Aboard Lady

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos

Thursday May 26th to Monday May 31st, 2011

Voyage to the Turks and Caicos (map)

We moved from our dock at Ocean World to the fuel dock, and filled the diesel tanks.  Charlie went to settle the bill, and the Dominican Republic Navy had to come aboard and do and inspection (750 pesos) to sign off on our out-bound clearance.  We departed at 1415, and by 1500 were sailing along at 6.8 knots with full sail under overcast skies.

We had rain showers on and off from early evening on, but as the night came on, the skies started to clear.

During the night we could see stars, and closer to dawn the tiny moon rose.  The wind backed and died, so we had to start the engine at change of watch at 0330.

Friday started of a a lovely sunny day.  We disturbed flying fish as we motored along.  We were surprised by a US Coastguard helicopter at 1015.  He circled around us, and then headed off west.  We later found out that the USCG has a base here.  

An hour later we left deep water and entered the Caicos Banks.  We went from the depth being off the meter to reading 12 feet in about 5 seconds.  You could see the change in the water color as we approached.

No sight of land, but the beautiful water went on for ever, and even the clouds were tinged with the turquoise color.

We radioed South Side Marina, recommended by Pete and DeeDee (Marionette) when we were at Ocean World.  They advised us that there was a shallow place in their channel, and that we should wait for the tide to rise.  We anchored in the Bay, and had a lovely swim , Charlie took a nap, and we relaxed for a couple of hours before heading in to the marina.

Bob and Julian helped us to tie up, and we were glad to get to bed early.

Saturday, McGeever, local Customs Officer came to the boat and checked us in to Turks and Caicos ($23US).  He also gave us some advice on a good place to snorkel on the north side of the island at Coral Gardens.  

Bob gave us the keys to  a rental car (it has a name, "Johnnie", rather than a number) parked at the marina, and directed over to Turtle Cove to Scooter Bob's Auto Rental to complete the paperwork.   We walked around the Turtle Cove Marina area.  Lots of sport-fishing boats and a few dive a snorkel excursion boats.  

It started to rain, so we headed to the Tiki Hut for lunch.  Mojito, local beer and delicious conch fritters!

After lunch we drove through the Grace Bay area.  Lots of beautiful home, resorts and shopping areas.  The rain continued, so we did not go snorkeling.  It became quickly obvious that the streets have no drainage.  The rain poured and the water stayed on the roads.

Eventually the rain stopped, and we were able to investigate "The Hole", an intriguing spot marked on our map.  It was suggested to us that it used to be an underground cavern, and the roof fell in, so now it's just a big hole!

At the evening cruiser get-together for drinks under the gazebo, we met Carolyn and Jack from Flying Fish, a beautiful twenty-five foot wooden boat from Maine that they had sailed across the Atlantic last year, and back this year!  We compared notes, and discovered mutual friends in Booth Bay, Maine.  We went out to dinner with them and Bob, revisiting the Tiki Hut, even though there are supposed to be tons of fabulous dining spots on Providenciales.

Sunday we bid Carolyn and Jack farewell, and headed out in Johnnie to explore the western part of the island.  We headed first to the Sapodilla Hill Historical Area, but it was raining (again!), so we went on down Chalk Sound Drive.  Chalk Sound is a shallow arm of the sea that is one of the Turks and Caicos' National Parks.  

There were some very impressive homes in the area.

By the time we returned to Sapodilla Hill, the rain was over for a while, and we climbed the hill to look for the old carvings.

We climbed the hill, and on reaching the cairn knew we were supposed to be there.

I looked around for carvings for a while, then Charlie called me over to where he was.  They were under our feet!  The story is that shipwrecked sailors over the years have carved their names into the rocks on the hill.  Some of the rocks have been removed and are now in the museum on Grand Turk.  Others have had plaster casts made and are used as decoration at the International Airport.  One of the most moving is the name of a ship that was burned at sea.  (That one's in the museum.)

Here are some of them.  

We were particularly intrigued by E. Pay's carving.  Perhaps one of my ancestors was here long ago.  My father's maternal grandfather was Edward Pay. He was a gardener though, not a sailor as far as we know.

 

On our way to the north-western point of Providenciales, we stopped at the Conch Shack for lunch.  It poured with rain again as we tucked in to more delicious conch fritters.  Maybe that's why they are becoming increasing rare.  Visitors are prohibited from taking conch and lobster from Turks and Caicos waters.

