PUERTO RICO!!!

We arrived into Boqueron, Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic after a beautiful motor sail across the Mona Passage. If you read the previous log entry, you realized that the passage was unexpectedly calm yet filled with the natural beauty of whales breaching and dolphins swimming beneath the catamaran's bows. Quite a show.

We arrived into Boqueron around midnight after a long day & night coming across. The harbor was open and so we weren't concerned about entering an unfamiliar harbor in the dark, a usual no-no. It was a Saturday morning (Friday midnight) and the music was loud and the parties were alive all across the town. We could hear them but were in no condition to join into the festivities since were were exhausted form the trip. We all dropped the hook and fell into deep sleep in no time.[ The next morning we needed to check into the country via customs and immigration. So bright and early Saturday morning, we all dingied ashore with the appropriate documents to seek out the appropriate officials who would stamp our papers and make us all official. All except Richard and Laila, that is. Since they hold British passports, they were supposed to have previously obtained a travel visa from the United States, before entering PR. This was something they were unaware of until the got to the Dominican Republic, so they were kind of anticipating a hassle once they got to the customs officials. Once ashore all of us tried to find the customs official, to no avail. We were told the customs people had traveled for the day up to another town to check in a cruise ship. So we decided that if 20 million Mexicans can travel unimpeded around the US, we could handle a day of being illegal aliens. Was actually kind of fun. When we did make the call on Sunday to the Customs officer they gave us clearance and we were legally allowed to be in the country. All but Richard and Laila, that is. They kept quiet and planned to check into PR at the town of Ponce, a few days down the coast. We only stayed at Boqueron for one night as it was very touristy feeling.

The next day we traveled on down the coast to a beautiful beach town called Playa Santa (Saint's Beach). We stayed there only one night, as we were, all four boats, anxious to keep moving on toward the Virgin Islands. Once we arrived into Ponce, PR's second largest city, we anticipated staying a couple of days, doing some provisioning, sight seeing, and boat work. The harbor was fairly crowded upon our arrival and several boats were having trouble getting their anchors to set firmly, and wound up dragging across the harbor dangerously close to the exposed rock breakwater. Our anchor held well and we felt secure, yet didn't like the harbor as it was too crowded, dirty water and near a rather noisy construction field and noisy party dock. The party area used to be occupied by the locals who would come to the area to party over the weekend, much like you'd expect to have in the states at a pretty place where no authorities were present. So the townspeople decided to clean up the area and build a rather large recreation area for the revelers. Now they had a nice place to party, under the nose of the authorities, and party they did. One thing we noticed about PR is that everyone must be deaf. They play their music extremely loud and late into the night. And that comment comes form Rick, the deaf one who loves loud music! But this was ridiculous. Trying to sleep through the Latin music was almost impossible some nights as the music wafted across the water into our boats and reverberated into our brains. But we all made it through OK. The weather turned bad after a couple of days and so we decided to use the extra, unplanned, days to take care of some repairs which needed attention. Most noticeably was the replacement of a throttle cable on Allergic to Cities, and the replacement of the entire Autopilot electronics on Nebula (the only NEW boat amongst us. The parts were ordered and Fed-Xed to the Ponce Marina while we waited out the weather. A2C had their part fixed the day the part arrived, with the help of young David from Windfreak. He has been most helpful to us newbies. I think he's kind of taken to us Old-timers showing them that we can still kick it up when we wish to! Nebula's Autopilot problems were only resolved once a rather terse call was placed by owner Richard to the boat builder. They flew the part in, and with the help of a certified PR technician had them finally up and running.

