Tuesday, February 18, 2020

February 2020



We started February on a mooring ball in the lee of Cayo Louis Pena, in the Spanish Virgin Islands, doing not very much as there was no wind to take us onwards.  On the 2nd, we had a lazy start and then headed off downwind under full sail to the nearest bit of Puerto Rico, Fajardo, anchoring in the lee of Isleta Marina.  We wanted to do a little touring, and some laundry, but could not see anywhere to leave the dinghy.   We took it ashore to a marina where old reports said we might find a friendly welcome.  It being Sunday afternoon, they were very busy lifting out small craft which were returning from their weekend away and being returned to their racks so, once tied up to the dinghy dock, we had to dodge monster fork-lift trucks.  The girl in the office seemed to think that we would have to pay $20 dollars per day for the dinghy, which was clearly ridiculous but allowed us an hour for free.  We located a service laundry and went to look for the local car hire.  En-route, we passed another marina and popped in only to be told that there was no dinghy dock.  We found the car hire and arranged to take one the next day.  Rumour was that there was a dock we could use near the ferry terminal but it was clearly privately owned and open to the public so not somewhere to leave a dinghy all day.


On Monday, I took the laundry ashore at 0800 and made further enquiries at the first marina.  Sure enough - $20 per day.  No Thanks. I tried a third marina on the way back and, after a check with the boss, I was told I could leave it next to a disused restaurant.  Result.  Back to Ruby to collect Elsie and ashore for the car.   We collected the car and drove out to El Junque, a tropical rain forest on a mountain.  We had been here before and were worried that it might have been devastated by the 2018 hurricanes but, apart from a few closed trails, it showed no adverse signs.   Lunch was at a Burger King on the highway.  We like to do this once a year to remind ourselves what crap food tastes like.  We then wend for a long country drive before returning and doing some dry store shopping.  On Tuesday, we went into the capital, San Juan.  We had booked a ‘free’ walking tour of ‘Old San Juan’ and left early fearing traffic but it was a smooth trip, we found free parking so had a 40 minute walk before the tour.  We waited at the designated spot but the guide never appeared so eventually we went to one of the defensive forts.  For $10 per head, we got entrance to that and another one a mile away so spent the rest of the day walking round and between them.  Lunch was a pasta meal in a Subway.  Slightly better than the previous day’s but not as good as the salad we had for supper. 

On Wednesday, ashore to get the propane bottle topped up and do a little more shopping before returning the car, collecting the dinghy and returning to Ruby.  It was calm so, after lunch, we picked up and motored the 7 miles to and anchorage in the passage between Isla Pineros and the mainland.  Here we met OCC members Mark and Lisa on Wild Iris.  They popped over later that afternoon and gave us a lift to the beach.  This was covered with signs warning of munitions and prohibiting access.  More to the point, there were vicious sand flies, so we retreated to the dinghy and drifted, beers in hand, for an hour.  They were heading basically the same way as us so we expect to see more of them.  Thursday was a sailing day, so we picked up at 0900 and sailed 9 miles to Green Beach, on the western side of Vieques.  A pleasant enough spot but used by tourist boats, so we stayed on board.  Much of my afternoon was taken up with arguments with Vodafone, who had suddenly decided to charge me for services I had already paid for.   Saturday, again an 0900 start and a longer sail, downwind, to Bahia de Jobos on the south coast of Puerto Rico.  There is an inner bay but, with the weekend coming up and strong winds forecast, we decided to creep into an isolated bay and anchor for the night.  We were 10 minutes late for the weather and got soaked (well Ruby and I did, Elsie sheltered inside) with a sudden shower.  That done, it cleared up enough for sun-downers in the cockpit.  Saturday morning was again spent on-line with Vodafone with an operator in India assuring me that he would sort it and I shouldn’t worry about the extra £100 bill.  Otherwise, a fairly lazy day. 