The north-western point of the island is another nature reserve.  We abandoned the search for any kind of information center after Johnnie's tyres got stuck in the sand.

More rain and more flooded streets canceled our plans for snorkeling again.

We topped off the gas tank ($6.00 US per gallon!), and headed back to the marina, after driving the Turtle Trail area, and finding this house.  Rumour has it that Prince is the owner.

Today, Monday, has been a lay day.  We have taken on fuel and water and done a couple of loads of laundry, as well as updating this blog. 

We'll leave at high tide tomorrow morning (about 0700) and head for the Bahamas.

 

 

 

 

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

Saturday May 21st to Thursday May 26th, 2011

Ocean World Marina, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

We arrived at Ocean World Marina, near Puerto Plata ("the silver port") on the north coast of the Dominican Republic Saturday afternoon.  There is a large dolphin and sea-lion zoo next to us, also a building with a restaurant, casino and Las Vegas-type theater show.  We slept most of the afternoon, then decided to treat ourselves to dinner and the show.  Dinner was really delicious. I had never been to this type of dancing show before.  Lots of beautiful scantily dressed young men and women in fabulous costumes doing very high-energy dances.  It was a lot of fun!

Sunday was a work day.  Cleaning boat, inside and out and doing mucho laundry.

Monday we rented a car.  $80 for two days.  Empty tank on pick-up.  On the way in to town we were struck by all the air pollution.   It's coming from all the little motor-bikes.  Lots of motor-bikes.  People also seem to regard the traffic laws as merely suggestions.  

I purchased some bananas from a local vendor.

We headed through Puerto Plata, and went on to Sosua, and interesting town to the east of Puerto Plata, settled by German Jewish people fleeing the atrocities in Europe in the 1940s.  We walked around some of the neighborhoods.  There are quite a lot of nice resorts in this area, and lots of European, many British, people here on holiday or vacation.  We stopped for lemonade and iced tea at a local grill and walked down to the beach area.  There were lots of vendors all wanting us to look at their souvenirs "Two for One!"  It's a lot of the same stuff being sold at the markets on every island, just has a different country's name on the T-shirts.

We were persuaded to look over a resort hotel (Ten weeks for $1,400 US, good for five years, all-inclusive) and this place had a great view of the Sosua beach.

After lunch (local German sausage for me) we headed back to Puerto Plata.  Looking for the amber museum, we met Jose, who proceed to be our guide for the next couple of hours.   The Dominican Republic mines a lots of the world's amber, and the Jurassic Park movie was filmed here.  Here's a picture of Alberto, our museum guide, with Jose.  We learned that a test for real Amber is that it floats in salt water.  After the museum he look us to an amber factory, more of a workshop than a factory where a couple of people were making jewelry from amber, and also from larimar, a native stone, unique to Dominican Republic that's a soft turquoise color. I think everybody was quite disappointed that we didn't purchase anything.  

After that Jose made us stop at a tobacconist, where they tried to sell Charlie a hand-made cigar.

Our last stop was at the best supermarket in town for some provisions.  We gave Jose a tip, and dropped him off close to his home.

The traffic was incredible.  Lots of old cars and motor bikes.  People seem to think nothing of driving on the wrong side of the street.  It's really quite scary.

Tuesday we decided to go to Santiago, a DR's second-largest city in the center of the country.  We purchases 1,000 pesos-worth of gasolina (not to be confused with gas, which is propane) and set off. Past lots of fruit-stands on the high-way selling mangoes, over the mountains, past some mines.  Buses tried to pass us as we were passing a motor bike.  We did not see a singly speed limit sign.  Our maps of the area were not very good, and once we got to Santiago we were overwhelmed with so much traffic.  Unlike the rest of the world, the people on the round-abouts don't seem to have right-of-way getting off the round-about, or perhaps this is just another traffic law that's treated as a recommendation.  Many of the traffic lights were not working.  Everybody seems to drive with their hand on the horn.  It was so busy in the central city, forget about trying to find a place to park, we just turned around and headed back to Puerto Plata.  

