harbor but when the wind is calm there some nasty no-see-ums, so we go outside to anchor for a few days. We have luckily internet here so we have updated all our mail and can always go with the dinghy inside to connect again. The showers here are $10 per person!! The water is taken from a sweet water pond in the middle of the island and trucked to the marina.

It is now Saturday and we are back in the marina, it really was a little wild outside, so yesterday we waited till high tide and went back inside.We had a wonderful dinner at Kay’s restaurant. The picture shows Delores, the mother of the owner and Dick and Nancy our neighbors in the marina. They have rented a golf cart, running on gas, and we went today with them to the other side of the island, again wonderful and deserted beaches, we have done some intensive shelling, but I still have not found my conch shell, I don’t give up hope.

On this island live about 60 people of which 20 are children. They can go to school here till they have to go to high school, for that they have to go to Nassau. The government is more then willing to give the kids the opportunity to get high school here, but the parent have to apply for that and until now they have not done that. I know all that because we had yesterday dinner at Delores (the matriarch of the whole island, see photo) and there was the school supervisor for three islands who just had a school meeting on Rum Cay.
It was really interesting.

The harbor master here is a very nice guy, called Rasta and is just filling in because the harbor is sold and the new owner first went on vacation before he would do something. Rasta is also an artist and carves wonderful pieces from death coral.

Tonight we have rain, after a long, long time and we hope that the boat will be cleaned from the salt water and I caught my first cup of rainwater to drink. Tomorrow we will go to the marine office and will check email and face book and will post this part of the blog.

Ria

Emerald Bay, Great Exuma Island

The cut to the outside of the islands went very good, it was about an hour before low tide and the wind was calm, so a new experience added to our list. There was not much sailing so we motored and when we arrived in the near where the harbor should be, we just could not see the entrance, the binoculars were glued to my eyes, but you had to get really close to see the buoys, after locating them everything went well.

Did I not talk about the simple life of sailing? We have now arrived in a first class marina; after they helped you put the boat on the dock they roll out a welcome mat on the dock; that is very cool. The harbor master’s office looks like a five star hotel lobby, upstairs is a game room with pool table etc, then an office and bar area, all furnished with really nice furniture and the lounge area with sofa’s and big screen TV. The showers are every boater’s dream with several soaps and lotions and after looking around and we were back on the boat we said to each other that we could get used to this. Most of the women and some men told me their stay here will take a little longer then was planned. We are really enjoying this, the people are very, very friendly, and they really make you feel home. The most intriguing part was the charge of 50 cents per ft. per day.

We took a taxi to Georgetown, because we had to see that and had some shopping to do. The taxi driver was a very nice guy and very knowledgeable about politics and history of the Bahamas, the drive was too short (an hour!) to take on all the topics he and we wanted to talk about.

In the restaurant we met Katera, who was from the big city, which means here Nassau, but was really enjoying the easy going life of the Exumas. She is opening her own restaurant in about two months and after talking a lot that evening we are now friends on face book.