On Sunday, we took advantage of the flat conditions to replace the fog horn / PA, which entailed me going halfway up the mast.   The inner bay is listed as being ‘scenic’ so, after breakfast, we picked up and motored the couple of miles to its head.  The view wasn’t any better than it had been in our previous anchorage and there was a constant buzz of jet skis so, mid-afternoon, we picked up again and sailed four miles downwind to another little inlet in the mangroves.  We picked a double-lobed bay and anchored next to a buoy giving a 5 MPH limit because of manatees.  This didn’t stop the occasional jet-ski whizzing past and, just before sunset, a large American cat came to anchor next to us, spoiling our sunset view.  On Monday, we headed downwind again, under jib.  There are little mooring fields between the barrier islands and we wondered if any were large enough for us – no, so we continued the few miles to Salinas, anchoring just off the entry channel, rather than joining all the boats next to the marina.  In the afternoon, we took the dinghy to a little ramp and had a walk along a rough track and back, then continued to the main anchorage to say hello to Wild Iris and a Swedish boat, Asta.  On Tuesday, a little later than planned, we dinghied into the marina and walked the mile-or-so to the Econo supermarket, intending just to get a couple of things but, of course, returning laden down with supplies which might be handy in Cuba.  In the evening we went ashore again for ‘Taco Tuesday’ at the marina restaurant.  Very good.  Wednesday was another lazy day for me, apart from further discussions with Vodafone.  I kept getting promised that incorrect charges would be removed from the bill but my running total was reaching my spending limit.  To avoid being cut off, I removed the limit and crossed my fingers.  Elsie was more actively employed on cleaning.  On Thursday we managed to get ashore early, did a weekly shop, then sailed 15 miles downwind to the lee of Coffin Island in winds gusting up to 30 knots. On arrival, we anchored in an area which was remarkably flat given the wind and swell only a few hundred metres away.  I spent the afternoon doing on-line things, including checking that Vodafone were aware that I had removed my spending cap.  At 20:01 local time, midnight in the UK, I was informed by Vodafone that I was being cut off as I had breached my spending limit.  Given that we are planning to spend a couple of months in Cuba, with no phone signal, this was more an irritation than serious harm.

An early start on Friday and after the essential coffee dinghied down to the south end of the island.  Here, there had been until recently a tourist facility with substantial pier, museum, gazebos with barbecue pits, etc.  Following the 2018 hurricanes, these have largely been abandoned as there is no money available for their upkeep but there are still daily boats full of tourists who are content just to sit on the beach.  We managed to find a little beach to land and had a good walk through the woods and up the hill to the lighthouse and back.  This again is in a poor state of repair, with the light now provided by a small self-contained, solar powered unit rather than the previous Fresnel lens.  We returned in time for an 09:30 breakfast.  We contemplated moving down to the southern end, where it was a little flatter but, at 10:30, saw the first of the day’s tourist boats arriving and decided to stay put.   We did similar on Saturday, with me exploring inland trying, and failing, to find a trail right round the island and Elsie exploring the shore line.  In the afternoon, I swam ashore from the anchorage and explored the shore near to it.  There was a small sandy beach here but it had a rocky ledge, just submerged which would prevent an easy landing.  Our final trip ashore was on Sunday morning.  As we were leaving, Asta arrived.  A brief conversation with them revealed that our next intended stop, Ponce, was practically closed because of the large number of earthquakes occurring in the area.

We had an early lunch and headed of to Ponce anyway, as we needed some food and also to get my phone working again.  It was another downwind sail, with the wind gusting up to 30 knots, so we made good time under just the genoa.  We intended to anchor in the harbour but, for some reason, we couldn’t get the anchor to set properly.  Possibly it was soft mud and, with the strong wind, I couldn’t hold position to let it settle.  Whatever, we headed half a mile north to a sheltered bay where we had no problem anchoring in 3 metres.  I noticed, on the chart, a small fishermen’s marina and we headed there early on Monday.  No problem, said a local.  I needed to find a WiFi signal to re-set my phone and we tried a little cafĂ© which had a signal.  Having bought coffee, I asked for the internet key.  No, that was only for office use.  Wandering further along the street, a local asked if he could help.  We explained the problem.   Again, no problem. He gave us a lift to the local mall where we would be sure to find what we needed at one of the big stores.  Except, it being only just gone 08:00, they were still closed.  Oh dear, I said, the only signal I can see is someone’s hot-spot.  “That will be mine”.  Within minutes, the problem of communications was solved and he even gave us a lift round the corner to the supermarket.  What lovely people they are here.  Since we knew we would be getting a taxi back, we stocked up on fruit juice, etc. as well as a week’s fresh food.  $4 for an Uber back to the marina and job done.  Breakfast, then I popped back to dump some rubbish, fill a can of petrol and a couple of cans of fresh water.  Then, deciding not to bother going into town proper, we heaved up and sailed another 15 miles downwind to a little, mangrove fringed, bay.  Here we anchored near to Asta, who had obviously not enjoyed Coffin Island as much as we had.  There were a few jet-skis and kite-surfers milling around but it quietened down in the evening and we were able to catch up on 3 days of radio and other internet type things.