On the way around a curve we hit another pot-hole in the road, and our right front tire was flat.  Charlie pulled off the road.  It was a area next to a little road-side convenience store and used-tire shop.  The local mini-bus drivers all semmed to be congregated there for their lunch-break.  The man from the tire-shop came out with a floor jack as we were investigating the trunk of the car for the jack, spare, etc.  There was no jack in our car.  The spare tire had a hugh gash in it.  One of the bus drivers came over, and with his little English, and my little Spanish the tire shop man agreed to sell us a new used tire for 700 pesos.  Twenty minutes later we were on our way again.  Talk about lucky!  Charlie gave the man $1,000 pesos which at the exchange rate at the ATM that day came to all of $26.37US.

We found a nice place on the Malecon (waterfront) in Puerto Plata for lunch.  Doesn't Charlie look relieved about that tire?

After picking up a few more groceries, we had a lovely evening with new friends DeeDee and Peter on their CSY 44 at the marina.

We had been planning on leaving today, but the forecast is for squalls and light air, so we've put off the next leg until tomorrow.

When we came in to Ocean World, I lost the signal flag halyard up the mast and down it came, so today we borrowed bosun's chair from Peter and DeeDee and up I went to replace it.

Tomorrow we'll fuel up and head for the Turks and Caicos Islands, an overnight leg at sea before we anchor.

Puerto Rico to Dominican Republic Passage

Puerto Rico to Dominican Republic Passage

Thursday May 19th to Saturday May 21st, 2010

 

(posted via Sailmail)

 

We departed Boqueron shortly before noon on Thursday, and moved over to Bahia De Añasco.  This is a little north of Mayaguez, which would have also been a place to stay, but it's a commercial port.  We saw a lot of debis in the water, (bamdoo and other logs) and conjecture that all the rain has caused a lot of stuff to come down the Rio Grande De Añasco River.

Kayakers from the local resort came by to say hi, but otherwise, we had the whole bay to ourselves.  More rain and storms in the night.

Friday we raised the anchor at 0615 and motored out of the bay, there being no wind, heading out in the Mona Passage for Isla Desecheo on a course of 312.

Our noon position was 18 37.916N 067 47.589 W, COG 310, SOG 7.0 kts.  We were over 39 nautical miles from our departure location, with 181 nautical miles to go.

Shortly after that the wind picked up, and we were able to sail and turn off the motor.  It started to rain, so we lowered all the cockpit isinglass.

We were pleased and surprised when three dolphins started playing in our bow wake.  We had seen very few dolphins since leaving the USA.  These were smaller than the dophons we used to see in Texas.  They finished off their five-minute performance with two of them doing a beautiful air curve before they disappeared.

By 1900 the rain had ceased, but we had to head up to 336 to keep the sails pulling well.

We take turns napping on overnight legs.  Charlie recorded our midnight position as 19 26.34N 069 04.5W.

The wind died shortly after that, to we turned on the motor and furled the sails. The rest of the night we went back and forth between rain and no rain, wind and too much wind or no wind. We knew what speed we had to average to arrive at our destination before dark (being a foreign country and a port we had never entered before, we would not have entered after dark). So, with a fair wind and a strong desire to not spend another sober night at sea, out noon position Saturday was 19 48.775N 070 32.114W and we arrived at Ocean World Marina at 1:10 PM.

 

We are docked at a combination of Sea World, Caeser's Palace and a Florida Marina. Great place to be if you are not an investor. The marina is 2/3 rd's empty. We'll report on the rest later. We plan to take some trips around the country in the coming days. From what we can already see, the DR shares an island with Haiti and the two countries couldn't be more different. Gee, I wonder why? 

 

Western Puerto Rico

May 17th to May 19th, 2011

Parguera to Boqueron (click to see map)

While we were anchored in Gilligan's Island earlier this week, we noticed a white blimp in the sky (1,000 feet?).  I had thought it was near Ensenada, but as we sailed to Parquera, it was obvious that it was a lot bigger and a lot further away than that. We think that this is part of our national defense system, and also used to monitor potential smugglers of people and drugs.  We've seen similar blimps in Key West and El Paso, TX.

Tuesday morning when we  left Parguera it had been raining all night, and more storms were forecast for the day.  I noticed that the blimp had been lowered to its ground tether, so after pulling the anchor, we motored over to see if we could get a better view.   If you zoom in on the Google map link above, you can even see it there!  You can also see its shadow and the docking station.  Here's a link to an article on  contemporary blimps.  If any readers find others, please let us know!  Charlie thinks it was grounded because of the weather. So, if you want to smuggle anything, do it in a thunderstorm when the blimp's "asleep".

