Sail Away With Us: Puerto Rico and The Virgin Islands

Not sure this beats flying?

Thursday 24^th May

We go ashore again to download yet another weather forecast – which again gives us winds out of the E. or E.S.E. somewhere between 10 – 20kts. Nothing new. We collect our clearance papers from the Navy, have another coffee, then, return to SHAMAL. Our plan is for a mid-afternoon departure. According to our cruising information this should be a 36 hour run following the Dominican Republic coastline, crossing the Mona Passage, then running down the west coast of Puerto Rico. It is overcast and humid as we raise the anchor from Samana Harbour in the D.R. A huge thunderstorm is passing just to the south of us. As we head out of the bay, and start the run following the coastline, the seas are short and sharp, and on the nose. By the next morning we start our tack out to sea to round the Hourglass Shoals. We can tell already this is going to be a long slow trip. By evening we are sailing with a reef in the main and full jib. I have been trying to fish, but there is just too much Sargasso Weed about. It gets very frustrating having to wind my line in every few minutes to clear it. The clumps of it seem to be getting bigger and thicker.

A Small patch of Sargasso Weed!

Evening – I have just come on watch. We are still under sail with the good old auto pilot on. Then just before midnight we have yet another squall line passing through. The winds are all over the place. Then they drop completely. Unbeknown to me we have also sailed into a humongous patch of Sargasso Weed. The current is now pushing us backwards, and the weed is starting to pile up on the back steps. I wake Alec who can smell the weed. He says we will just motor out of this, then be on our way again. He starts both engines but the weed is so thick the Port engine stops pumping water. We turn that off so not to do any damage, and ever so slowly edge our way out using the STBD engine only. I tell you it was like a scene from a horror movie. I thought we were going to be engulfed by the stuff. When it is daylight Alec has to clean both salt water inlet filters to the engines, which are clogged with weed. This is something he now keeps an eye on and cleans out regularly . Also when motoring the weed gets caught around the props which slows us down and causes the props to vibrate. To clear it we have to put the props into reverse. In certain areas this was quite often.

Boqueron

By dawn we have crossed the Mona Passage and are running down the west coast of Puerto Rico. It is midmorning when we finally dropped anchor in Boqueron Harbour on the south western corner of Puerto Rico. Log 185nm. Here I am able to make a phone call to Customs and Border Patrol to say we have arrived. This is a USA territory. They take our details and tell us we will need to go back to Mayaguez – back along the coastline we have just come along – to complete the paperwork. It is now Saturday and everything is closed till the Tuesday as Monday is a holiday being Memorial Day. Thankfully it is not too far, and we can take a cab there. There is no way we are backtracking in SHAMAL. This beating into the wind has truly lost its glamour!!! Also they have told us we can go ashore over the weekend thank goodness.

Puerto Rico – The history here is very much the same as the other Islands, only their first inhabitants are thought to have arrived by raft from Florida around the 1^st. century A.D. Well if our trip to date from west to east is any indication of the difficult of it, it must have been a nightmare on a raft!!! The Tainos arrived soon after. They named the Island Borinquen and were constantly fighting off the Carib invades.

When do the restaurants open around here?

Next thing the good old Spanish arrive here around 1508 totally decimating the indigenous peoples, all in their murderous greed for gold!!! The slave trade here was also no different from the other Islands. The Spanish-American War of 1898 freed Puerto Rico of the Spanish, and the Island was declared a commonwealth of the United States. This is still a very much debated question today – whether to keep the status quo, or officially become America’s 51^st state. In 2006 a massive budgetary crisis forced the government to shut down for a couple of weeks after it literally ran out of funds. The global economic crisis has led to huge numbers of unemployment. Then to top it off Puerto Rico was hit by devastating Hurricane Irma in 2017 which will take years to recover from. So all in all poor old Puerto Rico has really drawn the short straw. But, we found a positive attitude among the people we met.

Boqueron

Boquerón Harbour is nice and clean – we can see the sandy bottom clearly. The town is literally humming with visitors. Street vendors are out selling fresh juices, and the local specialty – oysters. The local restaurants and bars are doing a roaring trade. It is hot and everyone is in the water. We chat with the locals and other yachties over cool drinks.

On Tuesday we met up with Eddie the taxi driver who takes us over to Mayaguez so we can complete our arrival formalities. We learnt here how important it is to have ones paper work in order before arriving. A poor European family just arrived, no visas, they were fined $500 each.

Lighthouse Cabo Rojo

Hotel Copa Marina

After five days here we are well rested and stocked up, so up anchor and move just 8nm out to Cabo Rojo and drop anchor in the lee of the cape. We will round the cape in the morning and do short day hops along the southern coast. Our next anchorage is in front of Hotel Copa Marina, just north of Gilligan Island. Again clean waters with a sandy bottom. Then it is on to Ponca. We only go ashore and visit the port area here. Again we meet another couple heading somewhat in the same direction as ourselves. They are on a Trawler Yacht.

Ponce

Pelican of Ponce

From Ponce Yacht Club we continue along the south coast to the end of the Island. Come evening Alec was looking for an anchorage, but winds have dropped a little, so we keep going. We do a night motor sail through passage between Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgin Island of Vieques. We arrive into Ensenada Honda on the Spanish Virgin Island of Culebra just on daybreak.

