Culebra (Spanish Virgin Islands)

Pictures:
1. Jim and Lara toasting our arrival in the Spanish Virgin Islands
2. Sunset over the island of Culebra
(More photos when we find a high speed connection!)

Nov 28th - We are delighted to have fixed our computer problem! Note: Our charger would not work with any of the configurations we tried. We now have a working computer with wireless connection. We arrived in St. Thomas yesterday. We found a quiet anchorage just outside of a large Marriott Hotel. We anchored and took the dingy to the boat dock and purchased tickets to take their Ferry to the main St. Thomas downtown. There were people EVERYWHERE. After spending the past week on a small boat with just Jim, the contrast in noise and speed of the cars was surprising. Several enormous cruise ships were in port, which I am sure was the source of the crowds. We found a taxi and asked them to take us to Radio Shack. After 30 minutes with their computer team we found a charger (with multiple adaptors) that would work with this old laptop. We are beside ourselves as we can now create our updates ahead of time and not be rushed at the Internet Cafe!

From Radio Shack, we then found our way to the Crown Bay Marina. WOW. What a marina! There were too many huge, beautiful, multi million dollar ships to discuss here. We sat on the dock and marveled at the yachts. A trip to the marina store yielded additional maps for Puerto Rico and we used their Internet connections to update our blog. We kind of felt like the Clampetts among all the “rich and famous.”

After discussions with some “old salts” in and around the marina, we made our plan to return the following day to provision, fuel and obtain water. I managed to talk Jim into taking the return route by foot through St. Thomas to window shop along the way.

Once back at the Marriott, we joined their guests at the pool and enjoyed the amenities (including the bar for beverages)! Lara managed to join their “Welcome Reception” receiving without protest, a rum punch. The evening was quite lovely as we were in a sheltered harbor. Quite a contrast to the previous nights swinging wildly in the wind and rain.

Early the next morning, we motored over to the anchorage outside Crown Bay harbor (weaving in and out of the larger yachts) and watched with awe as we were overtaken and then passed by a HUGE Holland America Cruise ship in a narrow passage! Jim elected to give him the right of way…. We anchored, got into the dingy and were off by foot (with portable cooler and backpack) to the grocery store (about a half mile from the marina). We were delighted to find a taxi rather quickly to help us with transport of our provisions, which included 18 gallons of drinking water, steaks, chicken, fruit etc…

Once this was stowed, we called the marina (by radio) and arranged to enter for fuel and water. We were pretty impressed with ourselves as we managed to get into the marina (very tight quarters with lots of big, expensive yachts and power boats), spin the boat around and float nicely up to the fuel dock like pros! We only took on 7.5 gallons of diesel. This was our total fuel usage for the past week! Not bad when you consider that this includes the 2 hours of required engine running to charge the batteries each day.

All this was done by 11 am, we consulted the weather report (still not too good) and decided to head to Saba Island for the night. We set off out of the calm harbor to the high seas just to be pushed back to St. Thomas by the weather. We were not brave enough to put up even the main sail so we went by motor (running at about 5 knots). We got to practice our “Man Overboard” drill when Jim lost one of his gloves overboard. We felt quite smug about being able to swing back and pick it up. Good practice. We made it to our planned anchorage off Saba Island only to find it being pounded by a large storm surge. There was also a wrecked sailboat (just about our size!) on the beach, which didn’t make us feel too good. It turns out that Tropical Storm Epsilon has been causing all this trouble for us. So we headed back toward the west end of St. Thomas and found a lovely deserted bay, officially named Perseverance Bay. We renamed it Turtle Cove due to the large number of turtles. We counted over 50 sightings and stopped counting. Jim also managed to (finally!) catch some fish - a number of Crevalle Jacks, a kingfish and one large stingray. We snorkeled all around and were disappointed that we did not have a single turtle encounter. Darn.

I caught a much needed nap as sleeping the last few days has been poor due to the violent swinging of the boat and intermittent rain (open the hatches, close the hatches, open the hatches…).

December 1st

What a great sailing adventure from St. Thomas to Culebra! We departed just before 8am and the first few hours were dead calm, so we motored. Around 10am we encountered a slight breeze and set up our sails. Puffs of wind carried us in a Wing on Wing Run! A turn toward Culebra allowed us to move to a Beam Reach and sail for a few hours getting up to 6 knots. The harbor was quiet and we sailed all the way in to our anchorage! This harbor, called Ensenada Honda is surrounded in mangroves and we passed a Manatee habitat.

There is quite a story about this tiny harbor which held over 300 boats hiding from Hurricane Hugo. Apparently the boats ended up stacked on the shore and over 100 were total losses due to the over crowding.

There are few boats here and most of them seem to be live aboards. Next to us are a nudist couple. We call them naked Man and naked Woman. They smile and wave politely. It is hard not to stare (or so Lara says…). On the left is a man on a 40’ boat with three dogs! An Irish setter, a little dog and one in between. The setter barks at all the passing boats.

This is a sleepy little town – and we mean sleepy. The immigration was closed for “Siesta” when we arrived at noon and did not open until after 3pm. We completed the required paperwork and gave them $37. This allows for us to stay for a year.

We relocated to a sheltered cove. Another great night of quiet sleep (no wild swinging with rigging groaning).

At first light, Jim upped anchor himself and drove us off to Isla Culebrita. We trolled for fish (catching a few) and made an attempt to go around the Island which tool us into the open Atlantic and 10 to 12’ swells. Yikes. We turned around and came back in. That pesky Tropical Storm Epsilon stills plaguing our travels. The small boat advisory remains in effect and is quite evident when we hit the Atlantic – erg.

Our Streets Guide suggested a nice hike to a defunct lighthouse, so with some water and the camera off we went. Now that rascal, Mr. Street, should have suggested pants, long sleeves and a machete! The view was worth the cuts and abrasions.

More fishing and this time catching occurred (although we now have to add Jim’s sunglasses to the list of “Items Lost”). Jim pulled up a four-foot barracuda. They are really quite scary with all of those teeth. One must really take care in getting them off the hook.

The snorkeling was the absolute best ever! The coral here is relatively untouched (no crowds) so it is in great shape and quite spectacular. The fish are right out of “Finding Nemo” (blue fish, red fish, green fish, big fish, little fish…). This was a treat.

At the northwest corner of Culebra, Lara went below to stow some gear and while she was gone her seat cushion blew overboard. Thinking there was no chance to retrieve it, we continued on until it was obvious that the swells were still too big to go on the north side of the island. At that point, we decided to see if we could find the cushion since we knew roughly where it should be. After about 10 minutes, Jim spotted it about 50’ off the starboard bow and we retrieved it (thus erasing it from the “Items Lost” list!).

We’re heading off to check on ferries to San Juan for a day trip.