Anyway, after delaying our departure waiting for another storm to pass, we took off.  The weather came in again, and we had a very rainy ride.  Great sailing, but we needed the foul-weather gear as well.  We anchored in Boqueron harbor about 1400 and watched more rain fall all afternoon.

Wednesday dawned bright and clear so we headed ashore.  One of our guide books refers to Boqeron as the Key West of the Caribbean.  I don't think so.  This "fixer-upper"  looks to me more like a "knocker-downer".  

Looks like the local catholic church is predicting the end of the world next Saturday.

Boqueron has a lovely bay and a very nice beach.

The village is supposedly a popular spot for Puerto Ricans to party.  On Wednesday morning, however, most everything was closed.  We saw lots of empty roadside stands, and most of the dining establishments were cerrado.  Hardly anybody walking around.  

We were finally able to get some lunch at Mr. Mofongos.  Three men were working on make a new concrete floor for the Bar/Grill across the street, and a small boy was busy with his truck in their sand-pile.

All the street poles in Boqeron are painted with this attractive sail logo.

We ended up at El Shamar, adjacent to the dinghy dock, where we met another cruiser.  This latest part of our cruising we have met very few other cruisers.  Most of the people we met in the other islands are either on their way to Grenada and Trinidad, or already back in the USA.

We shared the dinghy dock with about three other vessels that day.  This local fishing boat's decorations caught our eye.  

On our way back to Lady, it was amusing to see that each of this abandoned pier's piling has been taken over by a tern.  

Later in the afternoon it poured with rain again, but after a couple of pretty rainbows, we had a lovely sunset.

Thursday, May 19th we'll leave Boqueron, and go about 20 miles north to anchor off Punta Ensenada.  It looks quite remote.  The next day we'll head west and north around to the north coast of the Domincan Republic.  That'll probably take another couple of days.

Cruising Southern Puerto Rico

South Coast of Puerto Rico (map of the area)

Wednesday May 4th to Monday May 16th, 2011

We flew from Tulsa to San Juan on Wednesday May 4th, and it sure felt great to be sleeping back aboard Lady.  A day of boat projects on Thursday, and Friday we rented a car and hit the local cash and carry for discount liquors and pop, West Marine for boat bits, and Econo for provisions.  Saturday we returned the car and did more boat projects so we could leave.

We departed Puerto Del Rey marina after settling the bill for over a month's dockage on Mother's Day, Sunday May 8th, but didn't go too far...just a few miles to Isla Palominos, where we had moored before we came in to the marina in March.  It was quiet at the mooring area...the marina golf-cart attendant had told us that Mother's Day was typically rather quiet...not at all like Father's Day. It was really good to be sleeping on a mooring, rather than in the marina.

Monday morning we were anxious to be on the move, and left the anchorage quite early.  A few miles south down the coast is an area called Palmas Del Mar.  Friends Lisa and Dudley Gibbs from Tulsa keep their boat there.  They were back in the USA, and although we ventured in to the complex, the narrow canals between the condominiums made us nervous, so we did not find their boat.  

We anchored for the night in Puerto Patillas, behind a reef for protection.

We sailed a few miles west the next day to Bahia Jobos, and anchored near Punto Pozuelo.  The bay appeared undeveloped, except for a generating station on the shore.  A big ship came in towed by two tugs and tied up at the large dock there, but apart from that it was very quiet.  We met a couple of young women in kayaks coming out of the mangroves who were working on a doctorate project for the University of Georgia.  It was flat calm in the morning.  The bay is known for the deep places that are located in the mangroves on the shore, and is very active when a storm is headed in PR's direction.  According to the guide-book, not a single vessel anchored in the Jobos hurricane holes was damaged during hurricane George.

We moved on the next day to Salinas.  The harbor had a couple of dozen cruising boats at anchor, and attractive homes on the waterfront.  There's a pretty good marina there, with a nice dinghy dock.  We walked around the village ashore, but things were very quiet.  Lots of pretty blossoms around.  We stopped in the marina restaurant for a coke, and on the way back to Lady we dinghied around the marina, looking at other boats.  When I saw the name Sojourner, I commented that I thought we knew that boat.  Charlie remembered that these were the people we had helped last year in Dominica, and that he was a former OU football player.  Peter appeared on deck at our hail, informing us that Julie had left for an Alaska vacation.  We met up with him for happy hour at the marina's snack shop and enjoyed hearing about their recent adventures.  Sojourner, a Tayana 52, is for sale, if anybody's looking for a great boat that has completed a circumnavigation.  We enjoyed dinner ashore at Ladi's, a new restaurant overlooking the beach.  We did not choose which crab we wanted to dine on.  Charlie thinks it's like eating spiders.

