Halfway Across Connecticut

The comparison made over and over is that Puerto Rico is about the same size as Connecticut. We’re now in Salinas, about half way across the southern coast of Puerto Rico, or about exit 45 on I95 in Connecticut – say around New Haven.

Early morning at Cabo Rojo

Backing up to where I left off at the last post, here’s the lighthouse at Cabo Rojo the morning we left. I’m still working on becoming a morning person; I’m making some progress.

We had intended to go to Ponce, but decided to stop part way and check out a little town called Guanica. It lies in a protected bay across the harbor from an even littler town called Ensenada. We anchored by the mangroves near Ensenada under the rusty remnants of the old sugar processing plan – we were the only boat.

Storm passing over Ensenada

Until the early 1980’s Ensenada had a booming sugar production industry (reportedly the 10^th largest plant in the world), but when the processing plant closed, the town began to slide into decline. Many businesses closed, the AAA baseball team left, the hospital and golf course shut down and the young people moved away. Guanica became the bigger of the two towns and now has the grocery store, the banks the malecon and unfortunately the fast food places.

The dinghy dock has seen better days

Something about Ensenada appealed to us so we walked around the town. We found a hardware store where we picked up a few things, a killer bakery, a pretty park and friendly people. It’s not a common stop for sailors so we were a bit of a curiosity here and everywhere we went people stopped us to ask where we were from and to see how we liked Puerto Rico. Many people here spent time living and working in the States and they told us stories about their lives there and the constant desire they felt to return home to Puerto Rico.

At the end of one long walk we were called over by some local guys who were hanging out drinking beer at the only store near the dinghy dock. Jose and Julio – brothers-in-law who spend most mornings and afternoons (with a break for lunch) socializing and drinking beer at the little store – had seen us walk by in one direction, then back again the other way. They said “You must be hot after all that walking…. come over here and have a beer with us!”  We couldn’t refuse the invitation. Julio was married to Jose’s late sister Evita, and both men had lived in the States for more than thirty years before returning home to Ensenada. Jose lives with his mother Maria and Julio lives in another house about forty feet away from them.

Skip, Jose and Julio

They offered to take us to the grocery store over in Guanica and invited us for dinner at Jose’s mother’s home that night. Julio hooked us up with some just caught octopus and promised to show us how to clean it before dinner.

Step one: Inspect the critter

Steps two through four: whap it around a bit, yank out the inside stuff, wash it off and lastly, don't forget to pull off the eyes.

Just like you see in your grocer's freezer!

Dinner was an entertaining affair dominated by a conversation about which came first – the chicken or the egg. Julio was insistent that it was the chicken… because duh, how could there be any eggs if the chicken didn’t come first? Once that was resolved we moved on to why people didn’t take karaoke seriously. Julio is quite the crooner and has no patience for people who get up on stage and need to have the words scroll in front of them in order to sing a song. These two were the odd couple incarnate and pretty darn funny to hang around with.

Julio surveys his land

We hated to say goodbye to these kind people but we’d been in Ensenada for almost a week and it was time to move on. Again we headed for Ponce and again we got sidetracked. We sailed to Isla Caja de Muertos (Coffin Island), just south of Ponce where the water was clear and blue. The water in the mangroves of Ensenada was a murky green – not so enticing for swimming after having been spoiled by the shockingly clear blue water in the Bahamas. 

 This is why they call it Isla Caja de Muertos

The tiny little white dot in the light blue water on the right side.... is Saralane!

We cleaned the bottom of the boat, which didn’t look too bad, hiked to the lighthouse on the top of the island, swam, snorkeled and watched a display of local power zip back and forth for the news cameras one day. We still don’t know what the event was, but there were police watercraft of all kinds as well as planes and helicopters buzzing around. The media was packed onto one boat filming the whole thing. This would’ve been the day to rob a bank in Ponce…. all the cops were busy over on Isla Caja de Muertos.

Sharp stuff

Skip waves hello

Having bypassed Ponce twice already we were making plans to head over there when we heard it was just the wrong time to go. An island wide college athletic competition was just wrapping up and students from all over the country were about to converge on Ponce for a weekend of partying. So, for a third time we skipped Ponce. We headed for Salinas and this time got sidetracked by some pretty little islands nearby called Cayos Ratones. Not too hard to translate… Rat Cays. No rats here, just mangroves and a teensy little beach. And for about an hour each morning and each evening there are also no see’ums. Lots of ‘um. Even though you can’t see’um, you certainly can feel’um. Nasty little bite-y things. They weren’t enough to spoil this pretty spot so we stayed for the night.

