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Since leaving Mayaguéz, we spent a couple of days at Boquerón, and now we are settled in at the town of La Payguera on the south coast of Puerto Rico.

Boquerón is nestled at the end of a large bay, a very pretty town.  The waterfront was undergoing the finishing touches to a major facelift to make it more attractive to tourists.  Almost all of the tourists here are locals visiting from other parts of the island.  The town is totally dead during the week, but on the weekends it becomes party central.  It seems every college age person on this half of the island is here.  The music is loud.  And not just loud.  All afternoon the beach featured karaoke–very very loud, and very very bad.  (Is there ever GOOD karaoke??) The local favorite is the old Sinatra standard, “My Way.”  We must have been tortured by at least 6 different renditions of that song, and each of them I am sure set Old Blue Eyes spinning in his grave…

We explored a bit on foot, and Kevan had a local friend who was good enough to drive us around and give us a local’s eye view.

We weighed anchor and sailed south, then east, toward La Parguera.  Another tourist town, but with less of a party-hardy reputation. After arriving here, Kevan felt that he needed to head back to the mainland to take care of some family business.  We were sorry to see him go, he has been the perfect boat guest for several weeks.

The harbor here is a small maze of mangrove islands and shallow reefs that give good protection from waves in all directions.  Every morning about 10AM the wind starts, blowing from the east at 20 to 30 knots.  Shortly after sunset, it dies back to near nothing for the night.

The highlight of our visit here so far was the exploration of the mangrove creek that separates Isla Curvea from the mainland.  A mile long channel about 12 feet wide, with mangrove branches arching over the top.  Birds and fish everywhere.  Supposedly, there are a troop of 400 wild monkeys on the island, but we found no evidence of them.

Seaside towns here feature houses built out over the water. Boqueron is no exception.

The main square in Mayaguéz

The entrance to the mangrove creek

The middle of the creek, a pretty wild place.

When moving through the creek, we paddled to avoid disturbing the wildlife with our engine.

Kevan hard at work on his watch. We wish him luck back in the real world.

Because every travelog has to have a sunset picture…

Sometimes sailing is very hard work. This is not one of those times.

We are safely anchored in Mayaguez Bay on the western shore of Puerto Rico. Our trip was a bit slower than we expected, but wasn’t hard. We picked a great break in the weather that left the tradewinds blowing gently. That made had an easy sail out of one that would have been difficult if we had left during the prevailing winter conditions.

Mayaguez is the largest city on the west side of PR, and is not normally a tourist destination. It is the official Port of Entry for the West Coast of Puerto Rico so boats entering or leaving the USA have to stop here to clear Customs.

Mayaguez is the home to a large tuna cannery, off of which we are currently anchored. One source claims that 60% of the canned tuna in the USA comes from here.  At the moment, you wouldn’t know it, no boat traffic and no real activity.

It has been many years since I have been to Puerto Rico, and then it was quick business travel, so most of my impressions are really first impressions.  The first surprise was right in front of us when we landed the dinghy to go to the Customs House.  A horse.  Tied to a tree.  Just sitting there like a car in a parking lot.  Turns out they are everywhere in town, and not for show.  It is a bit odd to my eyes to see a horse trotting though traffic, but not here.  They are used for routine transport around town.  The ones we saw out and about were ridden bareback, just to get to wherever the rider was going.

The town is not prosperous in growing and vibrant kind of way, but is clean and well cared for despite the structures that have been abandoned as the world passed them by.

The graceful Frigatebirds soared above the bay.

The tuna cannery in Mayaguez. Not the most scenic part of town!

Karen loved some of the beautiful balcony gardens.

Buoy #8 is obviously well loved by the local bird population.

The “Dr. Suess” tree. Almost no leaves of its own, it is covered with the fuzzy little pom-poms of blooming air plants.

Time 20:59 local
Lat N 20° 30.8′
Lon W 68° 49.2′
Nautical mile from Providenciales, TCI: 202.3
Nautical miles to Mayaguez, PR: 164.1

We have now cleared the shallow banks and made our turn toward the Southeast and the Mona Passage that separates the west coast of Puerto Rico from Hispaniola. The wind is well in our favor, finally having clocked around and we are on an easy and fast reach.

It is easy to see why this route would not be a common one for boats in the days before GPS. The Mouchoir, the Silver, and the Navidad banks would be true navigation terrors. The are located in an area famous for strong and unpredictable currents, and in the absence of any dry land, are totally invisible as you approach them.