Thursday May 12th (happy birthday to Nigel), we pulled the anchor at 0930 and moved west in the hazy morning.  We spied a sea turtle on the way.  By 1300 we had the anchor down near the Ponce Club Nautique.  The harbor there had few boats at anchor, but lots of big sport-fishing-type boats in the marina.

We went ashore the next day, paid the marina $10 each for the privilege of using the dinghy dock and took a cab in to Plaza de Las Delicias in central Ponce.    There was quite a crowd of school-kids at the old Fire Station.  We were informed that the trolley tours were fully booked until the afternoon, so we wandered around on foot.   The cathedral had impressive statuary, and tourists were bringing in their children for the priest to bless.

Fountains and statues in the plaza were interesting, as was some of the architecture of the old buildings around the plaza.

We tried to get in to a couple of different museums, but the were closed...come back this afternoon we were told.

So we found ourselves in a mall area, with street vendors, and lots of shops with inexpensive goods.

Charlie wanted to buy me jeans in every color, but I persuaded him not to.  They look much better on the young Puerto Rican girls. (Notice that the jeans are on display rear to the front, very important to Puerto Ricans-Charlie). 

The rain that had held off most of the morning finally arrived, so we had a lovely lunch at Lola's, and then taxied back to the marina as the trolley tours did not operate in the rain.

Saturday we fuelled up at the Club Nautique fuel dock, then headed west, anchoring at Gilligan's Island about 1415.  

Punta Jacinto on the mainland had about twenty-five nice looking homes on the water.  Sunday we tried to explore Gilligan's Island.  We had seen the ferry going back an forth from the Copamarina resort and the village, but the area on the island where the ferry docks was off-limits to other boats.  There were lots of moorings, and a large area buoyed off for swimming.  It seems as though if you arrive by private boat you have to swim ashore.  We did eventually find a small beach...here's the captain ashore on Gilligan's island.  We tried to hike through the mangroves and bogs, but were unable to get to the windward beach, and all we got were mosquito bites, so we retreated back to Lady.

Our last stop on the southern Puerto Rico coast was at Parguera.  It's a nice looking town in a bay full of little mangrove covered reefs.  Very sheltered, clean water.  There are lots of nice cabins built in the mangroves along the shore...but nowhere for visitors to dock a dinghy that we could find!  We finally found a boat ramp, and parked is on the shore, tied up to a mangrove root for security.  We met a couple of other Danish cruisers who pointed us in the right directio for the grocery store, which had limes, but no lemons or mushrooms, and only six choices of breakfast cereal.  

After lunch ashore, we walked back through town, and this scene caught my eye:  

"If I had a boat, I'd ride it on the ocean, and if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat."

We then took the dingy out to one of the outer reefs where we tied on to a Department of Natural Resources bouy, and had a lovely swim.  My camera has always claimed that it is good to 10 feet under water, but I never took it under water, just in case it failed.  When we were home in Tulsa last month, Charlie got me another "Waterproof to 10 ft" camera (on sale at Radio Shack!), so that I could have a spare camera, in case the first one didn't work underwater.

My camera seems to work quite well under water.  Now I just need a flotation device for it, so that I don't lose it!

 

 

 

 

 

Isla Palaminos and Fajardo, Puerto Rico

March 24th to March 31st, 2011

Isla Palaminos and Fajardo

Charlie pulled up the anchor in Puerto Real, Esperanza at about 0940 on Thursday March 24th, and we had a great downwind sail along the south coast of Vieques.  There was an interesting sort of radar installation on the shore, near the western end of the island.  We later learned that this was an 'over the horizon" radar for drug interdiction. We avoided all the  shoals off the western tip, and then headed up the eastern coast of Puerto Rico.  A good wind all the way.  Our noon position showed that the speed was 7.1 knots.

We anchored off the island of Palaminos at 1300, and loved the calm water and nearby reefs.  There were quite a few tour boats in the area. 