Rain in Salinas

Peaceful anchorage at Cayo Ratones. See? You can't see the no see'ums. 

In the morning we’d planned to make our way into the anchorage at Salinas, but turned out we were parked pretty well. Stuck in the muddy sand. After some fancy maneuvering by Captain Skip, we were able to get free before any other boats came in to watch us embarrass ourselves trying to get unstuck. This included Skip getting in the dinghy and pushing and pulling Saralane out of the mud tugboat fashion. It was fairly amusing... but only in retrospect and only because it worked.

That brings us more or less up to date as we sit here at anchor in Salinas. We were planning to rent a car here and explore the island but the weather may dictate that we head out tomorrow or be locked in here for another week or more. If we leave tomorrow we'll rent a car somewhere else and explore from another location. 

We’re still in mango heaven here and for the moment we’re also in tomato heaven. There’s a woman who has a small canvas shop here in who sells her homegrown tomatoes out of the shop. Yep… life is good.

Everyone loves mangoes

Green mango, red onion and fresh shaved coconut salad

One quick note about our laundress Brandy Alexandra back in Boqueron – she was better than we realized. Not only did we get our clothes back, we also got a few of someone else's!

How to get to Puerto Rico

From South Caicos; go east for 200 miles, turn right and go south for 200 miles. That’s more or less what we did. Our objective was to start just far enough north of the easterly trade winds to take advantage of a little southeast shift in the wind. We needed to make headway east before the strong easterly trades winds reestablished themselves, at which point we could turn south and use the east winds to our advantage for the second half of the trip.

Sunrise at Six Hills just as we pulled up the anchor to head offshore

Snowbird heading for South Caicos

The forecast was for light winds from the southeast, shifting to the east or northeast after about 48 hours. The actual conditions were a bit different…. winds were less southerly than forecast and stronger than anticipated at about 15 to 20 knots. The seas were big and bad. For the first 20 hours we sailed almost directly into steep 8 to 10 foot seas, with an occasional 12 footer thrown in just to keep us on our toes. It was rough, wet, windy and nasty. It was hard to move around the boat, hard to sleep, hard to eat and just overall uncomfortable. The conditions moderated somewhat after the first day but it was a pretty rough ride until we reached Puerto Rico 80 hours later. Skip has always jokingly referred to the boat as ‘the mighty Saralane’; on this trip she earned her nickname.

Clouds after the seas calmed

We had company offshore – Unicorn and Happy Times made the passage the same time as we did and though we couldn’t see each other we checked in twice a day on the SSB radio to see how everyone was doing. With 80 miles to go, we picked up this little flyer. He stayed with us through the night, huddled under the solar panels, and he flew off at dawn. I hope he made it to land.

Pretty bird on jib sheet

This little guy is the only thing we caught on this line offshore.

We arrived in Boqueron on the southwest side of Puerto Rico in late afternoon and after a few hours of attempting to clear through customs and getting conflicting information from customs about how to go about it, the customs office closed for the day. It was just as well… when we called again in the morning we got a simple “No problem, just bring your papers to the customs office and we’ll clear you through.” After a $30 taxi ride up the coast to the customs office in Mayaguez we are officially back in US territory. Our American flag still flies off our stern but we’re flying a Puerto Rican courtesy flag up the mast now.

Land ho! 

We caught up with the crew of Happy Times, Mike & Cheryl and their daughter Mikayla, who we hadn't actually met yet; we’d only spoken to on the radio up until now. The passage to Puerto Rico was their first offshore trip – and they were ready to celebrate! We were all cleaning up our boats and resting up after the trip but we took time out for a celebration dinner.

The salty crews of Saralane, Unicorn and Happy Times. (photo thanks to Cheryl from Happy Times)

Mikayla comes over for a visit

Captains Mike & Skip making captain-y decisions about new halyards

We had a nice rain shower shortly after arriving in Boqueron. It cleaned most of the salt off the boat and left behind a great rainbow. Mikayla took this shot from Happy Times... nice!!

Saralane happily anchored in Boqueron.

Boqueron is a funky little beach town, quiet during the week and rowdy on the weekend. It’s a mix of locals going about their business, sailors from all over, vendors selling trinkets and t-shirts, expats who came for a weekend and stayed for ten or twenty years and a sizeable population of both accomplished and aspiring alcoholics. Everyone seems to get along just fine though making Boqueron an easy place to hang out for a while or lose yourself for a decade. 

