A Sail of Two Idiots (28 page)

We happily spent the weekend on the beach with lots of Puerto Rican families. Unlike the Bahamians, the locals here used their beaches. It was quite a party atmosphere, but we enjoyed it.

A few days later while sprawled on the beach, we looked up from our books and noticed that our boat had moved all by its little self. Grumble, grumble. We raced to the dinghy and got back to the boat, only to find that Michael had lost the key to the boat's door. We wouldn't normally need to get inside the boat for this exercise, but our anchor windlass breaker had tripped. We needed to get to the breaker … inside. I threw out more anchor chain (easier going out than up) and kept the engines running while Michael dinghied back to the beach to find the key.

Amazingly, Michael found the little booger in the sand. He zoomed back, we flipped the switch, changed anchors, and dropped it again. We didn't know what the bottom was; we had been too tired to dive on it the day we arrived. I hadn't been all that confident in the pull when I had backed down on the anchor either, but was too exhausted to be appropriately concerned about it. The harbor floor turned out to be mud, not something our Bulwagga handled well, so out went our CQR. Hrmph.

Let's remind ourselves of the steps: Drop anchor, back down hard after a minute
until satisfied
, dive on anchor to be sure. These steps had to be completed regardless of hours slept … or not slept.

Do you know how we spent our final day in Boqueron? Watching the thunderstorms pummel the ocean, blissful that we weren't sailing in them, munching on the potato salad we had made in the Dominican Republic, and listening to music being broadcast from the beach. Did I mention we were soooooo glad we had left Luperon? We even saw boats sailing in the clean harbor. What a concept!

After a few days recovering in Boqueron, we went to four different anchorages in six days. Why? Because we could!

All these hops were via engines because we were tucked behind the island, which blocked the prevailing wind. Not that we were complaining. First we sailed south around the western end of Puerto Rico and then motorsailed east along the southern coast to Cabo Rojo, about 1½ hours away. There was an old lighthouse, built in 1881, on the hill above the anchorage. Now automatic, it could be seen for 20 miles. We stopped because it was a serene place to anchor and enjoyed a calm evening.

Next up was La Parguera, stopping at Margarita Reef on the way to see what there was to see. It was an impressive reef from above but was mainly hard white coral and seagrass from below. Most of the fish swimming around the reef were flying fish, which we'd already seen plenty of from above. Although it was a little disappointing, we were proud of ourselves for stopping (LESSON 61, Stop and smell the roses).

Upon arriving we went looking for monkeys and manatees. Yep, you read that right. Monkeys had supposedly escaped from an old research center on nearby Isla Cueva. We hiked around a bit and dinghied up and down several mangrove-lined tributaries, similar to the ones throughout Conception Island, Bahamas. Although we didn't hear or see any monkeys, we did see a few docile manatees.

Most of the houses in La Parguera were literally right on the water. Owners would bring their boat into a dock next to their front door as if they were parking their car in the driveway. We stopped there because it was considered a possible hurricane hole. The homes were barely above sea level and seemed as though they'd been there awhile, so this area had to somewhat protected.

At night we dinghied over to Phosphorescent Bay (La Bahia Fosforescente), which had the same glowing organisms we had become familiar with in the Bahamas and Luperon. The water sparkled anytime something disturbed it. This lagoon was definitely protected, and after later looking at crowded Salinas, we decided that we'd return to the bay east of La Parguera should we be threatened by any nasty weather disturbances. We later learned that all the little fishing boats would do the same thing (and might not be as careful as we would be anchoring and tying ourselves to the mangroves securely), but it's never perfect. (Note that boaters may no longer be able to tie off to mangroves on Puerto Rico, so do some homework should you expect to use them as hurricane protection.)

Next up, Isla Caja de Muertos, or Coffin Island, a nature preserve about 10 miles to the south of Ponce, so named because supposedly a pirate fell in love with a married woman and was later able to marry her, only to have her die in a battle a year later. He put her in a coffin and brought her to a cave on this island where he could visit her. He and his crew were killed a year later when pirates, seeing the regular treks to the island, thought he had been burying treasure there. The murderers were shocked (and I'm sure pretty disappointed) to discover the decomposing body of the woman instead (who was later buried on St. Thomas). Wow, that's romantic. The island was also shaped kind of like a coffin …

Coffin Island was yet another sand spit, but with a beautiful anchorage located near the southwest corner. Supposedly it was a madhouse on weekends, when ferries
dropped off hordes of people from the Puerto Rican “mainland,” but while we were there it was just us, the pelicans, and fish. There wasn't much on the island other than mosquitoes, so we decided to take advantage of the crystal-clear waters to try to clean the boat bottom.

We spent the entire afternoon in the water, unsuccessfully trying to erase the brown discoloration around the waterline (thank you, Luperon). We got the chunks off (that's right, chunks. Eew) but couldn't remove the more embedded brown stuff.

