Okay the pre-requisite 3 (yes that’s right a whole 3) blog fans have written in or phoned or come to the boat and requested that I pull my finger out and continue writing the blog. Okay they only emailed me and one was my god-mother but hey I just paid the 80 bucks to keep the domain name for the next 5 years so I thought I had better do something with it!

So where are we you ask (ok only 3 people asked that question – it would have been 4, but Mum just visited us in Puerto Rico, so she knows). We’re in Puerto Rico. Well more precisely we are in Culebra in the Spanish Virgin Islands, which is part of Puerto Rico and a little to the east (that’s to the right if you look up towards the north pole or to the left if you look down to God’s own country –Australia).

We have done a lot since I last wrote and I will gradually up date you on it and work my way back to Grenada when I last wrote. But here’s where we are at:

Okay we are just anchored round the corner in Ensenada Honda, but Playa Melones (above) is only a short walk away. We are currently waiting on a thermostat for the freezer to be delivered before we head east to St Thomas and make our way down the chain to Grenada by the end of May. Our friends on Kiana (an almost Australian boat) have lent us their PO Box here so we are also getting a new underwater camera and wifi booster delivered as well. So whilst we are waiting we are just enjoying the Margaritas from El Batey bar a short dinghy ride away and celebrating our 18th Wedding Anniversary at Mamacitas  and doing a couple of repairs on the boat while we wait.

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Repairs” you say (well one of the three people who are waiting with baited breath for this blog will have I am sure). Yes, we had the sail from hell on our way here. My entire fault, but what the heck.

We woke up early in Puerto Ferro on Vieques (also a Spanish Virgin Island) and started heading east along the coast in light ESE winds. I was chasing the wind to try and sailing, when I noticed a dark blue area on the chart. It said 2m (we draw 1.3m) so I thought it was safe to go just north of it and continue sailing. As we got closer, I zoomed in a level and the word “Danger” appeared on the chart and the depth changed to a 0.3m minimum. Danger – no shit 0.3m is up above our keels. So Karen headed up to the bow to spot for me as I turned to port to avoid the shoal. Karen yelled back “it’s getting shallower” as I tried to turn further north, but not fast enough as we heard the port hull hit the rocks (yes the ROCKS not soft smooth sandy shoal) at 5 knots and bounced forward into the middle of it. We then tried to figure out how to get off them as we were surrounded. Fortunately it was deeper than the charted 0.3m but slightly less than the 1.3m we draw and the sea was pretty calm, not like it was when we headed into Puerto Ferro the day before.
While I am on the helm trying to figure out what to do, I start smelling burning rubber- what the hell have I done now????!! Have I damaged the engines?????!!! What rubber would be burning???!!! Out of the corner of my eye I spot smoke in the cockpit- What the???!!! There in our highly polished stainless steel fruit bowl, my RRR stubby cooler is at the focal point of the bowl and getting a concentrated dose of the beautiful summer sun and burning a line down its side. Nice science experiment, but not what I needed as I was bouncing along the rocks.....

We contemplated calling the US Coast Guard and even tried once, but with a bit of subtle manoeuvring, shaking of the knees and a nice gentle swell, we eventually floated and bumped our way off the shoal and we headed into Bahia de la Chiva to anchor and check the damage.

Once we were set, I donned the snorkel and fins and headed under the boat. Our fresh new anti-fouling was scratched on both hulls and there was some slight damage to the bottom of the keels, but it was not as serious as it sounded when we hit, then bumped and scrapped along the shoal. We settled our nerves (quite proud of Karen throughout this, not once did she lose it and go incoherent) and decided to keep heading on up to Culebra – but avoiding that shoal by a long way.

Off we head to the west of the shoal, when the GPS loses its fix, and despite how shallow that shoal is it is not real visible until you are on it, so we decide to turn around and head back in to the Bahia to see if we can figure out what is wrong with the GPS, when it gets its fix so we turn back around and head east. Given bad things happen in threes, Karen was pretty sure we were right.
WRONG. As we were coming up to Punta Este, Karen again at the bow now spotting for me as we sailed through a plethora of fishing buoys , I heard a bang from behind me, and one of the braces from the new wind generator had come away and the wind gen was now free and only supported in the bow stern axis of the boat, as we rolled around the end of the island (of course rolling across the beam in the unsupported direction. So Karen came back and played brace to the wind gen as we dropped the sails and motored around the point to get the waves behind us and smooth the ride. Once we were heading NNW to Culebra it was smooth enough to get the win gen down and lashed to the life lines.

So I have repaired the scratches with my new Scuba Gear bought on Vieques (talk about timing) from BlackBeard Sports (101 Munoz Rivera St, Isabella Segunda www.blackbeardsports.com).



Redone the wind Generator and drank a number of beers out of the RRR stubby cooler to ensure it functioned properly.
Last weekend, it felt like we were in Sydney harbour with 5 Aussie boats in the harbour (ourselves, Attitude, Executive, Boundless and one other). The radio was alive with voices with no accents for the first time in our experience!

This afternoon we were heading over to Playa Flamenco (reportedly one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean), but the service station ran out of gasoline so the publicos (minibuses) were only running occasionally. So tomorrow we are heading there with Bill and Jeanette with whom we enjoyed a delicious meal aboard their boat Sea Lion) in a hire car.

Well I could say that this is the first in a long series of blogs on our second Caribbean season, but let’s take it one blog at a time.
Cheers

Matt & Karen