Seeking shade

Our view

We had our laundry done – by Brandy Alexandra. I kid you not. She’s the only person in town who does laundry since the local laundromat closed. She has one washing machine and no dryer, just a bunch of clothesline hanging under a big mango tree in her yard. 

Brandy.... our laundress

It took a few days to get the laundry done but it was worth it just for the entertainment value of hanging out with Brandy. She fits into a few of the above named categories… though I can tell you she’s not a local, a sailor or a vendor. We’re not entirely sure that all our clothes actually got washed… she said she might just hose down a few things instead of putting them in the machine. Uh… OK, I guess.

Mango trees are everywhere... and we've picked our fair share.

We've made friends with some people here and picked up information about places we're intending to visit along the south coast. Everyone is going in different directions but it’s likely we’ll see some of them later in the summer in the Caribbean. There are people in all phases of their lives on the water…. Canadian Rene, who’s taking his boat Kajou to St Martin to sell, has been sailing the Caribbean for the past seven years and is ready to live ashore again. Sailing with him was Mirko, from Italy, who’s just starting his days of hitchhiking on boats around the Caribbean. (We really hope to see Mirko again – he’s a chef and has promised to make us homemade gnocchi and pasta!)

Rene from Kajou telling tales with Skip

Hanging out in the restaurant

Mirko... make us some pasta!

I guess you can tell I was able to recover some of my photos.... I'm in a much better mood now. Here I am during the recovery process. Notice Skip took this photo from outside the room.... maybe I was a little crabby.

We've been here for a week and are just starting to get to know this little town. I know I say this about most places we go; we hope to be back here again soon. But, when the wind drops this evening we'll pick up the anchor and go around the corner to spend the night under the Cabo Rojo lighthouse. Tomorrow we'll start traveling east across the southern coast of the island. 

Turks & Caicos - briefly

It’s not quite two weeks since the last post…. and we’ve been to and from the Turks & Caicos. We didn’t spend as much time here as we’d hoped because we got a good weather opportunity to head offshore to get to Puerto Rico shortly after we arrived. We’ll have to see more of the T&C when we head back north. The best part of our short time in the T&C was seeing our friends Jim & Heidi! 

As unlikely as it was, our timing matched theirs perfectly and we spent the better part of two days on the beach with them at Grace Bay on the north side of Provo. Happy birthday to Heidi who celebrated her big day during their stay here! We were happy to be able to spend your birthday with you…. and equally happy that you let us shower at your hotel. Heaven.

Skip, Heidi, Madeline, Jim

Almost every year since Skip and I moved to Newport, we've gotten together with our Ithaca friends Rob & Marybeth and Jim & Heidi while they're vacationing on Block Island... so seeing them on the beach seemed normal. The clear blue warm water was a change from Block - as was the absence of Rob & MB. We missed you Rob & Marybeth!!

Jim & Heidi

All the photos on this post are courtesy of Jim & Heidi…. for two reasons. For one thing, the dinghy landing situation at Grace Bay was hazardous to all things not waterproof – like my camera – so I didn’t bring it ashore. There were crashing waves ashore so we anchored the dinghy in about five feet of water and swam in. The other reason is that I once again lost ALL the images on my camera due to some undecipherable file corruption crap. I can't recall the exact readout on the screen but it was something like "there's a curse upon your nikon!". Sigh... I miss film. I’m trying some file recovery software, and if it’s successful I’ll post a few shots another time. In the meantime we’re shopping for a sturdy point and shoot waterproof camera. (Thanks to Jim at Cameras Etc in Delaware for helping me out on the phone.)

Anchor ready!

Skip as sherpa

After Jim & Heidi headed home we took Saralane around to the south side of Provo and anchored in rolly, murky Sapodilla Bay in the company of several boats we’ve met along the way. Everyone was waiting for an opportunity to go either overnight to the Dominican Republic or offshore to Puerto Rico. The Swedish kids, Martin & Johanna on Snowbird were here as well as the Swedish grownups Hakan and AnnaKarin on Unicorn. We also got together with Janice & Bob from Tsamaya (Ithacans!) who we’d initially met in Staniel Cay (swimming pig territory) when they were waiting for a parcel to arrive on the same plane as our solar panels. 

Skip and I hitched around the island one afternoon – we made a pilgrimage to the closest marine store and a grocery store. One of our rides came from a vacationing couple who live right up the road from us back home. They knew some of Skip’s old neighbors…. small world.

Jumping ahead... we’re in Puerto Rico now. Hopefully I’ll have recovered some photos in the next few days to do a post on the trip here. That’ll have to do for now…. hasta luego amigos.