Puerto Rico (Part 1)

This is our first Spanish speaking island and we have had fun pulling out the dictionary that Kelli brought down for us. We cleared customs on the island of Culebra and headed off to Culebrita for the night. The bay we anchored in was a turtle nesting sanctuary though we did not see any turtles here. Ron and I hiked along the shore to explore an area referred to as the Jacuzzi’s. These turned out to be interesting tidal pools where the waves from the windward side spill into the basins. The pools didn’t look like a comfortable place to hang and seeing the water wasn’t heated to 104 degrees and because I stepped on a sea urchin we didn’t hang around. Now the sea urchin was extremely small and tucked into a rock crevice, if you are wondering how I stepped on a sea urchin Upon returning to the boat, Ron managed to excavate most of the urchin residue though we will wait and see if any remains.

Our next stop was Bahai de Sol (Sun Bay) on the Isle of Vieques where we anchored for two nights. Snorkeling here was not so great but the beach was a beautiful palm lined white sand beach. What was very special here was a bay a short dinghy ride away called Bahia Puerto Mosquito. This bay is considered to be one of the world’s brightest bioluminescent bays. This place was beyond words. We liked it so much that we went back the next night to experience it again. Watching the fish weaving and darting in and around the boat was like watching fireworks. Everything that moved in the water glowed, especially us. What an experience.

We left there with another night time sail up to the main island of Puerto Rico and we are now anchored in Playa de Salinas. This is a very protected anchorage surrounded by mangroves and adjacent to a nice marina that allows anchored yachts to become bay members. This gives us full use of the showers, swimming pool, parking lot and laundry. To our surprise there are resident manatees here. These wonderful docile creatures that are a joy to watch.

Puerto Rico is a very large island and to facilitate us getting around here we have rented a car. Our first outing was to old San Juan and I have to say it is a wonderful and beautiful place. There is so much history here and the town has been preserved and renewed with incredible character. While walking the streets we were caught in a very intense tropical rain fall. This caught us totally unprepared and we dashed from door way to door way. What was even more intense was driving out of old San Juan after the rain. Many streets were flooded and there were places the cars were up over their axels. Finding ourselves in rush hour traffic, to Alex delight we pulled into the Mall of the Americas and waited out the traffic.

Our next outing was to El Yunque, the largest tropical rain forest in the United States. Here we explored a world class interpretive centre and then off to hike to the Mina water falls. Tomorrow the caves of Rio Camuy and to the Arecibo Observatory, the worlds largest radio telescope.

U.S. Virgin Islands

My apologies to everyone for taking so long to update the Blog. After leaving the British Virgin Islands and the next stop was the U.S. Virgin Islands. We cleared in at Cruz Bay, St. John and spent our first night at a wonderful place called Hawkesnest Bay. The highlight in this bay was discovered when I was preparing to go snorkeling. Under our boat were three large creatures that resembled sharks. After a few deep breathes and Alex deciding she needed to be able to tell her friends that she swam with sharks we jumped into the water, though not straying far from the ladder in case we needed a quick exit. What we discovered was a type of Remora; creatures that resembled sharks but with slits on the top of their heads for attaching onto larger creatures. Theses guys were about 2 ½ feet long and stayed circling under our boat and occasionally attached themselves to one of the hulls. Alex ditched me when we decided they weren’t sharks and I went off to explore the shoreline on my own. St. John’s has an extensive marine park and I am sure this contributed greatly to the volume of sea life. We rarely ventured out onto the deck without spotting one or more turtles. In addition to the Remoras we were also visited by a larger specimen of the same type. It was approximately 3 ½ feet and we believed it to be a Cobia.

Our next stop in the US Virgin Islands was Charlotte Amelie on St. Thomas. Now if you have ever been on a Caribbean cruise you would most likely of stopped here. It is cruise ship central and the waterfront shopping is definitely geared to the cruise ships. It was amazing to watch the cruise ships come and go, and watching them parallel park while avoiding the yachts parked too close. One day in this place was enough for us though I am sure the girls could have spent more time and money shopping.