We sailed past the Silver Bank this afternoon in water over 5000 feet deep. Less than a mile away there was water less than 3 feet deep. Even though we knew it was there, in the calm seas there was no visible evidence of the danger that could tear the bottom out of the unwary–our just unlucky–sailor’s boat.

We were close-by hoping to pull a fish off that steep wall, but such luck was not to be ours today.

If the wind holds this direction and strength, we should be anchored in Puerto Rico tomorrow.

Time 09:51 local
Lat N 21° 37.2
Lon W 70° 59.8′
Nautical mile from Providenciales, TCI: 64.6
Nautical miles to Mayaguana, PR: 300.0

We are taking a bit of an unusual route to get to Puerto Rico, much more direct than people usually take this time of year, but the weather gods are smiling on us. Instead of going south and fighting our way east into the prevailing winds along the northern coast of Hispaniola, we are headed on a more northerly course over the top of Silver Bank and Navidad Bank.

We have been close hauled into 8 to 15 knots of wind with mostly flat seas ever since leaving Provo, making slightly better time than the models forecast for us. The wind has backed a bit more northerly than we expected, reducing the number of tacks needed, and giving us a faster, straighter course. Not much to report other than good sailing in good weather!

Yesterday afternoon we landed a smallish Mahi-mahi who was a very welcome guest to our dinner table!

We have greatly enjoyed our stay here on Providenciales, but it is time to move further down the island chain.

From here we have two options as a next stop, either the north coast of the Dominican Republic, or the west coast of Puerto Rico.  It looks like we have a great weather window to hop right on over to Puerto Rico, and we were hoping to leave early tomorrow morning.  The boat is ready, we have (almost) everything stowed for sea.  We made arrangements yesterday with the marina to have Immigration come by today and check us out so we can go on to another country without complications.

The marina called Immigration and the arrangement was that they were due here “later in the day”, and there was another boat right across the dock from us that needed to be cleared in.  About 4:00 the Customs officer (who Karen knows by sight now) visited the other boat, and promised he was stopping by after he finished there.  Nope.  He went home without stopping to do our paperwork.  Sigh.

I have nightmares of our weather window evaporating as we diddle around here trying to get our paperwork approved to get out of Dodge! Or maybe worse, getting cleared out, and then not being able to leave because the weather turns bad.

Maybe we can get it done tomorrow. On a Saturday.  Any one care to give odds?

UPDATE:

We got an early start on Saturday morning, figuring we’d have a bit of a runaround.  At 07:00 there was a knock on the hull, it was the Customs officer, apologizing profusely for getting distracted and forgetting us. Paperwork finished! A last minute weather check looks great for sailing for the next few days.

Jim and Laura are settled in and enjoying their vacation.  Around the docks there are lots of fish, with the larger predators especially active at night when the tide is running fast. You can frequently hear them splashing as they attack something smaller and unfortunate.  They have been driving Jim to distraction, because other than one smallish horse-eyed jack, he hasn’t been able to land any.

Yesterday the four of us took the dinghy over to Little Water Cay, a part of the Turks and Caicos extensive park system.  This particular island is devoted to the maintenance of the local population of the rock iguana:

A rock iguana on the beach.

The iguanas rule the island, there are thousands of them.  Unlike the ones we saw in the Bahamas (a different, but closely related species) these are not feed by visitors to the island.  They don’t come running up to you and beg (as much as a lizard can beg), but being fully protected, they have no fear of humans and make no effort to get out of your way.

The island, like most of the uninhabited islands in the chain, is small, low to the water, and almost all sand with beautiful beaches on all sides.

Of course, it is the tropics, and if there isn’t a breeze blowing it can be quite warm, so sometimes you just have to find the best shade you can…

Not all of the lizards on the island are large iguanas. We saw these little guys were sunning themselves as well.

Karen, Bill, Jim, Laura On the beach. Little Water Cay, Turks and Caicos Islands

Cruising your sailboat to exotic locations means you get to do all your maintenance and repairs in exotic locations! I feel like I am almost caught up.  I have an oil change on the generator left to do, and then the cycle starts over again! Having a boat with all kind of modern conveniences is great, but every piece of gear comes with a manual that lists its maintenance needs. Individually it never seems like much, but if you have 300 pieces of gear and each one requires maintenance of sort sort once a year, you almost have a full time job. And that’s not even counting any repairs that might be needed.

We are in the Blue Haven Marina on the east end of Providenciales.  A beautiful marina, with easy access to the ocean. Unusually in this part of the world, it has floating docks. Since the tide range hear is small, about 2 feet, very few marinas invest in the luxury of floating dock pontoons. Somethings are a bit pricey. Electricity, for example, is metered at the boat, and costs $0.60/kW-hr, about 4 or 5 times what you would pay stateside. Here on the desert island water costs $0.12/gallon, so you wash the boat with a bit of water economy you might not otherwise use.

