Puerto Rico to yeh mon- Jamaica!

After leaving Ponce we decided to spend an extra couple of days in
an anchorage on the west coast of PR. This would be a great takeoff
point for our trip to Jamaica,and also we both had terrible
hangovers after our last party night in Ponce.

So we sailed into a large very protected bay, dead flat, and dropped
anchor. Within minutes of setting our anchor a Canadian woman zooms
over in her dinghy and proceeds to tell us that we may have dropped
anchor on a submerged wreck in the bay. We were aware of the wreck
as indicated on our charts and we were both pretty sure that we
didn't drop anywhere close, we both couldn't be bothered moving,
coffee and breakfast was much more our agenda so we told her thanks
for the info and we'll deal with it when we leave in the morning.

So then she started with her "welcome speech", oh boy she was
talking to us like we were school children or something...she called
herself the "Dock Mum" and tells us that she takes it upon herself
to approach each new boat when it arrives to give them info. Jo
notices that Jason is starting to get a bit itchy at this point, he
hasn't had a morning coffee yet, and she won't stop talking,
explaining where laundry is, supermarkets, marine stores, internet,
cafes, bars, happy hrs...we tell her we are only here for the day
and that we don't really need to do anything but get rid of our
hangovers, but she continues on and on. From the way she was
talking we thought that she must have been here for quite some time
but later found that she'd only been here less than a week! Lucky
for us she was heading East to the Virgin Islands, and we were
heading West. She was a little too much for that hr in the morning!

Coffee and brekky is underway and we have a fantastic view of this
beach town called Bouqeron which is one of PR's most popular
vacation spots. The beach has loads of towering palm trees and a
mile of white sand and clear shallow waters, lined with beach bars
and restaurants...oh no here we go again and it's Saturday! Music
started up around 10am and already in the street people on vacation
are walking around with beers in hand (not a good look at that hr)
and street vendors selling clams and oysters in little shacks on the
roads.

We both tell each other that we will behave and we opt to eat out
for lunch instead of dinner to avoid getting caught up in evening
happy hrs and the like. We find a great restaurant on the
waterfront and have one of our best meals in PR. For the first time
in a long while it rained and BOY did it rain...lasting a good hr
maybe more. During this time we were watching Reverie from the
restaurant swing in every possible direction ...thinking to
ourselves that if we did drop anchor on the wreck we would
definitely be well hooked by now....oh no Jo notices Miss Canadian
arriving in the restaurant, we engage in intense conversation so to
avoid her eye contact. The restaurant is jam packed and she
recognises some other people and is on her way, and we are in the
clear! Time to leave for a long walk on the beach before heading
back to Reverie to prepare the boat for our 3 day passage to
Jamaica.

We wake early, there is no wind and the sea is glassy and flat, we
hoist the dinghy on deck and pull up anchor which comes up
surprisingly quick, no snag on the wreck, but alot of dark mud that
we hose off before leaving. The first part of the trip is to cross
the Mona passage, which is a stretch of water between PR and
Dominican Republic, DR. It is renowned for it's rough seas and
fluky winds and overall is said to be a difficult and uncomfortable
passage. We tell ourselves it's only 85 miles how bad can it be,
and Jo says that there is no way it can be worse than the Gibraltar
Straits and that she's not too fussed. We get out a few miles and
through the binoculars we can see no evidence of lumpy seas, there
still is no wind, we are motoring with 2 reefs in the main and can't
yet pull out the jib due to lack of wind.

It's now 11am and we are still motoring, NO WIND, the sea has a good
swell running, but without the wind they're not breaking and it's
all really pleasant, we hit the first drop off from 15m to 400m, the
fishing lines are out in anticipation. Soon after we hook our first
fish, hook being the key word here, not catch, as a larger fish bit
our's in half as we were trying to bring him in, bugger!!!

Still NO WIND, it's now lunchtime which is the usual time for the
winds to be building and what we'd noticed sailing around PR was
that by 2pm they were at there strongest. When 2pm comes we have
about 10 knots of apparent wind and get the jib out which helps our
speed and by the end of the day the engine finally gets turned off.
We obviously fluked the Mona passage and were grateful for it!

The passage underneath DR and Haiti was mostly calm, had a bit of
confused seas in some spots, but overall it was an easy 3 days. On
the morning of what would be our last sailing day we hooked a good
sized Wahoo which provided about 16 large fillets, so we were busy
with fish factory in the morning which made the time go very
quickly. Our arrival timing is becoming spot on as Jo check's the
chart and tells Jason that we'll be arriving into the Marina at
about 4:30pm....giddy up landfall drinks!

