21 January 2019 Isla Caja de Muertos, Puerto Rico
We rolled a fair bit over night, so we were sleeping in the recover position and had a restless night. After breakfast, we went for a stroll on the island. Isla Caja de Muertos is the number one tourist attraction in this area, so there’s an excellent gravel path leading up to an abandoned lighthouse.
The lighthouse is all sealed up with notices forbidding entry, but someone has knocked a hole in the wall. Of course, we had to go in and climbed up the rusty spiral staircase, taking care to put our weight as close as possible to the solid edge of the steps. There’s a nice view from the top.
Back at the boat, we pulled up the anchor and moved ½ mile along the shore to get out of the swell. We anchored at 17°53.93N 066°31.36W in six metres on good holding sand and it was nice and calm. We tried to go snorkelling at the north end of the island, but there was nothing but broken coral and rock, so we gave up. I ended up spending 20 minutes scraping the propeller.
22 January 2019 Isla Caja de Muertos to Ponce, Puerto Rico
As usual in the morning, there wasn’t a lot of wind, so we had to motor across to Ponce, where we anchored in the small harbour at 17°57.95N 066°37.07W in 9 metres on good holding mud/sand. There’s a huge marina/yacht club here, which we’ve heard is expensive and unfriendly to yachties who anchor in the harbour - they used to charge $10US per day to leave your dinghy there.
I popped ashore to the marina office and, sure enough, they were very stuffy, saying that we couldn’t leave our dinghies there; we couldn’t use their laundry facilities; and they won’t even let us go to their bar restaurant for a beer or a meal in the evening. Their one concession is that we can buy fuel from their fuel dock…
After lunch, we dinghied over to the Club de Pesca in the east corner of the harbour. They have a small marina for private fishing boats and were incredibly friendly. Most of the local people predominantly speak Spanish, but we eventually found Luis who spoke very good English. He told us that it was no problem to leave our dinghy on one of their docks and gave us the telephone number of a dentist in Ponce town centre. While we were sorting ourselves out, we met Damien and Rebecca, a couple of Swiss cruisers.
The harbour is in a commercial dock area called La Guancha and there’s not a lot there apart from a row of food kiosks along the waterfront. The Ponce town centre is 5 kilometres away and I was struggling to get an internet signal to call an Uber taxi, so Luis kindly gave us and the Swiss, a lift into town, dropping us off at the dentist.
The dentist was very good and only kept Glenys waiting for ten minutes, before taking an x-ray and sorting out the problem. Part of her tooth had pulled away with the filling and there was some decay, so he drilled it out and put in an amalgam filling which he said would be less prone to come out than a modern hard white filling.
We went looking for a laundry, which was supposed to be opposite the post office, but we couldn’t find anything. Like most town centres in the 1st world countries, the building of big shopping malls, has forced the shops out of business and there are lots of closed shops amongst the colonial architecture.
We met up with Damien and Rebecca, who shared an Uber with us back to the port - they came on-board Alba for a few beers.
23 January 2019 Ponce, Puerto Rico
A few months ago, I fitted a brand new Volvo water pump onto our engine, but unfortunately, the damn thing started to leak a couple of weeks ago. We’re now in a very secure anchorage, near a large city where I can get mechanical assistance if required, so I reluctantly removed the pump and stripped it down to replace the seal.
It’s a scary job, requiring the shaft to be pushed out of the housing. There are two bearings in the pump and one of them was very rusty and needed to be replaced. The bearing is pressed into a 30mm deep bore, so I used a hammer and a punch to try to knock it out. There’s only a 1mm wide lip that is accessible, so it took me ten minutes of hammering to move the bearing about 10 mm.
Then the middle fell out of the bearing, leaving a steel ring inside the pump bore. I couldn’t get access to knock the ring out, so I started to despair. Eventually, I made a small puller bar by cutting up a large washer, so that it just fit inside the bore. Using a bolt and other backing washers, I was able to fit the puller bar behind the bearing ring and by tightening a nut on the bolt I was able to pull the bearing ring out of the bore – phew!
After that it was a fairly simple job of rebuilding the pump with a new bearing and seal. While I was at it, I changed the pump impellor. The whole job took six hours, so I’m hoping that I won’t have to do it again – ever!
24 January 2019 Ponce, Puerto Rico
Glenys dragged me off into Ponce Town to be a tourist. An Uber taxi dropped us off at the Museo Castillo Serrallés, which is the number three tourist attraction in Ponce. It’s an old colonial house owned by the Serrallés family, who built a Cane sugar empire in the 1800s. The house was built in the 1930’s and is built on a hill with a fabulous view over the city.
