03/18/2009 Puerto Rico (South shore)

03/06/2009 Here I am sitting in Boqueron. I have a few items I need to take care of and I hope that Christian made it out of port and is heading for PR. First things first today is that I need to check in with Customs and Immigration. I made a call to the office and they asked me to call back later as they were in the middle of clearing in the ferry from Dominican Republic. Later that day I made the call and they were very anxious for me to be in the office before 4:30, since I arrived yesterday. I needed to get to Mayaguez. Mayaguez is located about 20 miles north of where I am now. In my cruising guide, it is recommended to call Raul on his cell and he will taxi you to immigration. I called, he answered and was available. He turned out to be my first contact in Puerto Rico and he was a great welcome wagon.

We scheduled to meet up in about an hour to make the trip. After I cleaned up and readied all of my documentation needed, I headed into shore and tied up the boat. I stopped at the first bar for a beer as I was little early. My first beer in PR costs $1.25. Heaven. After spending typically $4-6 a can in the Bahamas I can see I am going to enjoy Puerto Rico.

Raul is waiting for me as we scheduled and off we went. Raul is a native Puerto Rican that spent most of his life living in New York. He worked in transportation for Columbia University and other jobs. He decided to come back to Puerto Rico about ten years ago and could not find work. He bought a taxi and has been doing that since he arrived. He made a good friend in the writer of my cruising guide and now is listed in there and is the prime taxi driver for cruisers coming into PR. He was very helpful in making sure Immigration was ready for me and he gave me pointers to avoid while talking with the agents.

The process only took about 15 minutes and we were back on the road. Now I am legal in Puerto Rico. After the trip back to Boqueron I decided to walk around town and find out what was available to me for products and services. Boqueron is a sleepy little village on the back side of Puerto Rico. There was a small (real small) grocery store, pharmacy, bakery, couple of gas stations, marine store, etc. This is a little getaway town though during the weekends. It is known as the Key West of Puerto Rico. The only people that visit it though are islanders. After a weekend here, it may be the Key West of Puerto Rico, but you have to compare the size of the US to put it in perspective. I love it here.

There is a beautiful public beach here lined with palm trees and some restaurants and bars. Along the street though are little businesses set up that sell local made jewelry, t-shirts, fresh oysters and clams and my favorite, a bbq grill that they cook shiska-a-bobs of chicken, fish and beef. The main street is lined with these all the way up and down. During the weekend the partying went on all day and late into the night. I was amazed even on Sunday. I figured things would roll up around seven or eight o’clock. The music was going on until 11:00.

There were a couple of bars in town. Galloways is the cruisers hang out. I didn’t spend much time the there. I enjoyed going to El Swar. It was a bar at the dinghy dock. I enjoyed sitting and watching the people there play pool, sing karioki and just have fun. The beers are cold and the place is really much more lively than sitting at Galloways. I met Frank there. He is the bar tender and spoke great English. I talked with him and his brother every time I stopped by there. As it appears to be everyone I run into, they spent time in the US working and then came back to PR to live a different life and also usually come back to family.

03/10/2009 I have waited for four days for Christian to make it to Boqueron and there is no sight of him. I hope he is alright in whatever plans he went with. I am using Bruce Van Sant’s Passages South as my cruising guide for Puerto Rico and will follow most of his recommendations.

I take off for La Parguera. It is another little sleepy town on the south coast. I round Cabo Rojo (Red Cape) on get a picture of this beautiful light house. It appears most of the light houses are built from this mold down here. As I enter the area I stop for a swim on a reef I notice that there are mooring balls. It is a small beautiful reef with good live corals and small fish.

I later make my way to where I anchor and hook up with Graham and Wendy again. This will be the norm for the week, as they move much earlier than I do when going onto the next anchorage.

The next morning I get up and throw the gas and water cans in the dinghy and head over to the local marina to try and fuel up and get some water. When I arrive there, there are only three men that are working on a boat. The mechanic speaks good English and I ask about fuel. He tells me the bad news that the station in town is closed and the marina does not have any fuel. He does though, without any prompting, offer me a ride down the highway to the next gas station to purchase fuel. The generosity just blows me away. His name is Joe and he was in the US Coast Guard for eight years. As we are driving he tells me all about his love for boats. Any boats. Power, sail, skiffs. Whatever it is as long as it floats.