Virgin Gorda, BVI's

Our crossing from Anguilla to the BVI's was near idyllic. We left Prickly Pear Cays at 7:00 p.m. under a full moon and calm seas. As it was going to be a night time crossing the girls and I split up the watches (to keep Ron company). Now I said it was near idyllic but the only thing we lacked was wind. Who would have thought that 12 knots of wind is not enough, but 12 knots directly behind us (dead run) didn't make for great sailing. We averaged about 4.5 knots and because we were sailing wing n wing, Ron had to hand steer to keep the sails full as we don't have a head sail pole or a gybe preventer. We arrived in the BVI's at 11:30 a.m. to Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda for clearing customs. As Ron readied himself to go and clear, the girls and I donned snorkels and jumped into the water to be met by a 3' barracuda. This concerned Alex & Jenessa enough to jump back out to wait and see if I survived. After a short period of time and after the barracuda had departed, they rejoined me for our swim. Our treasure finds were some wonderful conch shells that someone had dumped into the bay and were ours for the taking. When we were here in 2001 our favourite spot was a place called the "Baths". These are giant boulders that form lovely sun-filtered caverns filled with water. We left Moon Beam anchored just off of Spanish Town and went over in the dinghy. It was only about a 5 minute run. We are very happy with our bigger outboard motor. Back on Moon Beam while the girls attended some school work, Ron readied himself for scrubbing the hulls. In the water he was met by our resident barracuda. Now he didn't believe us when we told him it was about 3 feet, but when he was jumping back out of the water he tried to tell us it was at least 4 feet. We captured this picture of him on the transom while he was trying to figure out whether it was safe to go back in the water. The barracuda appear to like the shade of the multihull as well as a multitude of other fish. Ron did manage to get one hull scrubbed before his friend came back. Now when you read about barracuda they tell you that barracuda are not dangerous but when you look into that big mouth full of teeth, one doesn't get a sense of being too safe.

Anguilla

Our sail to Anguilla from St. Maarten started off with an early rising to clear customs, take on water and join the lineup to proceed out of the lagoon upon the bridge opening. The sail was a close reach all of the way across to the island (up to 9 knots). Once in the lee of the island, Ron persisted on sailing still and even though we were close enough to see the whites of their eyes at Road Bay, we tacked and tacked and tacked. Anguilla is a very low island that is famous for its white sand beaches. It has quite an extensive marine park around the island and unfortunately there are fairly extensive fees to visit any where in the park. We have only scheduled and paid for one park visit to Prickly Pear Cays. It is our plan to spend the afternoon here before heading to the British Virgin Islands via the Anageda

We anchored in the Prickly Pear Cays and combed the beach for shells. Alex found a dead flying gunard and a puffer fish, but her favourite find was a pair of slipper that had washed up on the beach. The beaches were beautiful but well picked over as it appeared to be a favourite destination of the party catamarans. Ron and I snorkled the reef and saw many of our favourite fish, but after we went back to Moon Beam, I went off by myself and was overwhelmed with a visit from two very large spotted eagle rays. What a wonderful sight this was to see them soar through the water.
While walking across one of the islands to look at a sail boat washed ashore from one of the hurricanes, we came across these brown footed boobies with their young.

St. Martin

Good News from the mechanic as he checked our engine oil pressure and injectors and every thing checked out ok. We have again replaced the oil pressure sensor and are keeping our fingers crossed this is all that is wrong. Though the kids and I are sure that Ron was just a little bit disappointed he wasn’t going to get his hands dirty removing and rebuilding the engine.

We took advantage of our time here to play with the kids. They have had a lot of fun being towed around behind the dinghy. The bigger dinghy engine is capable of towing two people and gives us quite the ride over the waves and swells. In addition, Jenessa and I managed to go trail riding which also included a swim in the ocean with the horses. It was interesting talking to our guide Michel as he is from Spain on a two year horse training contract. After the trail ride Michel showed us the two stallions, a Andalusian & a Pasa Fina that he brought with him from Spain.

We spent quite a bit of our time on the French side (St. Martin) as it was a quick dinghy ride across the lagoon. The seaside town of Marigot is very quaint with small seaside restaurants and many interesting stores to peruse. We met up with an old friend from Jamaica and enjoyed a nice French pizza with him and his wife. We also met up with Linda & Michael from the S.V. Gåva and enjoyed another wonderful evening that included the most wonderful French desserts.
We had anticipated spending two weeks here, but with the good news about the engine we are off to Anguilla after only one week

St. Maarten

The sail from Saba to St. Martin was our slowest yet, with almost no wind. We actually had to motor the last 10 of the 24 miles because we had no wind. We didn’t plan it but we arrived in the midst of the Heineken Regatta. The Regatta was actually suffering from a lack of wind as well but we were treated to quite a spinnaker show. Unfortunately the organizers actually had to cancel the last day due to lack of wind.

St. Maarten has to be home to a large number of the world’s super yachts. We are anchored in the lagoon and there are probably more than 50 super yachts moored near us. A super yacht used to be any yacht over 100’ but is now a yacht over 150’. All of this show of money is beyond our comprehension.

We managed to get one more swim in with Donna before sending her off home. It was great having her here. We weren’t able to convince her to stay longer as Basil was running out of steak and kidney pies. Donna is a girl after my own heart; she loves to swim, snorkel, hike and explore the islands. She taught us a number of new card games and we spent many happy hours together.

