Adventures with Christine - Day 3 thru 5

On Monday, May 24th we woke up in a calm harbor off Culebra that called for a banana pancake breakfast. Afterwards, Andrew & I demonstrated the dinghy launch routine for Christine, which is no small feat that includes flipping the dinghy over on deck, pumping it up, hoisting it over the life lines to drop it in the water and lower on the 114 lb. motor... worthy of a big breakfast! 

We rode to shore, did a walk about town, took some silly tourist photos, scoped out a restaurant for dinner and planned some critical re-provisioning of rum & ice. The town was nearly deserted and most restaurants closed but we found Mamacita’s on the canal open for business. 

The lone open grocery was on high alert for COVID with a line outside the tiny shop and a strict shop keeper taking in one person at a time. There was a hand washing station outside and 6 foot markers inside throughout the entire store where the proprietor was policing your mask wearing and distance from other shoppers, as well as running the register and letting each new person in after he checked one out. Apparently, Culebra has a good record of low cases and this business man is probably personally responsible for it!

At Mamacita’s that evening, Christine experienced her first Mofongo (a plantain and yuca mash in the shape of a bowl stuffed with garlic shrimp or chicken & steak) while Andrew and I enjoyed the fresh grouper. For entertainment, a group of ladies in thong bikinis paddled by on their stand up paddle (SUP) boards with blue under lighting.

On Tuesday, we motored out of the bay to a reef in hopes of some snorkeling and getting out our SUP. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see and it wasn’t as protected as we had hoped so we had lunch and went back to the original anchorage. After some naps and a swim, that evening, under a cloudy sky with the full moon, we showed Chris how to make Chicken Coconut Curry with tumeric. More to come on that...

On Wednesday, woke up with yellow nails! She was helping me chop the tumeric and there was yellow all over everything she touched including the grater and the dish towel she used to clean up. Since our plan for the day was to sail back to Fajardo, we hoisted the main and with the wind directly behind us, put the preventer on for a long, hot and slow motor sail. We noticed that Chris’ nails were clearing up in the sun so in an attempt to entertain ourselves, we experimented with the other yellow items. By the end of the day, we had a new discovery: Tumeric can be removed from fingernails, the plastic part of a grater (but not so much the metal part) and dish towels by setting them out in the sun!

Before treatment:

After treatment:

P.S. The bruise on Christine’s leg is complements of Billy Ruffn’s steering wheel mount. Look out for that if you ever come sailing with us!

Adventures with Christine - Day 1 & 2

On Saturday, May 22, 2021, Christine arrived at Puerto del Rey Marina around 3pm after a 4 hour flight out of Philadelphia and a 1 1/2 hour taxi ride from San Juan. By 3:15, we were off the dock and headed for  Isla Palominos, intended to be a short motor sail into a pleasant anchorage for the evening. We arrived to a relatively crowded bay with loud Puerto Rican style disco music blaring for the floating noodle parties. Oh well, if you can’t stop them, join them. Our friend, Arturo assured us that most of the crowd would leave just before sundown and sure enough most did, except for the loudest one that was closest to us! As we had anchored and mooring balls were freeing up, we decided to weigh anchor and check out another location. Unfortunately, the ball we picked up had a frayed line and was so protected from the wind that the boats in the area were pointed in every which direction. We decided to slip the mooring and re-anchor in the breeze. There was a bit of a storm coming but the boats were spaced out nicely and pointing into it. We went below to prepare a shrimp curry for dinner and have a pleasant sleep.

I’m usually up a couple times at night, especially when at anchor, checking the lines and making sure we are holding ground. Although it was blowing 15-20 most of the night, we were still lined up with the same lights on shore and boats in the bay... until we weren’t! Around 6am (when I’m usually in my deepest sleep), I heard a loud metal crunching sound that’s never good on a boat!! I woke Andrew as I climbed over him to check it out. He rolled over and said “Probably the anchor line”. After a second metal crunching, the next sound I heard was a frantic women’s voice with a Spanish accent saying “Alo? ALO?” At this point, Andrew was up and bolting out the companionway in his underwear and I was headed the other direction to get a top on. By the time I made it topside, Andrew had the motor started and the wheel on. (We take the wheel off when at anchor to make a larger cockpit.) The wind was howling, the waves were probably 2-3 foot in the harbor and it was piercing rain that made our eyes bloodshot. All I could see was the bowsprit of a power boat and it’s anchor chomping on our stern. While Andrew tried to move us forward, our visitor, her shipmate and I were trying to unhook the anchor and push the boats apart. After a few panicky minutes, we finally separated and got to the task of pulling up our anchor, which apparently did not hold. Oh, and good morning, Christine! How do you like sailing with us so far!! 