We paid for an hour long tour, which was interesting, but a bit rushed with a guide who spoke English four times faster than I could ever do. After a tot of rum, we climbed a 50 metre high cross – 102 steps and had another view of the city. The grounds also contains a Japanese Garden, which is about the size of three tennis courts; and the formal gardens of the house, which were okay.
The property also has a small butterfly house, with several species of butterflies. The highlight of the visit was the endearing old man who gathers the caterpillars and raises them to butterflies in plastic cups. Despite not speaking any English, he was able to show us the process of hatching the butterflies. It was a pleasant couple of hours and, even better, we obtained old-age pensioner tickets, so the whole thing wasn’t too expensive at $6 US each.
The taxi driver and a guard at the Castillo had told us that the area around the Castillo was very dangerous, but we ignored them and had a nice one kilometre stroll back into town. The dogs in the posh houses at the top of the street were scary, so we armed ourselves with a couple of stout sticks. The neighbourhood at the bottom of the hill looked very suspect, but everyone we met was polite and smiled when we said “Ola”.
Back in the safety of the town centre, Glenys took us to a small local restaurant called “El Barril de la Mulata”. It’s a little rough and ready, but was full of locals enjoying lunch. There were four options, which we ordered at the bar ($5US each) and then grabbed a table. The meals were huge – chicken for me and beef for Glenys accompanied by rice, beans, plantains, etc. We were stuffed - when will we learn to share a meal?
We waddled to a supermarket a few blocks from the central square and did a two-trolley shop. Our plan is to sail to the Bahamas at the end of next week, so we’ve stocked up here thinking that getting provisions in Boqueron (our departure port) will be more challenging. We caught an Uber back to Alba and collapsed. In the evening, we were treated to some of the famous Puerto Rico ear-drum-bursting music, which carried on into the small hours.
25 January 2019 Ponce to La Parguera, Puerto Rico
At 09:00, we pulled up the anchor and went alongside the fuel dock, only to find that it was all closed up. I walked to the marina office and was told that the pump attendant was on his breakfast break and would be with us in 20 minutes. After 40 minutes, there was no sign of him, so I went back to the office where they called him on the VHF and told him to get back to work.
He’d obviously been chilling out with his mates and was incredibly surly when he shuffled back ten minutes later. I was fuming by this time, but there was no point in ranting and raving because he didn’t speak English and would probably refuse to serve me. Thankfully, we were out of there by 10:00.
As usual, there wasn’t a lot of wind, so we motored for the first two hours rolling in the five foot seas. The wind picked up at lunchtime and we had a pleasant sail for the remaining three hours – made even better by a pod of Bottle-nose Dolphins, who joined us for fifteen minutes.
We negotiated the narrow channel into the shelter of the tiny islands of La Parguera and anchored at 17°58.06N 067°02.38W in 6 metres depth on good holding sand. We’re tucked behind a small island with roosting Pelicans an Frigate birds– it’s a nice anchorage, hopefully far enough away from the Friday night revelry.
26 January 2019 La Parguera, Puerto Rico
Surprisingly, there wasn’t any loud music last night and we slept well. Mid-morning, we grabbed our snorkelling gear and took the dinghy over to a reef called “El Mario” where there are three moorings. Unfortunately, the visibility was about 3 metres, so that dashed our intentions of doing a scuba dive in the afternoon.
There wasn’t a lot to see apart from soft corals sweeping majestically in the strong surge, so we ran away after 20 minutes. On the way back, we stopped off to have a look at Cayo Caracoles, where we could see about 20 boats on moorings. The locals seem to love the place, but there didn’t seem much special – a scrubby mangrove island with lots of moorings on a patch of white sand. I guess that it popular because it’s sheltered in the lee of the island and only a mile from town.
Later in the afternoon, we went to have a look at the nearby Yacht Club marina, but it’s all private berths with no place to leave a dinghy. There’s a restaurant on the shore, but nowhere that we could tie up. Just past the marina, we found a small dock with about ten boats tied up. I chatted to the owner and he’s quite happy for us to leave our dinghy there. Even better, he says there’s a launderette across the road.
We carried on towards town, passing small wooden houses packed along the shore line – every single foot of the waterfront is private. It’s the same in town – there’s no public dock. We chatted to a local on a moored yacht and he suggested that we continue along to a small fishing boat marina, where he thought we’d be able to leave our dinghy. As we headed there, a local guy, Juan called us over from a house on the waterfront and let us tie up to his dock.