On Tuesday morning, we went over to ‘Gilligans’ Island, a local tourist spot.  There is a little pier, but that is reserved for water taxis so, after dropping Elsie on it, I picked up a close-by mooring ball and waded ashore.  There were the usual gazebos and barbecue pits, but that was it so we didn’t linger and instead went for a slow dinghy tour of the mangroves, looking for manatees.  We didn’t find any of those, just some fish, pelicans and a heron.  One of the inlets led to a tombolo, so we beached the dinghy and had a little walk along the ocean side beach.  Since it was only a couple of hundred metres long, we were surprised to find bicycle tracks.  Hmmm.  Further round the bay, we found a little ramp, near a small jetty, and hauled out to investigate.  There was a rough track a picnic facility and the jetty, not private as we had assumed.   Waking further we found a locked gate with notices on the other side proclaiming the start of the nature reserve.  By this time, we were hungry and returned to Ruby for breakfast.  We explored further on Wednesday and found wetlands with many birds and crabs.  There is a river through the mangroves, about 3 miles away so, after breakfast, we picked up and motored there, anchoring in a perfectly protected bay and heading off in the dinghy.  Unfortunately, the river entrance was blocked by a fallen tree so we couldn’t proceed.  We were compensated by a group of manatees which played hide-and-seek with us for a while.  Back out and another downwind sail to anchor off ‘Bio Bay’ renowned for bio-luminescence.   Theoretically, we could have taken Ruby in but only by inches under her keel, so we anchored just outside.  Sundowners, cook supper, then dinghy into the darkness (moon in last quarter).  We had seen a couple of tourist boats go in and could just make them out so headed in their general direction.  They soon left, leaving the bay to us and, for once, it lived up to expectation.  Brilliant wake from the dinghy and, when we stopped sparkles every time we agitated the water.  I put on my snorkelling gear and jumped in causing an explosion of light; swam round for a bit and re-boarded just in time before the next tourist boat came to anchor right next to us.  A little more wandering and splashing then back to Ruby to eat our supper.

Thursday, another downwind sail, this time with gusts over 30 knots, to weave our way, through reefs and mangrove clumps, into Parguera, although it was still breezy, we were well protected and took a long dinghy ride past this holiday town with lots of attractive waterfront properties and into the mangrove-fringed passages beyond.  We stopped at a public ramp on the way back for a wander round the town then back to Ruby for lunch and a lazy afternoon.  On Friday, we headed downwind again, past Cabo Rojo and up to Puerto Real, our last stop in Puerto Rico.  Our original intention had been to spend some time in the Dominican Republic on our way west, but we kept getting reports of aggressive and greedy officials and also of burglaries from boats (even that the two phenomena might be connected).  The places we wanted to see were land based , so we decided that we to give it a miss and, maybe try to get a house-sit there in the future.

Ashore, early next morning, with laundry.  We managed to get this on and, while it was washing, wandered to the local store, to see if we could get final supplies for our trip to Cuba.  No.  We decided to hire a car for 24 hours and do a little sight-seeing but, as there was no working drier, take it from 1 PM, to give the washing time to dry.  This worked, so we set off on the main road round the coast.  Not scenic, but we wanted to get to the big radio telescope at Arecibo.  Only with 10 miles to go did we realise that this closed to visitors at 3, so we had missed it.  The return journey was much more scenic, over hills with some great views.  We stopped at a big Econo supermarket on the way back to get supper and scout for the morning.  On Sunday, we took advantage of the car to go a few miles south for a walk on a nice beach we had seen on passing.  Lovely, apart from other people.  Back to the supermarket for our final stock up then back to Ruby to prepare for our longest voyage of the winter, 600 miles to Cuba.

