Falling For Puerto Rico

Boqueron, Puerto Rico
18 01.3N 67 10.6W

It’s amazing how your state of mind or experiences can colour your opinion of a place. The only place we didn’t have 100% great memories of from our trip was Puerto Rico, on our first visit a year ago, despite great company and visitors, we experienced two robberies, traveled against the wind and had very ordinary weather. Well, this time around, we sailed downwind, had no robberies and perfect weather. We loved it!

From Culebrita we had three great day sails to Ponce, we even used our spinnaker for the first time in 17 months. It has been sitting in the locker under threat of sale as it takes up way too much space and is too hard to use in anything other than perfect conditions.

Having perfect conditions we put it up and sailed along under it, overtaking a fellow cruiser who was motoring because there was too little wind and complaining to his buddy boat about how miserable everything was. By the time we got to the anchorage we had decided to keep it after all, "it’s such a great and useful sail".

15 minutes later when we finally got it down, my (Tim) hands were burnt and blistered, the radar reflector bracket was bent and I had run out of swear words. It immediately went back on the must sell list – permanently! Luckily we got some great photos while it was up!

In Ponce we took advantage of the US style shopping to re-provision at the largest and cheapest supermarkets you can imagine - jumbo boxes of chocolate chip cookies for the night watches ahead, steaks for the first time in a year and all the essentials at rock bottom prices. The only down side was the beer, Puerto Rican men despite the macho car driving, swaggering, posturing and phallic speed boat owning only like 2 beers, Coors Lite or the local version Medalla Light and if that’s not bad enough they can’t drink a whole one so sell it in 290ml cans, which are frustratingly 1-2 mouthfuls short of a proper beer (that said Gareth, maybe this is the answer to your prayers!).

From Ponce we had a great sail to Boqueron averaging 8.6 knots going dead downwind on a sunny day – heaven. Boqueron is the jumping off point for boats heading back NW and the arrival point for those coming the other way down the “Thorny Path”. Our good friends Roy & Doon on Bold Endeavour who are heading south had arrived the day before so we had a great week catching up with them, while waiting on a weather window to head off.

We hired a car for a few days for a trip to San Juan, touring the heritage listed old city, looking at the forts and generally just marvelling at the architecture. The whole area has been lovingly preserved and renovated and is well worth a visit.

The next day Roy & Doon needed to do their food shopping, so we drove to Ponce with them and Linda and I did something we had long forgotten - “fun” shopping! We bought ourselves a few items of clothing to replace the rags we’ve been proudly wearing for 2 years, and not all of them from Wal Mart either.

I (Linda) realised how detached I have become from the consumer lifestyle we used to leadwhen, while choosing a few (very trendy) tops from the $5 rack (or 3 for $10) I came across a REALLY nice one. Tried it, loved it, it was simply perfect. Then I looked at the price tag and saw it must have been misplaced because it was priced at $14. Oh no, what a shame, it’s soooo nice I thought and was about to put it back when it suddenly hit me! $14 would have been the deal of the century only a few years back and now I’m thinking twice about getting it. I felt good I must say. (PS; In the photo I’m wearing one of the 3 for $10 tops, it will take a very special occasion for me to wear the other one!)

Then on 29 April it was time to wave good bye, Roy & Doon heading for the Caribbean and all the excitement that holds and us contemplating the 1,800 mile trip back to Chesapeake Bay to slip Matsu for our trip to the UK. It was sad to wave them off but such is the cruising life. We’re getting use to it slowly but always painfully.

South Coast Of Puerto Rico

Ponce, Puerto Rico
17 58.0N 66 37.1W

We have spent the last 2 weeks cruising along the Puerto Rican coast. From Boqueron we sailed round to La Parguera, a lovely spot in among the mangroves, a nice little town and some snorkeling on the reef. We also visited a bio luminescent bay where we swam in the water on a moonless night with the silver trails from the fish and ourselves all around, spectacular.

From there we went on to Ponce via some other great anchorages, we have been here now for a week doing some provisioning, going to the doctors and all the chores that have built up with all this enjoying ourselves we have been doing.

We have also found some time to explore inland, including a coffee plantation, the caves at Camuy (funny hats compulsory - crew of L'Aventura with Tim) and the amazing Arecibo observatory - set in the hills it's featured in the Bond film Golden Eye.

My brother Mike and his family arrive from England tomorrow so we will cruise on to the Virgin Islands from here with them.

Bandidos!!

Puerto Real, Puerto Rico
18 04.3N 67 11.5W

Not the greatest start to our time in Puerto Rico, we arrived here in company with L'Aventura, yesterday after a short and pleasant sail down from Mayaguez, and managed to work our way in through the gap in the shoals to anchor in the well protected bay off Puerto Real.

We got in at 3pm, and went ashore for a walk round meeting lots of friendly locals all interested in who we were, which boat we were off, how many of us there were on board etc etc. They all helpfully gave us directions to some restaurants on the edge of town, but finally we decided on sundowners on the boats instead.

When we got back to Matsu we discovered that one of the many "helpful" locals had been on board our boat in our absence and stolen our lap top! All this despite it being broad daylight and having to hang his own boat off the back of ours in a small harbour in full view of the shore while doing it, amazingly none of the other "helpful" locals noticed him doing this!

We put it down to experience (a bad one) and went to bed early as we were still exhausted from the trip across from the Turks and Caicos. I woke with a start at midnight when there was a big thud and the boat shook, I knew straight way what it was, either the same or other "Bandidos" had come back and had cut the harness we use to lift the dinghy out of the water at night. I rushed out of the back companionway shouting profanities and they sped away, leaving our locked dinghy still partially suspended by the harness and us rather shocked at their audacity.

We were a little unsure then what to do, after 9 hours in Puerto Real we had been robbed twice, but it was the middle of the night and there was no way we could get back out over the shoals in the dark so we had to stay put. The next thought was that having had the cheek to rob us in broad daylight and then try to steal a dinghy suspended 6ft in the air while we were on board, whether they may come back a 3rd time, possibly armed and just force their way onto the boat.

We rang the police who were unable to send a boat as it was busy on a training exercise, so we were left on our own. Our solution in conjunction with L'Aventura was to stay up all night in the cockpit with a bright spot light, our flare gun and a machete at the ready should they choose to return! Not the most relaxing night for us, or the many fishing boats that we shone our spot light on as they went out to fish, finally dawn arrived and we relaxed slightly.

We upped anchor after a brief visit from the police to take our report and then moved round to Boqueron, a lovely anchorage with another 15-20 cruising boats there for company and security and a less creepy population of locals! If anything even more tired than we had been when arriving in Mayaguez after the long passage!

Any other cruisers reading this, miss Puerto Real and go straight to Boqueron, at the moment this is not a safe place to anchor, with some strange locals!