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
1 comment:
I liked it.
Bathmate
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