For the past 3 weeks, there had been constant trade winds, which would have made for a rapid passage.  Now, we were faced with a succession of fronts.  There had been a calm over the weekend and we now had 3 days of good wind.  Unfortunately, it was going to take us 4 days. There was no better prospect coming up in the next 2 weeks, so we had decided to take this window and accept that we might have to motor the last 100 – 150 miles.  Our preferred option was to leave Puerto Real that afternoon and motor 15 miles up the coast, both to shorten the passage and to get a better angle on the wind to cross the Mona Passage.  A storm, much further north, however, was kicking up a big swell, and there were no anchorages that would provide shelter from this, so we, after taking fuel and water, stayed put for the night.  Up and out at first light to motor 10 miles into a light wind, then set sail.  We had 2 reefs in the main and the wind quickly built to 15 knots on the beam, so we made good speed using, initially, full genoa.  There was, indeed, a 3 metre swell running, which vindicated our decision, but made it less than totally comfortable.  We had rigged the wind-steering rudder for the passage and this worked well.  For 24 hours, we tracked north west, across the Mona and along the coast of DR.  We then broadened out and Hattie continued to perform well. On Tuesday morning, I spotted a spout, so called Elsie.  There were a couple of humpback whales on the surface, flipper flopping.  We passed a couple of hundred metres from them, which was quite close enough as they have been known to broach and fall on passing boats.  As they were longer, and much heavier than Ruby, this would not be good.  That evening, the wind veered a little and we wanted to turn a little to port so we gybed the main and ran, goose winged for the next 24 hours.  The swell, though decreasing, was still too much for Hattie to cope with, so we had to get George, the electric auto-pilot to take over the steering.  With winds a little stronger than forecast, we were making good time, now expecting to arrive at 04:00 on Friday.   The wind was still forecast to die on Thursday, giving us a slow finish and we considered diverting to Mathewtown, Great Inagua, to wail for a northerly wind on Saturday to complete the voyage.  We finally rejected this on Wednesday evening and, when the wind did die on Thursday morning, we started then engine and motored at 1300 RPM, giving us 4 knots, to arrive at daybreak on Friday.  Almost anywhere else in the world, we would have headed into a little bay and anchored for a few hours but this was Cuba where you definitely do not stop anywhere before checking in.  There was one appealing looking bay, actually another country’s sovereign territory but, it being Guantanamo, this would have been an even worse option.  While ‘browsing’ the coast on the chart plotter the previous week, I had tried to look at this area, only to be presented with a blank screen and the plotter throwing a big wobbly.  Late on Wednesday, I zoomed in to look at the eastern tip of Cuba and the same happened, even though we were still 80 miles from Guantanamo.  This time, presumably because we were in the ‘prohibited’ area, re-starting the plotter didn’t work and it kept cycling and throwing out spurious warnings.  Eventually, I had to remove the data card to get it to work at all.  This enabled us to get a basic picture of the coast and use AIS.  We just had to hope that, once at Santiago, we could replace the data card and have navigational data restored.

As expected, the wind died at 02:00 on Thursday and we started a slow motor as we still had 110 miles to go and 29 hours to do it in for a dawn arrival on Friday.  It got calm enough for me to have a little swim at lunchtime (sails down, floating line out) but then picked up for a few hours to enable us to save fuel by sailing at 4 knots.  We were back to motoring before we passed Guantanamo bay that evening, giving a wide berth to the exclusion zone though this didn’t stop a little patrol boat shadowing us on the boundary.  A stronger, northerly, wind then sprang up and we had to reef right down to prevent us from doing 7 knots and arriving too early.  With 12 miles to go, I called the El Morro lighthouse as required with no reply.  We had heard nothing on channel 16 for days, apart from occasional buzzes and were concerned that our VHF was malfunctioning.  With 5 miles to go, however, we did get a response so continued in.  I restored the data card to the chart plotter and yes, it was still working.  Phew! We passed the impressive fort at sunrise and made our way to the marina which was easy to approach and the check-in hassle free though very formal.  4 hours later, we were out at anchor and enjoying a nice wind-down.  Elsie is writing about our stay here, so I will leave the rest to her.

Monthly stats:
Over ground   702
Log                   749

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