03/11/2009 After Joe brought me back to the docks, I headed off to Gilligan’s Island. This is located off of a resort. The new thing I am learning is about the trade winds. It has appeared to me all along the south shore that I have to power and not sail as the wind is usually blowing from the east. There do not appear to be the weather windows I could rely on in the Bahamas to change the weather and the wind direction.

After dropping the anchor, I took the dinghy to Gilligan’s Island. The island is a mangrove island and it appears that people from the resort are ferried to the island to hang out. There are picnic pavilions a couple of small sandy beaches and trails for walking. Everyone is having a good time here.

That evening I took the dinghy to the resort and met Carlos there. He is the bar tender at the bar n the beach. He is a young guy that has good stories about the country. I asked for his specialty. It is the Puerto Rican Ice Tea. It is great. There are four flavors of Rum, Sour Mix and a slash of Coke. The Puerto Rican version of the Long Island Ice Tea. They went down smooth.
03/12/2009 This morning I took off for Salinas. It is a major cruiser’s hang-out. There is access to fuel, groceries, rental cars, etc. It sits back in a mangrove protected harbor. There are several small restaurants, bars and little stores around the marina.

I met up with Graham and Wendy again. Friday night I made a pot of spaghetti. They brought over a salad and a chocolate bar for desert. We had a great time sitting around eating spaghetti and drinking plenty of wine. It was a real fun night catching up with them and what their plans are and mine. They have been on the boat for five years now and they are trying to determine what their next adventure is going to be. Oh the tough life.

03/15/2009 Today I have taken off for Puerto Patillas. Another sleepy little town with a public beach. The park is full of people all having a good time. There are boaters here also. There are several people on jet skis zipping around. I am definitely in a different place right now. Jet skiers always seemed to be my nemesis. It was fun to watch them just having fun, even when they came zipping by my boat. It was like a mark to go around, as there was only one other sailboat anchored here. There were also three men on sunfish like sailboats. They would race across the bay and back. The fastest of them would come right behind my boat off of the transom. I knew he was a racer as he had no problem dipping my transom as I would do if I were racing. He would yell, “Buenos Dias, mi amigo”! I felt welcomed and belong.

As with Boqueron, the partying and music went on late into the night Sunday. I am so happy to watch people having such a good time. It was not uncommon to have people say hello to me as I was walking around the village. While in the grocery store I met a man that was doing his best to share with me about the bottle of rum I was buying. This rum was recommended to me by Carlos from the resort I had the PR Ice Teas. He was kind and patient, but really wanting to talk with me. It is times like this that I put in the extra energy to learn another language.

I stayed here two days. There has been weather rolling in with rain. The rain isn’t heavy by any standards, but it the most amount of rain I have had since September in the Chesapeake. This gives me a chance to wash the boat down. The island seems to be making the weather. Puerto Rico is fairly hilly. The winds comes from the east, hit the hills and rain. The eastern side of the island is much more lush and green than the west side that was more dry and arid.

03/17/2009 After a couple of days in Puerta Patillas I took off for Roosevelt Roads. This is a mostly closed US Navy base. It was supposed to be the largest US Navy base in the world by square miles. I motored into the harbor and could not raise a harbor master. The base appears to be mostly abandoned, with very little activity.

At the marina there is a small PX that also acts as the marine control. They charged $20 to even anchor there and provided no real services since I am not, or ever was, in the military. I moved on to Isla Pineros.

What a great move that was. I had the whole channel to myself with a lovely little beach on the lee side of the island. It was a quiet little place with no one else around.

03/18/2009 I made my way to Puerta del Ray. This is the largest marina in the Caribbean. I was in desperate need of fuel after motoring against the wind along the coast for the last week. I was also there to check out availability for a slip, rental cars and marine needs for the next part of the trip.

I have my daughters flying in on Tuesday and this place will work out great as a staging place. It is about 40 miles from San Juan with plenty of marine, grocery and department stores in the area that I can use for supplying for the next three months when traveling to Grenada.
After fueling up, I was able to sail for the first time in a couple of weeks and headed for the west end of Vieques. This is the largest of the Spanish Virgin Islands and one of the areas I have wanted to make it to since planning this trip many years ago. I made it to Green Beach on the northwest end of the island just as the sun was setting.