The arrival into Port Antonio Bay was absolutely spectacular,
Jamaica's coastline is very lush, green and mountainous due to the
Blue Mountains being located on the east coast. The Marina is
expecting us as we have a berth reserved, and there are locals
waiting to take our lines. Jason does and awesome job of backing
Reverie into a tight spot, and we are tied up within a few minutes.
Within a minute of berthing the Quarantine guy is on the boat doing
his inspection, he is extremely friendly and the inspection is over
real quick. Next the Custom guy jumps on and we fill out the
customary paperwork and he has a beer with us once we've finished
with the formalities, no fees yet which is surprising. We are told
that Immigration will see us in the morning and that we are free to
leave the boat. Our first impressions is that everyone is super
friendly! We decide to hit the Marina Restaurant for dinner as it's
a 2min walk away and plan to explore the town in the morning.

Cheers
J&J

Puerto Rico & the Spanish Virgin Islands

Spanish Virgin Islands,

What a place, moving from east to west, if you look at the BVI's,
somewhat developed, but 90% around boats, sailing and charter
yachts.

About 15 miles to the West is the USVI, VERY heavily developed
with resorts, and accommodating the cruise ships that are always
parked in the center of town. There is almost over kill on the
amount of development such that the place does not have a
Caribbean feel to it.

Another 15 miles west and you have the Spanish Virgin Islands, They
are made up of a few islands, but there are two main ones, Culebra
and Vieques. Culebra in comparison to the BVI's and the USVI has
close to zero tourist development. It's great, the town is a real
island town not twisted and altered by the tourist dollar. Not
much here though. Great small anchorages, clear water and lots of
fish / lobster living on the reefs.

On our approach we had a couple of big whales swim by. They were
headed the other direction. Even at 200m they are still monsters and
thoughts of Moby Dick slip into your mind. Otherwise it was a
uneventful sail. No fish (normal) no other boats, becoming more
normal as we are getting out of the popular routes.

We anchored in the main bay in Culebra at just on Beer-O-clock.
Thought about going ashore to clear in but decided that we should
tackle that in the morning. There were a few other boats in the
anchorage and by the look of them quite a few had been there a long
time with coral reefs starting to grow on the bottom of their boats.
Yikes!!!

In town there is not much apart from the basics, but it's all there
if you really take a look, just the choice is a little more limited.

The next day we headed out to visit some of the smaller islands
around Culebra. We stopped in a few smaller bays, went on the
endless lobster hunt ( found one - Great size to about 2kg's!)
Fresh Lobster for dinner!!

Over the next few days we moved around, looking at some
more of the bays and islands. Great place if you want to get away
from it all!

Our plan now was to get a move on and head over to Puerto Rico - 30
miles to the West.

Reading one of the cruising guides we were going to target Palma Del
Mar, a gated community on the eastern side of Puerto Rico, we read
that there was a large private marina, that also has a good sized
bay where we could anchor for the night before heading down towards
the southern side of the island.

We arrived into Palma Del Mar at about 2pm, the wind was up as was
the swell. There is a small entrance into the harbour which is quite
shallow and narrow, so your heart is pumping a little faster as you
head in. Well we were in for a surprise!, all expecting this nice
large harbour to drop the anchor in, as we went in through the
entrance we looked to the left where the anchorage is located only
to find that they had filled it with marina berths ( only about 50%
completed, there were workmen all over the place. Well that plan
was out the door. We just had enough room to turn around and head
back out the little entrance we came in. It looks like we will be
down on the south coast earlier than we planned!

Luckily it was the early afternoon and that gave us enough time to
get around the south east corner into a small anchorage that would
be protected from the large swell that was running. We got in right
on Beer-O-clock again, once again!!, dropped the anchor in very
shallow water ( must have had about 10-20cm of water under the
bottom of the keel!) Looking around towards shore we decided that
there wasn't much happening on the beach bar and food front, so we
stayed put on the boat for some beers and home made lobster pizza.

Next day we made a move to Salinas. A great looking bay tucked up in
the mangroves about midway along the south coast. The sail was quite
nice, down wind, fast, nice even swell rolling in and great views
along
the coast.

Once we were inside the pass of the outer reef the water became dead
flat due to the numerous amount of mangrove trees that do a
fantastic job of blocking out any southerly swell, and because of
all the mangroves this bay becomes an excellent hurricane hole for
boats that choose to come here.

We arrived into a massive dead flat anchorage which was chocas with
boats, lots of room still to choose a good spot, again the entrance
into the bay was a bit hairy - extremely shallow due to a 1.7m
shoal. Jo was guiding us in via the charts and at the lowest point
we would've had barely nothing under the keel, but we didn't hit,
and if we did we just pushed thru some mud.