When we first cleared in the the Turks and Caicos through customs and Immigration, they cleared us in for seven days. Today we finished the process of getting out Cruising permit from Customs that allows us to keep the boat here for 30 days without paying an import duty, and our 30 day visas from Immigration. So now we are “Legal” until the end of February.

This afternoon my brother and his wife will be flying in and joining us for a week or so.  Hopefully we can get some good fish catching done while he is here.

Right now we have typical tropical weather:  Sunny, with some very widely scattered showers around, temperatures in the low 80’s during the heat of the day, and a delightful cooling breeze.  In the bar at the resort yesterday they had a sports channel on the big screen.  The featured event was some kind of snowboarding competition.  It was truly jarring. My first thought was, “Where is there snow in the middle of summer?”  Then I remembered, “Oh, Yeah…”

We are now in the Turks and Caicos Islands with an internet connection, albeit a slow and unreliable one, but hopefully I can get caught up on some pictures and stories.

Let’s start with this picture of one of the more unusual private yachts we have seen.  the Pink Shrimp.  At first glance she looks like an oceangoing commercial fishing boat, and certainly that is what the hull was designed as.  One of the surprising things we have noticed about the very high end super yachts is that very few of them have much in the way of creative design in their external appearance.  This boat at least has character

Pictures of fish from the trip out to Mayaguana:

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Mayaguana was an interesting place, and one where we would like to spend more time exploring.  Late every afternoon, we had a visitor to the boat in the anchorage…

Each day a 6 foot nurse shark spend several minutes carefully checking us out.  It wasn’t clear if it was used to being fed from boats, or if we were just on its afternoon “commute” route and were worth a closer look out of curiosity.  Things we missed, the windward beaches are supposed to have some of the best shell collecting in the world, and the lagoons on the windward side have great bonefishing.  Next time!

When you arrive in a new country, the first thing they want to see is the paperwork from the LAST country you were in to be sure that you checked out legally and are not on the run from the law. So we visited the tiny one room building on Mayaguana that serves as the office for Customs, Immigration, Police headquarters, Tax collector, Department of Education, and who knows what all else.  When we told the women behind the counter that we were there to check out, her first response was that we had to wait for her boss to be in the office to do that.  When it turns out we need to leave that afternoon, and he won’t be there until maybe tomorrow, well, OK, maybe she can do it herself. But wait!  The electricity is off… how can she check us out without electricity to run the office machines?  Carbon paper to the rescue!  Eventually we get all the proper papers stamped and we are free to leave the country.

The wind faded away in the early night and we had a slower than expected trip to the Caicos Islands, arriving about 13:00.  We called the marina on the radio so they could send out a guide boat to help us in through the long, complex, and narrow channel.  We were told we had missed the tide, and would have to wait until about 17:00 to come in so we just sailed around the bay for the afternoon.

Close to 5PM the marina’s guide boat hailed us on the radio, and met us at the cut in the reef:

Turtle Cove Marina Guide Boat ready to lead us in.

Why the guide boat?  Well, to start with missing the entrance into the reef could ruin your whole day.  Here is what you see on both sides of your boat as you come in the reef break:

Then there is about a half mile of twisting channel before you get into the marina itself.  It is well marked, and actually marked better than most of the places we have been in the islands, but there is not much room for error.  We scraped bottom twice as we came in, but ended up inside safe and sound, and quite tired from a long day and night.

Time 21:30 local
Lat N 22° 21.5′
Lon W 72° 59.1′
Eastern end of Abrahams Bay, Mayaguana, Bahamas

We moved over to the eastern end of Abrahams Bay, about 4 miles to be closer to town, and to be in a more protected part of the bay for the passage of the cold front coming through tonight. Which is happening right now as the wind is blowing at 30 knots gusting to 35. By morning it should be calming down again.

Calling the settlement of Abrahams Bay a “town” is a bit of a stretch. At night we can see the lights on shore. You can count them and you don’t need all your fingers and toes to keep track.

We have one project tomorrow, and that is to visit the Customs office and check out of the Bahamas. If we can get that done early enough, we might head out for the Caicos, but that might happen Wednesday. If we stay here an extra day we might take a chance to tour the island a bit.

The trip over to Providenciales is about 50 miles, and we want to be sure we arrive during daylight, so we need to leave between midnight and 10AM.