We had a lovely afternoon of snorkeling, and enjoyed the sunset of our last night at anchor.

The next day we headed to Puerto Del Ray Marina.  After filling with diesel at the fuel dock, we moved in to slip 1273.  The marina is HUGE - over 1,000 slips!  The dock hands ferry boaters back and forth in golf carts. 

Most of the next few days were taken up with de-commissioning the boat - oil changes, cleaning inside  and outside, laundry, etc.

We did rent a car for two days, and took a trip to the rain forest, El Yunque.  There we had a good hike on the mountain, enjoying the cool and rain.

Finally we were all packed and on March 31st, we left Lady, headed back to Tulsa for a month of vacation from our vacation.

 

Vieques

Isla Vieques

March 19th, 2011 to March 24th, 2011

Isla Vieques

Charlie say I have to finish writing up about the last cruise before we start work on the next.  

After a lovely sail from Bahia Tarja in Culebra, our first night in Vieques was spent in a lovely harbor on the south coast, Ensenada Honda.  (I think that's a popular name in Spanish for a good deep harbor).  There was room for hundreds of boats, but there were just two others that night.  As the sun set, egrets roosted in the mangroves on the shore, and shorty there-after we witnessed the "super" moonrise, where the moon was closest to the earth in a long time.

Next day was cloudy and rainy, so we just hung out on the anchor.

Monday March 21st, we left Ensenada Honda, and had a good sail along the coast to Sun Bay.  Another great harbor, loads of room, only half-a-dozen boats.  We took the dinghy around the point to Esperanza, the main settlement on the south side of Vieques.  We explored around town, and had a lovely lunch ashore - lobster benedict for me!  We visited the museum and walked up the hill to the grocery store for a few provisions.

Tuesday morning we took the dinghy to the beach at Sun Bay and spent some time giving her a good scrub, and getting her cleaned up, ready for storage.

I also took the opportunity to get in a nice walk on this lovely beach.

That afternoon, we move Lady from Sun Bay to Esperanza's harbor, Puerto Real.

Wednesday we decided to take the Publico to the other side of the island to visit Isabella Segunda.  It's the main town on Vieques.  The publico buses don't run very ofter, so we were pleased when a local driver stopped and offered us a lift across the island.  In town, we visited the museum, looked around, had lunch, purchased some replacement snorkelling gear, and waited at a local bar near the ferry dock for a publico back. We could see the main island of Puerto Rico from the museum.

After dinner aboard, we went ashore again to meet a tour we had booked.  Vieques has a small bay that has lots of bio-luminescent microbes living in it.  After a dark and bumpy ride on a retired school bus with about thirty other people, we boarded an electric driven pontoon boat.  It was the only motorized vessel permitted in the bay...others were kayaks.  As the boat moved through the water, it left a luminiescent wake.  We could see luminiscent trails of fish as they swam away.  All the passengers had come with swimsuits on, so we got in to the water and swam.  I felt so elegant...my whole body sparkled as I moved through the water.  They can't do these tours when the moon is out - too much light - so this night we had a few hours of dark before the moon rose.  And of course, cameras can't operate well, unless one is pretty technical.  It was kind of like Avatar in real life.

 

Cool Culebra and Culebrita

March 6th, 2011 to March 18th, 2011

Islas Culebra and Cubrelita (click on this link to see a map of where we went)

 

The main harbor at Culebra is called Ensenada Honda "Deep Harbor".  The island is surrounded by reefs, and all the guide books advise only arriving in good light.  We passed a number of yachts at anchor in Ensenada Dakity as we approached Culebra on Sunday afternoon.  We anchored near the town of Dewey and phoned the local customs to check in.  After a couple of calls we were cleared in to Puerto Rico.

Monday we dinghied around exploring.  The island has a population of about 2,000 and is accessible from Puerto Rico by a ferry from Fajardo three time a day.  Tourism and our tax dollars seem to be the main the economic engines.  Don't you just love this newly-painted lift bridge that no longer operates, because the two fishing boats that used to be in the canal behine the bridge are no longer in business?

Off the canal are some waterfront restaurants and bars.  There was a bouy indicating that it was a mantee area, but we didn't see any.

We parked  Bimbo at the Dinghy Dock Restaurant and explored the town.  We found a couple of grocery stores, a few additional restaurants and a few gift shops.  Gail had told me that there were few opportunities for shopping.  

