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!!