Culebra

Isa De Culebra – this is a delightful place, but we are seeing the damage hurricane Irma did as she passed over this area last September. Culebra means snake in Spanish, the name describing the shape of the Island. It is only 7 miles long by 3 miles wide. We were anchored off the town of Dewey. We spend four days here exploring the local area, partly on foot, but also by tender. There is a small creek cutting through the town with an old lift bridge which no longer operates, but takes us through to the western side of the Island facing Puerto Rico. Again beautiful clean clear waters. I am able to catch a jack to use as a bait fish later. The township is quaint. The supermarket is housed in the oldest building in town, with its wooden floors which lead you uphill among the shelves.

Dinghy Dock Restaurant, Culebra

Culebra

We are surprised at how many people we are meeting who are still on the move since we are nearly in hurricane season. That officially runs from June to November.

On leaving Culebra we head for the first of the US Virgin Islands – St. Thomas. We anchor in Long Bay off the town of Charlotte Amalie. As we are still in American Territories we can phone in our positions which is great. We take ourselves on a walking tour of the town. There are many old stone buildings and wooden houses down alleyways, now turned into cafés, restaurants and tourist shops.

Charlotte Amalie

We spend just under a week visiting different anchorages in the US Virgin Islands. In Christmas Bay, Great St. James Island, the pizza boat is still open for business as there are plenty of cruisers about, many of them charter boats, which surprises us as we are now at the beginning of hurricane season.

Charlotte Amalie

Pizza Boat

We move to the north side of St. John for a night, before crossing to check into the British Virgin Islands on Jost Van Dyke Island. Here we visit the famous “Foxy’s” Beach Bar and Restaurant. Again damage from Irma is everywhere around Great Harbour where we anchored.

Road Town, Tortola. Before dropping anchor we do a tour of the harbour. The inner harbour is a very sad sight indeed. Here is home to the Sunsail and Moorings Charter Fleets. The damage hurricane Irma did here is unbelievable. Damaged boats everywhere. Some rafted together only just floating, others sunk at their moorings. The thing that really stands out is most lost their masts. It is the main charter boat base for the Islands, and is heart-breaking to see so many damaged boats. We learn that 80-90 percent of all boats in the US and British Virgin Islands were damaged during Irma, over 2,000 boats, and of that somewhere between 40-60 percent were write-offs. Also, there are still many homes and commercial buildings damaged, some will never be rebuilt. Many have new roofs, but again blue tarpaulins dot the hillsides of homes yet to be repaired.

Foxy's, Jost Van Dyke

Buck Island

Our next anchorage is off Buck Island. The clean up here has not started and it is a little concerning having one catamaran sitting high and dry on the beach in front of us, and behind us two large ones upside down on the beach, along with mono yachts broken and washed up on their sides or just smashed to pieces beside them. We are told that the tornadoes within the hurricane are what caused much of the damage. Those along with the 9-10 foot tidal surge. Irma produced winds up to 185mph. The local Islanders who were in her path tell you she was greater than a Category 5 – the highest category measurement to date which has maximum sustained winds of 156mph. They feel it should be classed as a Category 6 – 7 with the high winds they had.

Hurricane damage, Buck Island

Jost Van Dyke

While sitting at anchor here we see a freighter pass by with about 15-20 brand new boats for the charter fleet. Alec believes that the general cruisers are now subsidising the charter fleets over insurance premiums, as they are covered if they take “reasonable precautions “ in the event of a hurricane, where as we are not covered if we are damaged within the hurricane areas!!!!

Sunsail boats in Road Town

From here we sail across to Manchioneel Bay on Cooper Island. Again the waters here are crystal clear. Also it is one of the few places that is not showing hurricane damage. It is only a tiny place and the buildings here are newer and have been built to a higher standard. They have renewed any damage to docks and gardens. It was a breath of fresh air to visit here, and what we imagine the islands looked like before Irma went through.

Cooper Island

We find a couple more anchorage before moving to the Island of Virgin Gorda. We stop in Spanish Town to visit Customs and Immigration to find out the procedure for checking out. We would like to leave from the top of the Island but discover their office there is now closed. Never mind, we sail up to Gorda Sound for a couple of days, return to check out, then head back up there for our last night in the Virgin Islands, before leaving for St Maarten.

Hurricane damage, Virgin Gorda

Gorda Sound is a large bay protected all around by islands and reefs. It is a lovely place to visit and up until Irma’s destruction, had marinas, restaurants and holiday accommodation around the bays. The only one up and running to any degree is in Leverick Bay. Bitter End is still not open, and Saba Rock Island Resort is roofless.

Necker Island just to the north of the Sound, which is the holiday resort owned by Richard Branson, was having major reconstruction work going on.

While in the BVI’s I have caught a lovely big mutton snapper.

Thursday 21^st June and it is time to up anchor and continue eastbound. It is an 80nm run to St Maarten. I somehow think we will be doing a few more miles than that. Tacking out to avoid going head on into the eastly winds.