It was only a few hundred yards to the town square, which is very touristic with bars, restaurants and touts trying to sell boat trips. We found a dive centre and found out that a two tank dive cast $125 US – no thank you… There’s a small well-stocked supermarket and a bakery up a side street. After 15 minutes, we’d seen enough, so we wandered back to Juan’s house, where he kindly gave us a glass of wine, while we had a chat.
We were back on the boat in time to see the sunset and then had a quiet night in.
27 January 2019 La Parguera, Puerto Rico
After breakfast, I set up our satellite phone so that we can receive emails while at sea an in remote places. I’ve just bought 75 minutes of Iridium airtime which only lasts for one month and costs a staggering £180. I’ve also had to buy a 6 month subscription for Mailasail email compression service, which cost another £90. I’m treating it as a £270 insurance policy…
Mid-morning, we went ashore and made use of the launderette. It’s in a private compound opposite a small marine store. The place is very run down, but we found two machines that worked and for only $2US per wash it was a bargain.
28 January 2019 La Parguera to Boqueron, Puerto Rico
Weather looks good to go to the Bahamas on Thursday 31st. It’s a passage of 450 miles to Mayaguana, so if we leave on Thursday, we should get there on Sunday late afternoon or possibly Monday morning. There’s a cold front stalled over the Bahamas, which stretches down to Mayaguana, but it’s expected to dissipate on Saturday 2nd. After the front clears, there should be a week until the next front comes down off the East Coast of the USA.
I rang the Border Protection Agency and told them that we will leave on Thursday. They said that they could send us a clearance by email, which is good of them. The clearance is only valid for 48 hours and officially they shouldn’t issue it until tomorrow, but the officer said “What the hell” and we received it within the next hour.
We left the anchorage at 10:00 and had a lovely downwind sail to Boqueron using just the genoa in the steady 20 knots winds. Just after lunch, we rounded Cabo Roca and 90 minutes later, arrived in Boqueron. It’s a very shallow bay and our Navionics charts showed some isolated rocks, close to the beach, so we bottled out and anchored at 18°01.39N 067°10.64W in 5 metres of water on mud/sand.
We decided to leave the excitement of going ashore until tomorrow and had a quiet afternoon on board.
29 January 2019 Boqueron, Puerto Rico
We went for a walk around town, which didn’t take long. The main street along the waterfront is lined with restaurants, bars and food stalls – this is tourist town. We were told that the nearest supermarket is 4 miles away, but we found a mini-mart where we were able to buy some essentials – eggs, beer and bread.
After a short walk along the pleasant beach, we were back aboard Alba for lunch and had another quiet afternoon, mentally preparing ourselves for a four day passage. I checked the tension on our steering cables and gave the engine a good inspection.
30 January 2019 Boqueron, Puerto Rico
The weather forecast looks good to sail to the Bahamas tomorrow. The front is still forecast to dissipate from Saturday 2nd, so we’re hoping to have light winds and good weather for our arrival on Sunday. The pay-as-you-go contract on our phone runs out tonight, so we’ll have to hope that today’s forecast is accurate.
With nothing to do in town, we had a quiet day on board, running the watermaker and preparing for the four day passage. I put the dinghy on deck in the afternoon and we were all ready to go.
31 January 2019 Boqueron to Mayaguana, Bahamas (Day 1)
The alarm went off before dawn and we were underway at 07:00. There was no wind at all, so we motored north, hugging the coast until we’d worked our way through the shallow reef that stretches a few miles out to sea off the town of Mayaguez. The wind was fluky until 14:00, by which time we had cleared the north-west corner of Puerto Rico and had lost the land effect.
The skies were overcast, with showers passing through, which brought very variable winds veering from East to North-east and varying in strength from 10 knots to 25 knots. To make matters worse the sea was 4-6 feet high and very confused. It was hard work all afternoon, having to reef a fair few times.
As darkness fell, the skies remained overcast with a 12 knot wind from the north-east, putting us close-hauled with the wind 60 degrees off the starboard bow. We had two reefs in the main with full genoa and staysail and waited with some trepidation for what the night might bring.
Despite there being no moon, it turned out to be a pleasant night. The clouds slowly cleared and by midnight, we had an impressive display of stars. The wind slowly veered until it was 120 degrees on the starboard side, so we were able to pole the genoa out to starboard and gently roll downwind.
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