Spanish Virgin Islands

[N18d05:50, W065d27:38]

We arrived at Vieques this morning at 8:00 am. Vieques is sometimes called la Isla Nina (daughter Island)- referring to it's relationship with the larger island of Puerto Rico. We had a beautiful night motor sail from Ponce. This evening we plan to visit a bioluminescent(phosphorescent) bay. They say the water splashes up in a burst of millions of lights as if fireworks were sent up from the depths. They say as you glide through the water you develop and eerie glow and when you resurface, thousands of sparkling lights remain on you for a brief moment. We can't wait. We will tell you all about it.

Michele and Glenn

Two weeks in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Photos from Old San Juan


We never dreamed we would stay two weeks at a marina in Ponce. We originally planned to leave Boqueron a couple of days before all our friends so we could get a head start with some projects - like having our mainsail re-cut while in Ponce. We left at midnight on April 10 planning to sail all night to Ponce. We had no idea what a frustrating night we had embarked upon. The weather was supposed to be light, maybe 10 to 15 knots. It is also suppose to be much calmer at night, they call it the night lee. Ha! Once again none of this was so, we never saw a night lee. It was blowing 20 to 25 on the nose. We were making a whopping 2 knots of speed and at this rate we would arrive in Ponce in about a week. Yuck! The waves were a short, steep chop and very confused. So we endured a very tedious motor sail and decided to stop the next morning at Playa Santa – about half way to Ponce. We got into Playa around 9:00 A.M. and slept all day. Our friends from Dragonfly arrived later that afternoon; they had also endured a rough ride. We piled into their dinghy and went in search for a restaurant. We walked a while and found a lovely little family owned restaurant. The owner Rosie was a trip!

We left the next morning at a bright and early 3:00 a.m. and once again had a rough, slow motor sail into the wind. We arrived at the Ponce Fishing and Yacht Club around 1:00 pm. We were happy to be connected to shore power and have an endless supply of water. The next day we rented a car with Jeff and Una. We were so excited to be in U.S. territory. I never thought I would be so happy to see K-Mart and Sams. It was a little overwhelming to go into the Super Walmart - rows and rows of produce and food. Remember, we are more accustomed to being in small islands in the Bahamas where the town has no fresh milk or produce. The other weird thing about being back in U.S. territory is seeing all the familiar fast food places, but no one speaks English. We have decided we must learn Spanish.

Friday morning I taught my first yoga class. Crew from four other boats wanted to practice yoga so I said I would give it a shot. It was awesome. It was not as hard as I thought it might be. Everyone taking the class had practiced at least once and they were all in good shape. Practicing with a group made me realize how much I miss yoga. This marina turned out to have a beautiful setting for a yoga class. We were over looking the ocean to one side and the mountains on the other. We have practiced there several times since. That evening I organized a potluck. It was easy because you can just tell 3 boats and they pass the word around to bring a dish and before you know it you have 30 people and lots of yummy food. I think this potluck had the best food yet. One boat brought freshly caught mahi mahi with mango salsa. Gary and Linda from “July Indian” brought a beef tenderloin. We had 4 tables of food.

The next day we decided to take an excursion and drive to San Juan. Glenn and Jeff were excited to be able to spend their West Marine bucks - Una and I were excited to go to the largest shopping mall in Puerto Rico. We were in search of cool cotton sundresses. Oh my! This mall was sooooooooo big I got lost 4 times. It had 3 ½ floors and had everything you could ever want or need. After three hours of power shopping we headed for Old San Juan. We saw tons of children flying beautiful kites on the grounds of the fort. It was amazing. The fort went on for miles and miles and you could really spend a week just touring the old town. The streets had a very European feel and looked like an old part of Italy or Spain. We thought we might get a hotel room and tour a little more the next day, however everything was sold out due to the holiday weekend. So we returned to the boats late that evening very tired and broke thanks to West Marine and the mall.