Andrew has taken great pride in doing a lot of research in finding the “best anchor in the world” and up to this point, the Sarca Exel had been doing splendidly but the wind had veered 180 degrees and a squall hit with gusts up to 30 knots. Wonder how the 2nd best anchor or the tattered mooring would have done? When we dragged down on the moored power boat, it’s pulpit knocked our dinghy motor askew, bent the propeller, bent the stainless tubing that supports our wind generator and scratched a few chunks out of our toe rail paint but in all, we were fortunate. No one was hurt and it didn’t look like we did any damage to the other boat. On the way out of the harbor, we motored by to check it out and give them our contact info.

With the wind out of the north, the plan for Day 2 was to sail to Culebra but it shifted to the ENE and it was a bit of a slog. We motor-sailed for four hours before finally arriving at Ensanada Honda Bay, a well protected harbor with a view of the town dock, a closed restaurant, a draw bridge that never draws and people-less buildings with driveways that went straight up into the hills. 

Upon finding what looked like good holding for our anchor, we saw a note on the chart that said “Note B - Mariners are cautioned against anchoring, dredging or trawling in this area due to the possible existence of unexplored ordinance.” With all the boats anchored around us, we figured there was no way ordinance could be a problem. Not sure what Christine was thinking at this point but we once again we settled in for a good meal and a calm night’s sleep.

A week in Fajardo, PR

Billy Ruff’n has been at the Puerto del Rey marina in Fajardo, Puerto Rico for a week now and Andrew and I have a short list of what we’ve accomplished and a longer one of what still needs to be done! It’s pretty hot (88+) and we’ve had only enough motivation to get to some of the mundane projects like provisioning, cleaning winches, scrubbing dock lines and washing dirty rags. 

Through our friend Arturo, we met a brilliant rigger named Jorge. A wiry, energetic guy who ostensibly came by to look at our broken winch, but within 5 minutes of being on the boat, found another slightly more ominous problem. A piece of our boom that has a patch on it caught his attention. We weren’t even sure of the story behind the patch but upon further inspection, Jorge found a small crack. Fortunately, it’s forward of the vang connection where the pressure is less (than if it were aft of the vang) and Andrew addressed it temporarily with punch holes. In the meantime, we won’t be strapping down the boom.

After initially suggesting we have the broken plastic part of our winch fabricated on a 3D printer, Jorge confirmed that the part was unobtainable (and probably not reproducible) but he could help us find and install a new one. The next day, Jorge had an almost new Harken winch that he could secure for us for $100 plus shipping. Of course, the next question was, where is it coming from and at what cost? The answer was Florida for probably $75. We couldn’t get our money out fast enough. Hopefully, he doesn’t make up for that deal on the installation!

Other adventures since arriving in PR include driving a lime green Element to the grocery store, where I saw my first elevated guard station in the parking lot; discovering a new favorite rum (Don Q) and beer (Medalla) and enjoying some great food, starting with the octopus salad & fish tacos from the marina restaurant, La Cueva Del Mar; Cuban sandwiches from the local breakfast/lunch shack, Botero’s Galley, and giant mangos, from Arturo’s house.

The boat is clean, stocked up and ready for our friend to arrive for some sailing, snorkeling and visits to the local islands around Puerto Rico for the next few days.

Puerto Rico - our new home for the month

After 9 months on the hard and another month in the water, Billy Ruff’n left St. Lucia on May 13, 2021. Sailing with just the two of us, Andrew and I set her on a course of 328 degrees magnetic, headed directly for Vieques, Puerto Rico. The main was up and jib out before we got out of the bay. We started with a single reef, 12 - 17 knots of wind out of the East and 3-5 foot seas. Easing along at an average of 7.5 knots under mostly sunny skies... pretty much ideal conditions. Shortly after passing two ships outside the harbor, it occurred to us that we hadn’t seen them on the Automatic Identification System (AIS). We’d checked all our instruments before leaving, but it appeared the one that helps us see other boat traffic wasn’t working. I wonder, when setting out on any voyage, what is going to happen this time... it’s always something!

Our first day out, we sped along seeing 10.7 knots at one point surfing down one of the bigger waves (that got to about 7 ft). We popped on the radar at night so we could steer around storms and boat traffic. Andrew and I swapped watches every two hours, pretty much uneventfully throughout the star lit evening into the next day.

