On the Move Again

With the rebuilt genset finally installed and running, you can imagine how happy we are to be back on the move again heading towards the beautiful Spanish Virgin Islands. We sailed out of Salinas at o'dark thirty for the long windward beat along Puerto Rico's south shore. We motor sailed along the shore for most of the morning and then headed for Vieques, an island about 10 miles off the coast. The wind was on our nose but the waves weren't too bad, so we continued on a 47-mile diagonal towards the southwest corner of the island to a secluded little patch of sand called Green Beach.

Secluded Green Beach off the southwest corner of Vieques, Puerto Rico.

Numerous people have told us of the untouched beauty of Isle de Vieques. Some friends had honeymooned on the island and loved it. However, among our cruising community we heard warnings of a strong anti-US sentiment in various areas of Vieques. The US Navy had been using it as a bombing range and approximately 10 years ago the Navy abandoned the range and began a decades long remediation program to defuse the island. We decided to play it safe and not go ashore and also put a cover over our US flag. Once we reached Green Beach there were people along the beach swimming and sunbathing, and some diving for lobster. We dove into the water to cool off, check the anchor, and started cleaning our boat bottom with scrub pads. After over three weeks in Salinas we had some amazing growth on the bottom, especially along the water line. We worked at it for an hour and decided the rest should be done with our dive tank & hooka set up at another location. We had a pleasant evening without any issues.

At 7:00 am the next morning we had to clear a huge shoal called Escollo de Arenas. Escollo means dangerous in Spanish and it had a reputation for eating ships. We literally had to sail backwards towards where we came from to get in deep enough water to pass around the shoal. But it was a beautiful day and of course the wind direction continued to be on our nose so we did a combination of sailing and motor sailing to expedite our arrival at around 2:00 pm at Dewey on the island of Culebra. Just as we were entering the anchorage and dropping our sail a big rainsquall passed over and totally drenched us. In these warm climes we often wonder if you should bother to wear a rain-jacket? Or strip down to your bare skin?

The later seems to make more sense but always gets the neighboring boats grabbing for their binoculars. The anchorage had plenty of room so we dropped our anchor and waited for the storm to pass before going ashore. Meanwhile, a French Amel sailboat came along side us with a very young lady in the tiniest bikini possible standing on the bow with three older men in the cockpit. To our amusement the vessels name was Clitoria, and the vessel flew a Norwegian flag. Walter enjoyed surmising what that might be all about. The wind and rain never did lift so we ended up staying onboard and decided we would spend another day in harbor so we could explore the town in the morning.

Beautiful downtown Dewey on Vieques.

On Thursday we dingied into town and explored the small town of Dewey, once full of US military personnel but now a sleepy tourist town. After wandering the narrow streets in search of a grocery store (Meryl has this thing for fresh lettuce) we ended up at Mamacita's, a local hangout along the canal under the bridge.

Mamacita's under the Canal Bridge, a local hangout.

This is why God gave cats nine lives.

We ended up talking with a young couple next to us who were both barista's/bartenders from Whitefish, Montana. Since Walter's mom's family is from Montana we had a great little chat. They said they just got back from staying on Vieques and said it was lovely and super safe. Turns out they were the couple sunbathing on Green Beach at Vieques while we were cleaning the bottom of the boat. They enthusiastically remembered us, causing us to remember whether we were skinny-dipping when we cleaned the bottom at what was supposed to be a very secluded beach. They guy just had this big smile on his face.

We got an early start on Friday with the intent of sailing all the way to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Although the weather report was for 15 - 20 knot easterlies and 4 - 6 seas, we immediately ran into some big whopper waves and after getting beat to death for about and hour we decided to bail out and sailed on a reach over to Culebrita (Little Culebra). It was kind of a hairy sail along a lee shore with rock cliffs, but once we rounded the northeast corner of Culebrita we entered a magical crescent bay called Tortuga Bay.

We were the only boat so we picked a buoy on the northwest corner that looked protected from the swell (it wasn't) and immediately dove the mooring buoy and swam to the beach. We snorkeled around some small reefs, saw lots of small turtles, and walked along the beach. Since it was a Friday we knew this privacy wouldn't last long and soon the "Puerto Rican Navy," the local term for the swarms of large Bertram fishing boats that show up on weekends to party, was steaming around the corner and soon the buoys were full. We liked it here so much we stayed the whole weekend but did move over to the other side of the bay, which didn't get as much rolling from the swells.

Voted one of the Top 10 Best Beaches in the Caribbean, Tortuga Bay certainly lives up to its reputation.

My little friend reminded my why they call it "Tortuga Bay."

The crew from North Sports taking photos for their annual product catalog.

While at anchor we love to relax and watch all the activity from the cockpit. One large catamaran caught our eye with two pretty 17-year-old girls paddling around on stand-up paddleboards and numerous guys with other floating paraphernalia. They had this nifty large floating pad off the stern of the cat so you could land and launch your paddle board from the pad. When the wind died down in the evening they'd all head over to the point and catch the small waves breaking for hours. We both wished we had portable paddleboards while we watched. They left that evening about an hour before a huge thunderstorm hit the area.

We had heard Puerto Rican Coast Guard warnings on the VHF radio but didn't realize it was coming our way. We buttoned everything up and hunkered down while the thunder and lightening exploded all around us.

Fortunately, the major storm cells passed just north of us and we were out of danger from lightening strikes. We thought about the cat and wondered if they made it back to port before the storm. The next day the cat returned with a different gal and most of the same guys. This time they had blow up toys all over the beach and hanging off their boat. We decided they must be a day charter operation or something along those lines. Come evening they all headed to the surf spot again and had a great time as the sun was slowly sinking in the background. One of the guys paddled close to us on his way back and we called him over and found out the story. Turns out he was a designer for North Sports, out of White Salmon, Washington and they were doing a catalog shoot. They had chartered the cat for two weeks and were working everyday shooting for next years catalog. Not too tough an assignment in probably one of the most beautiful anchorages we've visited to date.