We think that the postmaster lives above the Post Office.

Kardia and Livin' A Dream arrived in the harbor later that day, and we made plans to tour the island by golf-cart together on Tuesday.

Ann and John, Velma and Mark, Charlie and Jenny all managed to fit in the six-person golf-cart, and soon we were travelling down the main highway of Culebra.

 

It did not take too long to get to the other end of the island.  This is a magnificent view of the island of Cubrelita with St. Thomas in the back-ground.

To the north-west is Cayo Norte.

The six of us had a lot of fun, stopping to take lots of pictures.  We headed over to Playa Flamenco, a very popular beach on the north side of the island.  This is certainly NOT a place where we could bring the boats.  Too shallow, and too much surf.  The girls swam, while the men idled in the shade on the beach.  There were a number of local vendors selling food, and we enjoyed frozen mojitos, pinchos (grilled boneless chicken pieces on a stick), with rice and beans for lunch.  This beach has the only camp-sites on the island.  

After lunch, we visited another beach, Playa Tamarindo, and decided that we needed to come back and get one of the moorings another day.  While snorkeling here we saw rays and starfish in the grassy bottomed bay.  It's part of the nature reserve.  A local showed up in his model A while we were there.

We ended our tour by going back through Dewey and out south toward Ensenada Fulladosa, where we
arrrived at Bahia Marina, which seems to be the largest "resort" on Culebra.  While we were having a drink at the bar, and checking the place out, a local fisherman arrived to deal with the chef on the lobster purchase.  The chef chose the lobsters, and then they were all weighed together.  

They also purchased a rather large fish.

What a great day we all had!

The next morning we had to return the golf cart after re-fuelling it.

There is only one gas station on the island.  The employee showed up shortly after we did at 0800.  We were second in line.  Charlie talked to other drivers waiting for gas, and found out that the owner takes his time about getting to work in the morning.  He finally arrived at about 0900, and then had to check all the tanks and re-price the fuel (up, no surprise there) before they started pumping at about 0915.  While he was waiting I walked around town and took pictures of some of the lovely signs.  There are no chain stores or restaurants in Culebra...it's like going back in time.  Most of the signage is hand-painted works of art!

        

Later in the day, we left Culebra, and motored over to the uninhabited island of Culebrita, where we picked up a FREE Department of Natrual Resources' mooring, and had a quiet night.  There were four other boats in the bay.

Thurday March 10th, we explored the island.  

We had been told that a hike up to the old light-house was worth the effort, so with a backpack and water, we climbed up the hill.

Tha light-house had been originally built in 1882-1886 by the Spanish.  Now it is abandoned and in ruins, but the red-brick architecture is quite something.

The view from the top was quite something!

We got a nice view of Lady on our way back down.

We took another path over to Bahia Tortuga ("Turtle Bay"), where is there was too much swell for many boats.  We walked the beach and found our way to the "jacuzzis", large tidal pools where the waves came crashing through the rocks.  It was tough going on the hard rocks, and we decided that the Bubbly Pool in Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands was better.

A rain shower on the way back brought out lots of hermit crabs.

After lunch aboard, we moved Lady back to Culebra, picking up a FREE DNR moooring in the Bahia Dakity area.  We met up with Kardia and Livin' A Dream.

The next week or so, we cruised the many bays of Culebra and Culebrita in the company of Kardia; every so often we'd return to Dewey for provisions, then go out again.

One day, moored in Bahia Almodoran, we met up with Coconut Telegraph friends Allegro, Aquilla and Phaedrus. The Coconut Telegraph is a Single Side-band ("SSB") radio network.  Most mornings we tune our high-frequency radio to upper side band 4060 and check in with about twenty or thirty other cruisers up and down the Caribbean chain.  It's a great way to stay connected with friends we've made on the way, and to make new friends.  We had met Lee and Sharon on Allegro in Trinidad, but had not previously met Lesley and Charles on Phaedrus, nor Larry and Barbara on Aquilla, although we had heard them on the radio.  We all got together on Lady.  Mark and Velma from Kardia were also there, so it was quite a crowd in the cockpit.

Saint Patrick's Day we had a lovely meal ashore with Mark and Velma at El Eden.  This was a temporary farewell, as they were off to Puerto Rico to meet family, and we were going to spend another couple of nights in Culebra before moving on the Vieques.