Puerto Rico’s South Coast
Karen:
After leaving Samana at 6pm, we arrived in Puerto Real, Puerto Rico in the dark, 26 hours later. Christian and I held watch on the bow for the 2 hours we motored down the coast in the dark, looking out for crab traps by shining our flashlight. We were a bit nervous as our depth sounder had stopped working and we knew it was a tricky entrance, and were releived to find the narrow channel was in fact clearly marked with lit lateral bouys. There was live music from the bar onshore as we put our anchor down in the small, calm and secure bay. The Mona passage had been crossed! Another major milestone as we make our way east. It had prooved to be a calm sea for us, due to our choice of weather window.
We spent 10 days in Puerto Real, an easy place to do laundry, rent a car and provision from. We ended up making the drive to San Juan to order our new dinghy as Westmarine wouldn’t accept our card over the phone and I couldn’t place the order online either! The 5 hours of driving was worth it though, to get the Black Friday deal. We were also able to make our first Costco Run and really stock up our stores. We are back in the land of big box stores and can buy everything we could ever want. However, fresh veggies are pretty rare (or we just havent found a veggie market) - and because its all shipped in you need to be really careful how long of an expiry date the items have.
We also got a few boat jobs done. I revarnished the teak trim on our cabin top. Ray from Ride the Wind came over and helped diagnose our windlass problem- turns out it’s the fuse! An easy fix and we now have a fully functional windlass. Michael’s back is ecstatic.
We plan to make our way around the southern coast in a series of small hops, and take advantage of the morning calms.
Nov 26 Puerto Real - La Parguera 23nm
We had our anchor up at 6.45 and we’re taking advantage of the night Lee to get around Cabo Rojo by 9am. The sea was glassy as we left and the wind picked up by later in the morning. As we rounded the cape we had 14 knots and put up the full main, but were very close hauled with wind coming from 150/160 degrees as we head east.
Our depth sounder stopped working so we got out the lead line to know the depth we are anchoring in. Its a nice remote anchorage, with good snorkeling nearby. We also tried the bioluminescence bay at night, but didn’t see anything other than tour boats
Nov 29 La Parguera - Gilligans Island 11.5 nm
The wind and seas get going by 9/10 so we got up early again for this short leg and motor sailed. Good calm anchorage, although the Gilligans Island is just a rotting abandoned dock and the beaches are nothing special. Ray and Kathleen were also anchored here for a night and Christian got a great drone shot of our 2 boats!
We scraped our hull ourselves for the first time! Hard work but also quite satisfying. We found some great showers in the beach park and enjoyed a real shower. Its the little things that make this lifestyle magic.
Dec 2 Gilligan’s Island - Isla de Muertos (Coffin Island) 21nm
We left at 8.30, and it was very calm, however we later sailed 2 hours of this leg - fantastic
We LOVED this island. Found a great spot to anchor on the North side that was close to shore and had great snorkeling nearby. Lovely little beach and viewpoint hike. Crystal clear waters. It’s not very protected but was fine for prevailing Southeast conditions.
Dec 5 Coffin Island - Salinas 13.5nm
Anchor up at 6.30, we sailed most of the way with main & staysail up. We had just 7 knots of wind and were able to make 3.4 knots.
I went up to tighten the port lazyjacks and accidentally let 1 go! So taking down the mainsail became more interesting, I got Christian to lower it down while I flaked it and then just got it all on deck before tieing it all to the boom. Christian later climbed the mast to fix the jack line. He loved being up in the bosun’s chair!
Salinas was a fun stop- very walkable, nice community with lots of shops and little restaurants. We ate some tacos and checked the town out and learned it was the day of the Christmas boat parade- a huge local event, where boats all lit up drove around the bay including right off where we had anchored. We are in the Christmas spirit now!
Sadly our swim platform finally let go. Michael has fixed it numerous times already but this time the weld itself failed. Add it to the repair list for when we are next in a boatyard.
Dec 9 Salinas- Patillas 18nm
Anchor up at 5.45. I was on the bow as we transited a narrow opening in the reef. Gorgeous place to be with the sun coming up.
We ended up in Patillas longer than we wanted. A ROLLY anchorage, we were forced to stay due to weather conditions.
We tried using a swell bridle and it worked well as long as the wind didn’t shift. This will thankfully be our last stop on the south coast. We were getting a bit bored here, but did make it out for a nice meal of local dishes including mofongo, fish tacos, chorizo and tres leches for dessert. The kids got their schoolwork done. We are all a bit cranky from not sleeping well. Really looking forward to our friends visiting over Christmas!!
Dec 15 Puerto Patillas - Fajardo 37nm
Anchor up at 7.30. We had hoped as we started heading north that this would be a sail for us. However, the winds were lighter than forecast (4-5 knots) so we ended up motoring. Anchored at 3.15pm off Cayo de la Cordillera / Isletta Marina. It’s a small Island that has a marina, boatyard and 2 apartment buildings that had their hey-day in the 80’s(?), with its own passenger ferry that runs every 15 minutes over to Fajardo. We grabbed a beer at the little pub to celebrate, as we plan to be here for a few weeks.
We needed to spice things up a bit so got day passes to a local resort. We learned that it’s booked up 90% with military, and had been since September due to the US presence in Venezuela. So, we had the place to ourselves! We thoroughly enjoyed a day of playing in the pools.
Walking around Fajardo had the same feel as other areas of Puerto Rico have. Small flat homes with bars on all doors & windows, many have a barking chained up dog in the yard, that is surrounded by chain link fence. Our uber driver told us at one time PR was very dangerous and it’s hard to change that mindset of needing protection. For us, we found it barely walkable (like many places we’ve been to in the US). The strip mall and big box stores dominate here. Some people do put a lot of effort into the painting and decore of their homes, which is fun to look at.
Our boat buddies Ray and Kathleen arrived a few days after us and anchored close by. It’s so nice to have a couple of familiar faces in the bay.
We had an incident with our dinghy where it was spotted by Christian floating off into the Bay - we were really impressed by his initiative to jump into the water and swim after it. He got it back. There was a little debate about who had tied the knot so that mystery remains unsolved.
We rented a car and did a Costco run, put our liferaft in for repacking, some Christmas shopping and are all ready for our friends to arrive for Christmas! Super excited for their visit.
We also did another official back to back comparison between Christian and I and I had to admit he is now clearly taller than me! He has grown so much this past year, its wild to watch. We now have a teenager onboard.