We are here in St. Maarten to have our port engine looked at, as well as to pick up much needed marine supplies (new lines, batteries, etc…). We hope to have the mechanic here tomorrow to give us the prognosis.

Saba

Our sail of 35 miles to Saba was again a very easy sail with light winds and 1 meter seas. The next island after St. Kitts was St. Eustatius (Statia), which we decided to bypass as we are now half way through our adventure and much less than half the distance we need to cover by the end of May. At the northern tip of Statia we enjoyed maneuvering through 7 large anchored oil tankers. Statia is home to a large storage depot for oil from around the world. Smaller ships take the oil from here and deliver it where required.

Half way between Statia and Saba we were greeted by our best ever dolphin show. It started with quite a few tail slaps and continued for at least an hour with dolphins weaving across our bows. We sat on the cross bar dangling feet in the water until Alex came up with the idea that they should put the climbing harness on and dangle more than their feet. So this was what happened. They had hoped to be able to touch the dolphins but they managed to keep out of hand reach.

We anchored on the northwest side of Saba in one of the few allowed anchorages. Most of the area around Saba is Marine Park. Ron headed off to clear customs and Donna and I were quick to get in the water to check out the snorkeling. Even though there was a northerly swell stirring up the sand, which lowered the visibility we had a great snorkel. We saw many Black Durgeon, Cow Fish, Blue Chromis, huge Stoplight Parrot fish, Hawksbill Turtles and some species we still are working on identifying. We managed to get in quite a few snorkels while anchored at this spot.

Saba is the last of the “Islands that Brush the Clouds”; it is a very unique island that is only 5 square miles and reaches to a lofty 3000 ft. When you look at Saba from the water one can hardly understand why anyone would live on this rock. But once on Saba we discovered it was as unique as it was beautiful. We toured Saba with Billy, a third generation Sabian. He was able to take us on the road that couldn’t be built, according to the Dutch engineers who inspected it for the citizens of Saba. One of the citizens who didn’t agree took a correspondence engineering course and supervised the hand building of this road over a period of forty years. Prior to the completion of this road the only way in and out of Saba was via the 800 stairs cut into the hillside. The two main villages are Bottom & Windwardside. Bottom is not at the bottom at all which I found quite amusing. The towns and streets were spotless with the road maintenance staff hand sweeping the streets every morning. After the completion of the road that couldn’t be built the island wanted to put in an airport and again was told it wasn’t possible. so they again proved them wrong and built the entire strip by hand. The main planes using the airport are Twin Otters built in Canada and the landing here is compared to landing on an aircraft carrier (only 400 meters long). (picture is the painting inside the church in Bottom)

Billy asked us if we were going to take the hike up Mt. Scenery which is stated to have 1064 stairs. Alex started the ball rolling with saying she would do the hike and not to be outdone by a 14 year old we took on the challenge. Ron of course had to see how quickly he could do it and left the girls and me behind. In the end we all made it to the top where we were in a cloud forest in the clouds. Though Ron tells us he did catch the most amazing view before the clouds rolled in. The hike was probably the most aerobic exercise that any of us had done since we left and a few of us felt it the next couple of days.

St. Kitts

St. Kitts is a sister island to Nevis and only a short crossing of about 10 miles. We introduced Donna to Caribbean sailing with an easy sail of 15 knots winds and 1 meter seas. St. Kitts like Nevis is steeped in history with St. Kitts being the first island of the West Indies to be colonized by the British

This is our first time using a marina and our first time to moor Mediterranean style. This was a bit of a luxury as it had showers, power and unlimited water. We weren’t long in the dock before Alex had a young man show up that met her in Nevis and it wasn’t long for the rest of us to hit the showers (even a cold shower felt good).

Donna Du and I were off fairly early to tour the island. We caught the mini bus that took us down the island where it stopped a short distance from the Romney Manor. We hiked the rest of the way and were treated to the sights of a beautiful old plantation garden and a demonstration of batiking. From here we hopped a shared taxi and headed off to the Brimstone Hill Fort. This is probably the biggest fort that we have toured and by far the most intriguing. Our bus driver was only allowing us ½ hour for this stop. This only allowed us time to explore a fraction of the site so we parted ways with him and spent a couple hours wandering around. We hiked down the hill and met a mini bus on the main road. The driver drove like a madman and Donna and I tried hard not to think about whether we were going to make it back to the boat.

When we arrived back to the boat there was quite a scene on our bow with a half dozen people holding off a 43’ chartered mono hull from banging into us. As the boat was coming into the marina the driver failed to see our mooring line off our bow and drove right over it. They had to send a diver down to cut our anchor bridle from their prop (which was toast). After watching this and many other charter boats, we would be reluctant to put a boat into a charter fleet.

Next stop Saba!