Sunday we cooked hamburgers and invited our friends from “July Indian” over. It was one of those great spontaneous days that turned into an all day and evening event. Jeff from Dragonfly came down and said they were also grilling burgers, so we told them to bring their stuff over and join us, We had a couple of extra burgers so we asked Bob and Jane from “Scooter” to join us, several hours later we decided we should probably order a few pizzas. What started out as a midday cookout turned out to be a 7-hour get together. Crossroads was entertainment central.


Ponce has provided excellent opportunities to get a ton of projects completed. I had no idea how many projects we still needed to do. Glenn replaced the anchor windless; hopefully this will make it easier for him to pull up the anchor. I might even try it. Ha! We are getting our main sail re-cut; it was too long on one side for this boat and it could not be flattened to allow the boat to sail to windward. We hope this adjustment will help us. We are also getting risers made so we can modify our companionway stairs. The previous owner changed these steps into a ladder. Very Steep! Glenn installed our water filter and so many other little projects that I can’t even begin to mention them all. So while we wait for our sail and stack pack we are enjoying the swimming pool and luxuries of being hooked to the shore power.

Ponce, Puerto Rico

We are staying in Ponce (pronounced pon-say)the second largest city in Puerto Rico. We decided to treat ourselves to a marina.
It is great to be back in the U.S. we are a little overwhelmed by the super Walmart and Sams. We rented a car with our friends Jeff and Una from Dragonfly. We will add photos and more details regarding our travels to Old San Juan.

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Reflections from the Mona Passage

The Mona Passage

I have been worried about the Mona Passage every since our Gulf Stream crossing. We read about the horrible thunderstorms that build up off the coast of Puerto Rico and hit you, whack -right in the middle of the passage. Yuck! I was so worried about this one I even asked our sailing mentors John Hutson and Wyatt Nichols to join us but the timing was not good for them to leave work. So, we prepared all we could and again waited for the perfect weather window.

On April 5, at 7:00 am we left Luperon with mixed feelings. In many ways we were wishing we could spend two more weeks in the DR but we knew this weather window was too good to pass up. We also had that nagging feeling of the need to be in Grenada before the end of June for Hurricane season.

We are a very slow boat so we left two hours before the rest of our fleet. This was going to be the longest passage on our journey. Everyone talks about how much easier an offshore passage is after the first 24 hours. They are right. You are actually tired enough by the second day to really get some sleep on your time off. I had prepared a lot of yummy food so we could just heat things. I made potato salad, smoked sausages; macaroni and cheese and bought a roasted chicken. Of course I had the regular PB&J's prepared for emergency. The seas were so calm Glenn actually went down below and made a hobbit "second breakfast", a yummy breakfast burrito. Hobbit first breakfast was a pop tart.

We arrived in Boqueron, Puerto Rico around 10:00 am on Friday morning. We spent the rest of the afternoon clearing in with customs. It is great to be back in U.S. territory.

miramar

Glenn and I returned to Miramar for wonderful relaxing second honeymoon. The saying goes… a picture says a thousand words. As you can see from Glenn’s photos, words cannot adequately describe the beauty of this place. It was a tropical paradise. We hung out by the pool and read all afternoon. Later that evening, Lisa (the owner) brought out a lovely meat and cheese tray with a glass of wine. We were the only people at this resort. We had a wonderful lobster dinner. It rained hard that evening, we slept great.

The next day we started with a yummy European breakfast. Lisa brought a tray of breads, cheeses and meats. That was the first course then she brought a huge omelet and French toast. If that was not enough she brought a local fruit called guanabana, it tasted a little bit like a banana but the consistency was more like a pear. After the big breakfast we decided to go for a hike. The owners are from Belgium. Lisa’s husband is multi- talented like someone else we know and love. He is the chief and has an extremely artistic way with masonry; all around the grounds you could see evidence of his work. Stonewalls, a castle tower that concealed a water tank. Glenn loved this of course! After the hike we got in the pool for a cool down and read in the shade looking over God’s beauty. We were sad to leave but we knew we had to get back and get things ready for our departure the next day.

Mona Passage

We made it! we arrived in Puerto Rico at 11:00 am and have been clearing in with Customs all afternoon. We are very tired. We had a wonderful 50 hour motor sail from the Dominican Republic. We will write more when we are not so tired. We just wanted to let everyone know we are in Boqueron, Puerto Rico and doing great.