With the large number of boats in the anchorage we were keen to get
ashore and check out town. Once leaving the Marina gate what we
thought would be a bustling place with Puerto Ricons drinking in
bars was rather the opposite. It was a very quiet, sleepy town, and
very very poor, there was little to keep us interested, and being a
Sunday made things even more quiet. A taxi trip into the larger
town of Salinas was too much of an effort to organize, (due to the
lack thereof) so it was back to the boat for beer o clock, sleep and
an early morning departure for the town of Ponce. Ponce is the
second largest town in Puerto Rico, second to San Juan, so we
figured that's where the action would be.

We arrived into Ponce mid afternoon, easy sail, no fish though!! We
anchored of the Ponce Yacht and Fishing club. Now the Puerto Ricons
are fisherman, not the best sailors, not that they are not good
sailors, they mostly prefer to fish, so the Ponce yacht and Fishing
club, is really the Ponce Fishing and maybe a small bit of sailing
club ( 1 or two boats), They LOVE their fishing. We also found out
they love their Latin music, drinking and fried food!!.

Just on the edge of the harbour ( 70m from Reverie) is a board walk
filled with local restaurants and small scale snack bars. they seem
to have a daily competition on who can play the loudest music!, and
who can play it the longest into the early hours of the morning.
It's quite distracting but actually quite good as it puts you in the
Latin party mood.

While we were in Ponce we had a few parts shipped in from the US and
also waited for the weather to sort itself out, it had been
blowing into the 30's since we arrived.

There is quite a bit of history in Ponce so we had a good look
around, ate some of the local fried food, went out to dinner met
some locals and
other cruisers ( going the other way! - East) After a week, parts
had arrived and we were off to Jamaica! Mon....a three day / night
passage passing Dominican Republic and Haiti on the way..

Cheers

J&J

St Martin - BVI

Mid January and it was time to get a wiggle on and head up to the
BVI's
( British Virgin Islands).

Looking at the weather it didn't look overall great as a front was
coming off the US east coast and causing a lot of odd weather -
lots
of rain, odd wind directions etc.. So we sat tight, in St Martin
( French side) for a bit waiting for things to sort them selves out.

Sure enough the weather clamed down and we made a run for it. Most
people do the trip at night. Leaving St Martin early evening and
arriving in the early morning. We on the other hand made it a day
sail - Why not, the weather was now good and we would have the
opportunity to catch fish, fill up the freezer and enjoy a nice
trade wind down wind run to the BVI's.

Well part was ok, the wind was fine, weather great. But no fish,
not even a stinky barracuda, zippo!.

We arrived into Spanish Town on the Island of Virgin Gorda at about
5pm. Right on beer o'clock for land fall cocktails! We dropped the
hook set up the BBQ and we were set for the night. In the morning we
would clear in ( customs and immigration).

It was really strange being back in the BVI's as this is where we
started the trip in 2003!!!, HOLLY COW! One thing we noticed it was
not nearly as busy as it was then. There seemed to be more cruising
boats around and not the mass of charter boats rushing from one spot
to the next.

While in Virgin Gorda we sailed up to Gorda Sound, a great bay that
is very protected from all winds. At one end of the bay is the
Bitter End Yacht Club resort and at the other is the Limerick end
Marina. Both places are filled with restaurants, bars and lots of
things to do.

We spent a few days there, snorkeling around, checking out the
resorts etc. From there we moved around to a few of the other
islands in the BVI. There is a bunch of them, all in a very
protected cluster and all within a few hours sail from each other.
Perfect for low stress sailing, and if you don't like anchoring,
there are mooring balls everywhere. $25 and one is yours for the
night.

Now it was time to head into the main town in the BVI's "Roadtown"
we had a few things to do. One was to pick up a MOB (Man Over Board)
system sent to us from Australia - Mobi-Alert. The other main one
was to catch a ferry to the US Virgin Islands to get our passports
stamped
with a US Visa stamp ( so we could sail in on Reverie).

The US Virgin Islands is part of the "geographical" structure of the
BVI's, but this lot belongs to the USA.

What a difference, if it wasn't for the rhythm of the steel drums
playing, you would think you are anywhere in the US ( take away the
blue Caribbean water as well) It's a massive contrast to the BVI's I
think better anchorages are in the USVI but the BVI's have more
"Caribbean character".

While also in the BVI's we were planning to meet up with an
old work colleague from Melbourne, now Canada. Andrew M.

Gosh what liver punishment that was. Three days and we were ready
for a detox. We took a sail over to Great Harbour on Peter Island,
then back to Roadtown, then the following day off to Nanny Cay
Marina where Andrew was taking off on some Caribbean Sailing. We
were keen to get back to Nanny Cay Marina as it is where we picked
up the first "Reverie" it was great being back and we FOUND a
spinnaker pole!!! Finally!!

Good one too, nice and thick with good ends on it and extendable.
Quite long though when extended ( about 35ft!) but it was a great
price and will do a perfect job.