That meant it was time to enjoy the solitude, the beautiful beach, and the clear, warm water … Heaven. We had planned to go on to Salinas the same day but just couldn't drag ourselves away.

One morning we slipped behind some thunderstorms and followed them east over to Salinas, staying as dry as could be. We would use Salinas as our base as we reprovisioned and fixed stuff (such as the bent propeller). We figured we'd be there about a week.

We compared this harbor to the other “major” ones such as George Town and Luperon. The harbor was crowded, and we did see a turd float by, but the water didn't smell. The supermarket was about a 2-mile walk, but it had produce and other goodies that we hadn't seen in a long time. Peanut oil! Liquid smoke! Fake soy meat!

We rented a car and encountered culture shock. Huge malls, toll roads, traffic cops, and movie theaters. Overload! Overload! We did nothing but shop for three straight days. We hit one of the biggest malls I'd ever been in, with the usual (Sears, J C Penney, Macy's, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and every clothing-store chain I'd ever seen). Surrounding that was a Super Walmart, Home Depot, Wendy's (we craved French fries), West Marine, and Super K-mart. I was even able to get a new battery for my watch!

We had to go into
all
those stores because Michael had lost weight and needed some new shorts. This should not have been a problem, but it was late October and the stores had winter stuff. What? We were on Puerto Rico and couldn't find shorts because all the stores were selling coats and sweaters. Let's shake our heads together in disbelief, shall we? Michael eventually found enough to keep him going. I didn't fair as well. The rest of our purchases were food and spare boat parts.

You'd think that boat parts would be simple purchases, but noooo. There were lots of stores, but most didn't seem to be aware of the concept of restocking. We needed eight filters? That'll be five stores. Need a metric Allen-wrench socket? That'll be seven stores because all were out of number six.

We even visited every grocery store we drove past because they each carried something the others didn't.

After the end of our fourth day, we'd had enough of the car. We saw more of the turnpike than we would have liked. The thrill of the drive was long gone.

Let's not forget about boat repairs (you didn't, did you?). Our most important project would be the propeller. The question was whether Michael could get it off while he was underwater. The answer turned out be yes (yay!), but not without losing the spacer for it (boo!). So then we had the spacer to order (that would be $55).

When we went to take the propeller to the guy who would bend it back to pitch, it took four hours to find his shop. Why? Because many streets had the same name (kind of like Main Street in the States) and few streets had signs. After three hours of driving in circles, the store owner finally answered his phone and then told us to go to the corner with a Walgreens and a McDonald's catty-corner to each other. That seemed a reasonable description until we discovered that there were half a dozen corners in the area with that exact setup. No exaggeration. An hour later we grumpily handed the guy our propeller and hoped for the best.

We decided it was time to have a little fun, so we drove to the northern part of the island and spent the day in Old Town San Juan—where we entered a time warp. We felt as though we were wandering down the streets of Old Europe. Timeworn, narrow cobblestone roads, lots of quaint restaurants, plazas with statues, and big old forts.

A long stone wall encircled the entire city; it had repelled just about everyone who tried to overtake it until the United States overran it in the late 1800s. We could definitely see ourselves living in one of those old places surrounded by so much history.

Our relaxation time over, we retrieved the propeller and spacer and spent our first day
on
the boat in Salinas getting everything put back together. This gave
some nearby boaters a chance to introduce themselves. As in other anchorages where people stay for long periods of time, Salinas had a lot of organized activities and everyone knew one another. We were invited to a Halloween shindig so everyone could get to know us too. As nice as that was, we didn't want to just sit around again. We'd been anchored in Salinas a week now and, believe it or not, our one-year anniversary of sailing was coming up. We wanted to keep moving. We spent the night doing final preparations and decided to island-hop the 80 miles or so east to Culebra, in the Spanish Virgin Islands.

Our first stop was Puerto Patillas, 23 miles to the east. This was just a stop-off point to split up the trip. The anchorage itself was nothing to write home about—a small, dirty beach next to a busy road—but the cove was wide and empty. Better yet, it was full of manatees! First you'd see a brown splotch under the water. Then you'd see a nose stick out. Then a head as it looked around. Then a body doubled up like an inchworm. Then a back would come out of the water followed by a whale-like tail that pushed the body back down. We fed them lettuce and enjoyed their company.

Another bonus of this anchorage was that since we were no longer surrounded by mangroves, we weren't swarmed with mosquitoes (none have ever beat the ones in the Bahamas though). We were able to lie on the trampoline and watch the remnants of a comet come down in the form of shooting stars. Make a wish!

The next morning we took off for Cayo Santiago, also called Monkey Island, another 26 miles east, nestled on the eastern end of Puerto Rico. This would be another motorsail because winds were being blocked by the big island. There were about a thousand monkeys in this free-range Caribbean Primate Research Center. I don't doubt it. While we were anchoring, we got a whiff of the creatures. Once we were settled, we saw lots of them on the beach and heard screeching from the island's interior.