Oh, yeah, once we arrived into Ponce, Richard and Laila placed a call to the Customs people to try to resolve their Visa issues, to be harshly told to meet the customs official on the harbor dock the next morning at 7AM. That morning, they dingied in to the dock, waited an hour for the guy to arrive, then were basically "scolded", and told to report to the immigration office in Ponce where they would likely face a fine of between $500 and $1500 each. They were not the happiest campers of the bunch at that point, but knew they had to show up and take what was handed to them. When they returned from the meeting, they were visibly happier as the Officer in charge had taken a liking to them and decided the "scolding" was sufficient and stamped their passports and gave them a 1 year Visa for any US possession.

We were all tiring of Ponce after this longer than anticipated stay and were anxious to move along and get closer to the blue waters of the true Caribbean. Once we got a good weather window, were were OUT OF THERE! However, it is important to remember, one can walk faster than most sailboats move. So moving long distances takes a while. Actually, David/Vicky and us decided to move ahead to the next own as we were so ready to leave Ponce and Richard was still awaiting, at the time, his Autopilot fix and Jake/Carol had made plans to have their boat's bottom scraped the next day. So we left on Thursday early knowing that the others would follow on Friday morning. Since we were only going down the coast to the next small village we expected that we'd reconnect the next day. Sure to form, the Autopilot installation guy couldn't come for an extra day so they had to wait longer in Ponce. Once we heard that, the four of us who left early rented a car and took off for an inner-island exploration day. We took the rental van and drove up north to Old San Juan (the Capital city) and to Fajardo and the rain forest area around there. Was a fun field trip and we four enjoyed the get-away immensely.

Old San Juan was a big city and beautiful. A 500 year-old place, it was obviously filled with history. We toured the old fort and wandered around the old part of town which has been carefully restored. The rainforest, El Yunque, was a natural beauty, complete with cascading waterfalls and thick forest canopy overhead. We stayed at a neat bed and breakfast in Fajardo, a rather large seacoast town in the Northwest corner of the country. The next morning, we returned the car to the rental agent and reunited with the other two boats whom had since arrived at our new harbor. We had spoken with them prior to our field trip and suggested we all be ready to move on the night we returned from our field trip. Once we reunited, it became clear that the newly arrived two boats were not ready to move on that night due to weather concerns. David/Vicky and Suz/Rick revisited the weather forecasts and felt comfortable with them enough to continue with our original plans to move on that night. That night at 10pm, we moved on out of our final PR harbor toward the Spanish Virgin Islands, some 12 hours away.

One thing one learns doing this type of traveling, is that one must make their own travel decisions. Those whom rely soley on another's direction must feel totally confident in that person's judgment and must be ready to accept that other person's decisions, good or bad. In our world it's called "being one's own Captain". Since everyone has their own comfort levels, they should be the final "decider", as the fool on the hill says. That way one has no one to blame, should the situation turn wrong or one feel they got stuck behind when moving forward might have been a more desirable choice. So our decision to pull out that night was based on several factors. One, we felt the weather, although not perfect, was certainly acceptable. Two, we were sick of being in PR and the other boat's decision to stay, possibly for another entire week until the weather window improved, was an unpleasant option at best.

That night we traveled through the night and into the dawn in passable seas under motor and sail and arrived at our original destination ahead of anticipated schedule, allowing us to consider continuing further along to the island of Culibra in the Spanish Virgins. Since we were making such gooid time, we actually decided to moved on to the next small island Culibrita, to a stunningly beautiful anchorage.

Having made the passage safely and successfully, we called the two other boats and encouraged the to move on as soon as possible. This morning, we got a call from them as they were pulling into Vieques,p the island just before Culibra. They had made the night passage, as we had, 24 hours later and were moving forward as soon as possible. We expect to reunite with them later this week in the US Virgins as they come across the last few island passes to meet up with us as we will only be ahead of them a few days.

Culibrita has been a terrific stop and we have thoroughly enjoyed the peace and quiete of the island. Hiking, snorkeling and just relaxing has allowed us to do what we came here to do: kick back. We will stay here another day, then head the final 15 miles across to St. Thomas to prepare for Jen and Greg's honeymoon trip arrival next weekend. Should be a fun visit.