Two days after leaving Andrew we were off from the BVI's to the
Spanish Virgin Islands, quite close ( 20 miles). The Spanish Virgin
Islands are part of Puerto Rico.

Cheers for now

J&J

St Maarten / St Martin

At the last log we arrived in St Maarten after a 17 day Atlantic
crossing.

Not a great deal has changed here in the last 3-4 years,
businesses
have grown, changed names, vanished, Marina and harbour fees have
increased to a comical level (more than in the Med!!) but the place
still feels the same, which is great for us.

But what is the same is the volume of big motor yachts, certainly
more than was in any one place in the Med that we visited, big boats
here everywhere,
right up to the 430ft Rising Sun!

St Maarten is a strange place, half the island is French the other
is Dutch which really feels like a casual version of America.
Together
they are very different, crime is quite a problem on the French side
but not on the Dutch.

Prices on the French side are significantly higher than the Dutch.
Euros prevail 220V power and you really need to try and speak
French. BUT they do have the great food, French shops and Fashion
stores are everywhere - not so on the Dutch.

But either way it's a great Island, lots to see and if you are on a
boat, there is no better place in the Caribbean to find things, get
things done and provision the pantry and celler. St Maarten has it
all.

This would explain why we were there for so long... a good month
infact. We did however make several trips to St Barts - a short 15
mile sail
away, to soak up the beautiful beaches and hit the chic boutiques.

Did a bunch of boat things, hunted like crazy for a Spinnaker pole
( no joy) put some solar panels on the boat, fixed up a few small
things, increased Reverie's battery bank ( x 2) and provisioned like
crazy!! and had a ball.

After a month it was time to get moving again, this time it was West
with
a little north in it, back to the BVI, British Virgin Islands where
we first started in late 2003!!!.

J&J

St Barts / NYE.

While we were in St Maarten we were at a bit of a loss on where to
spend NYE. Without doubt the locals we spoke to and other yachties
all
said that St Bart was not to be missed. Such was the draw here that
we were told that the harbour in St Bart was FULL!, and some boats
were anchored almost a mile out!

Bugger it, we went anyway!

It had been blowing quite hard for a good week ( they call them the
Christmas winds!) so when we made a run for St Barts we had a good
25 knots on the nose and big lumpy seas, in all it was quite a lousy
sail but we got there in one piece, and nothing broke.

Next challenge was finding somewhere to anchor!, Arriving it felt
like there were boats anchored in the middle of the Caribbean sea
they were so far out. BUT this was all the Super / Mega / Ultra
yachts. Little small Reverie would be able to squeeze in much
further to find a spot.

Well this was a little harder than we planned. There are areas in
the Harbour which are NO Anchoring as it is the commercial ships
"road" into the Harbour. Everywhere within the Port was locked with
boats. We did notice that there were a lot of boats anchored in the
"No Anchoring " area so we thought we will move if they ask us to
and dropped the hook on the edge of the channel in a not too obvious
spot. Seemed to work ok as no one said anything!

On the way in we passed lots of HUGE boats. James Packer's boat
"Artic" no oil painting, but big all the same. Larry Ellison's
430ft Rising Sun was also there. In total there were 430 boats in
the Harbour, there would have been over 100 over 100ft, and maybe 50
over 200ft. Many of these were in the Med and also in St Maarten
only a few days before, where they all left and came over to St
Bart.

One boat is so big it has a 90ft Tender ( Dinghy - our's is 10ft)
and the Tender has a tender! Mad!. Many of the big sailing yachts
there were fully crewed for the NYE's "Around St Bart" Regatta so
there was a real boating buzz around town. Drinking wine in the many
cafes, strutting around in the latest fashion and looking nautical
was the go.

With all this commotion, boats, bands, celebrities and stars in
town, the
businesses had a field day. We thought that it would be great to
have some Sushi on NYE. There are some fab restaurants in town most
were booked out. One we went to were having the standard NYE set
menu. We walked up the hill where it was located.

Reverie: Do you have any vacancy for dinner this evening?

Sushi Restaurant: Yes we have two tables remaining, we have a set
menu for the night which is 430 Euros per person.

Reverie: Great, thanks..

and moving right along and out the door....

At that point we re-thought our plans and settled for a gourmet meal
on the boat where we would actually have a much better view of the
town and the fireworks.

It ended up being a perfect night. The fireworks were in front of
us
upwards at about 45 degrees so we have a great view, and the harbour
was a spectacular sight being lit up with the lights from all the
big boats.

Over the next few days we watched the slow departure of many of the
boats as they headed out, back to cruising or to their base in St
Maarten. We stayed for 5 days, walked a lot, shopped too much, swam
in the crystal clear water before heading back to St Maarten to
continue our provisioning and Reverie "make it right" projects.

The trip back to St Maarten was a nice smooth downwind sail with a
few small squalls.

J&J