[N18d01:31, W067d10:78]

Easy Rider

I Don't Want a Dill Pickle…

I just wanna ride my motor-cycle (pronounced so it rhymes with pickle- Arlo Guthrey)
Sunday Michele and I took off with Jeff and Una (from Dragonfly) to see a bit more of this part of the country. Just to change things up a bit, we rented a couple of small motorcycles and took off for a town called Isabella. I'm not really a motorcycle rider. We have rented scooters a time or two on vacation, but I 've never really logged anytime on a real bike. Not that you can call a 100cc Yamaha a real bike, but it did have gears, clutch and a very not-bicycle breaking system.

Jeff gave me some quick instructions about the one down, three up shifting thing and we were off. There were a few tense moments getting out of "downtown" Luperon as we dodged other motorcycles, trucks, people, dogs, and donkeys. Soon we were roaring through the country side at a breakneck speed of about 40 kph(+/- 25mph). I felt pretty much in control at speeds that I could normally make going down-hill on a bicycle. The views of the rolling green hills and ocean were spectacular.

Forty-Five minutes of uneasy riding brought us to Miramar, a lovely hotel where we stopped for lunch. The hotel has beautiful landscaping.(although a rather long, rutted gravel drive), a pool and 15 or 20 rooms with million-dollar views. We checked into getting a room for our anniversary- 1,000 pesos a night ($30 US)- What a deal! Lunch was served in the open-air restaurant by the pool and was a meal to remember. This was our first meal out since Key West that featured wonderful sauces matched with perfectly prepared dishes. Michele had fish, Una Shrimp, and Jeff and I had beef tenderloin. All were excellent. The bill for the four of us with wine, bottled water and an ice-cream desert was 1700 pesos ($53. U.S.) We will be back!

After lunch we checked out their on-site museum of pre-Columbian artifacts from the surrounding area. They have a room with thousands of pots and vases, vessels and shards some of which were found there on the grounds. Then it was back to the saddle again for a short ride to a not very old church. Nice replica of a church, built in the late 1400's and still in use. From there we rode to El Castillo, the site of the first permanent settlement in the new world. It was interesting but historically disappointing since all the actual remains of the original settlements were bulldozed in an effort to "clean up" before a visit from the Pope. Then it was the time to get the bikes back to Captain Steve's Place before they turned into pumpkins at dark.

The ride back was easier on me since I had gained some confidence in handling the motorcycle. It was even kind of fun, until we saw the cows. Cattle trucks haven't really caught on in the Dominican Republic, so when you need to move your cows from one place to another you use the road, the whole road. There were cows from one shoulder to the other. We stopped to take pictures and figure out how to get through. Cars were honking and nudging their way past and a few locals had zoomed around through people's yards on their motorcycles. I was hoping that the cows were headed for the next driveway and I could just wait, no such luck. Jeff got past following another motorcycle through a lawn. I waited for a car to clear a path and puttered along the shoulder to the cow-free road ahead, what a relief.

We gassed up the bikes and got them back to Steve's in useable condition before dark. I could finally relax and have a beer since I skipped the wine with lunch. Whew, almost as nerve wracking as sailing.

Glenn

All Creatures Great and Small

Last Tuesday was our 8-year anniversary; we made big plans to stay at a beautiful hotel. Mira Mar is a beautiful estate with a nice hotel and restaurant with a spectacular Ocean and mountain view.

Well that was the plan, but the little parasites of the Dominican Republic liked me and decided to make my anniversary week one I will not forget any time soon. I will spare the details. The local cruisers turned us on to the drug of choice for this creature. So I have been taking a lot of Quizol and am feeling much better. Glenn did a wonderful job taking care of me all week. I felt like I had the flue and a bad stomach virus. Apparently this bug is not uncommon for this area. Many cruisers that have been living here for 10 months have dealt with this many times. YUCK!

Good news, Glenn and I plan to go to Mira Mar on Sunday and spend the night.

Michele