The second day, while I was on watch (with my eyes closed, as our former boat partners will attest), I felt a sudden dip and slowing of the boat. My first thought was that we’d run into a fish trap. Andrew dismissed it as a wave and went back to bed. Later in the day, when he was up and assessing things, Andrew noticed that our wind indicator had crapped out. Other than the wind vane at the top of the mast, we couldn’t tell true wind direction or speed. It felt like the boat was really slow. We started to think we might have picked up something on the rudder, keel, (or worse) the prop. We pulled in the jib and tacked to see if we would shake something lose. We luffed up and tried to drift backward. We tried every maneuver we could think of before turning the motor on, to figure out why we were now averaging only 5.5 knots with what felt like similar winds to the prior day. 

Eventually, the wind completely dropped out, and after Andrew hand turned the propeller assuring that it wasn’t obstructed, we cranked up the engine. We motor-sailed all that evening and through the next day until we arrived at Puerto del Rey Marina in Fajardo, Puerto Rico at 16:15 on Saturday, May 15th. We dropped the main into our new sail bag with ease and pulled into slip #1268 at 16:30. Our friend, Arturo, who lives here and runs charters, was on the dock to help with our lines. We chatted with him from the boat while we completed our online customs arrivals requirements and as soon as we got the okay, he was on board to enjoy some celebratory beers. In talking to another sailor on the dock, we surmised that the slowing of the boat was likely due to currents that we had no idea would be so strong in the middle of the Caribbean.

Sunday, after a good long sleep, Andrew tried to remember how to switch the boats electricity from 220 to 110 while I explored the marina and surroundings to figure the lay of our new habitat. The marina is apparently larger than any on the U.S. East Coast and has over 1000 slips. They actually have golf carts to take you to and from your boat and a huge restaurant at the end of the peer. To walk from our slip to the restaurant is two sides of a good city block!

This week, we’ll be re-provisioning, cleaning up the boat and getting our new neighbor (who turns out to be an electronics wiz) to look at our instruments while we anticipate a visit from our good friend, Christine, who will be joining us for some cruising fun soon!!

What to do in St. Lucia after breaking out of jail!

For a little more than a week, we’ve been released from quarantine, enjoying the view from the marina and we’ve continued to keep ourselves busy with boat work, despite my pleas to Andrew to get to know more of the island and have some fun! We tested our new Spectra water maker while still out in the bay and found that it efficiently makes about 8 liters of good freshwater out of saltwater in about an hour. 

We came into the dock to take advantage of gourmet store provisioning, which really just means you can get most everything you want as opposed to the island version of everything. For instance, when you order breakfast sausage from the island store, you get a 3lb unidentified package with 50 grayish looking links when all you really wanted was 8 links of Jimmy Dean. 

On one of the hotter days, we laid out 300 feet of new chain on the dock in order to install colored coded markers every 25 feet. It took hours to update computers, software and apps to test our Iridium Go communications equipment, which enables us to get weather files and make phone calls, text and email while offshore. And finally, we got our gorgeous new sail cover installed & fitted and ordered a few other covers (including a dinghy motor cover) to keep the sailmaker busy. 

At sundown, we met up with some old friends (Bill and Maureen on Kalunamoo and Geri, from Gros Islet) and met new ones (Steve & Jenny on Tanglewood and Gill & Alasdair on Star Charger), while enjoying the Wednesday evening J24 races between the boardwalk and the docks. On what was supposed to be one of our last evenings, we enjoyed meeting up with new friends (Ray & Nadine on Mojito) at Salt, one of our favorite restaurants in Rodney Bay.

I finally got to take an island tour with the most able & interesting driver, Paul. He knew all about the history of the islands and who lived in the big houses up in the hills with the most spectacular views of the ocean. We enjoyed a visit to the (thankfully dormant) volcano and The Pitons in Soufriere and had the best chicken roti yet at Mon Amie.

Today, the boat is cleaned up and ready to go but we are sitting and waiting for a good weather window to Puerto Rico. We have asked Chris Parker, the weather guru, to advise us and we think he’ll agree, holding off a few days will be a more comfortable 10 - 15 knots out of the East/Southeast with 3-5 foot seas as opposed to the current 20 knots, gusts to 30, waves 5-7 feet! What would you do with a crew of two on a 47 foot boat? I think we’ll continue to enjoy St. Lucia!!