The Coast of PR

We were up at 5:30 and cast off about a half hour later. We motored the 20 miles to Salinas, reputed to be a great cruisers’ hangout.

We arrived about noon. The large protected bay was a sea of masts. We found a mooring. My first attempt at catching a mooring was not a thing of beauty. For one thing, I hadn’t worn gloves. Mooring balls generally have a second float that you snag with your boathook, then pull up to get to the bit that attaches to the real mooring. All the lines live in the water and are, in consequence, coated with slime, seaweed, shells, and (nastiest of all) barnacles. Barnacles hurt…they give you multiple tiny paper cuts. Just add salt water… At any rate, we got the deed done on our third attempt and found ourselves nestled between a monohull moored to port and a pair of royal terns in full breeding finery to starboard. They spent a great deal of time there, preening and nattering. I hope they don’t plan to try it as a nesting site.

We decided to go in for dinner and took Boffo in to the marina’s dinghy dock. The adjacent hotel had an outdoor bar where we (foolishly) ordered possibly the worst wine of our entire voyage. That’s really saying something; ask my sister. A rather drunk woman came up to the bar and introduced herself as Lynn. She invited us to sit at a table with her and her friends. We joined them after switching to rum. “O God, no!” she said, “Never stray from rum in these parts.”

We met Kathy and Ron from the good ship At Last, Lynn and Dennis from the yellow ketch (whose name I failed to catch), and Phil (wife Marianne absent) from the 42 Manta cat Calypso. Very nice people. We had a good chat then decided my oxtail stew probably trumped anything we could find in the village, and headed back to Django.

We raised anchor the next day (Tuesday, May 6) at 5:30 and sailed up protected water between a line of cays and the coast. Following us was Calypso. Eventually, the cays went away and we had to get out into the great wide sea. We turned to starboard and went through the Boca del Infierno. I choose to translate that as the Jaws of Hell. Reefs to the right of us, reefs to the left of us, reefs all around us volleyed and thundered. Actually, it was a bit of a nonevent. Light airs and an ebb tide. But I’ve been through the Jaws of Hell. Not everyone gets to do that.

Our next stop was Punta Patillas, about 20 miles from Salinas. Once again, we were there at about noon, but then fussed trying to find a good anchorage. Finally, after having our anchor alarm go off repeatedly (it let’s us know when we’ve moved more than 0.1 nm), WW dove down and set the anchor manually. Then he came up to discover all our propane had leaked out of our tank. We decided to barbecue.

Calypso was anchored upwind of us and we saw she was out of Prout’s Neck. When they passed by later to say hi, we learned they know the Smiths (Andrea, Tassy, Bobby/Howard, and Gordie). They couldn’t stay to chat as they were dining aboard another boat anchored with us. Their cruising plan was much like ours for the next bit, so we expect to see them from time to time.

The next morning, they had the drop on us and raised anchor at about 5:45; we were 30 minutes behind. The other boat, a monohull, left some time after us, but made far better time than we as we continued to bash into the Trade Winds and seas. At the southeast corner of PR, both the other boats headed down to Vieques. I had an island I wanted to see first and WW wanted to sail, so we left our convoy to head up the east coast of