|
Updated March 27, 2011 |
|||
|
| |||
|
In Culebra we did the Culebra things. We had lunch at Mamacita's on my birthday and saw one of their iguanas obligingly posing on the railing
(we soon learned that he (?) was really waiting for his lunch).
We bought postcards and sent them, we watched the ferry come in, and I worked on the guest cabin, trying to get it ready for our granddaughter Alena. We shopped at Milka again, with its varied but unpredictable stock, and we were pleased to discover this year that we could take the dinghy right to a landing in the canal behind the store. |
Peacock Behind Milka's Grocery Store |
||
|
Apart from the much shorter distance to carry our groceries, another benefit was the family of peacocks that live
beside the store. The male felt impelled to threaten us with his fierce display.
After a couple of days we decided it was time to head on, toward Salinas and our mail, so on the morning of the 27th we organized ourselves in a leisurely way, weighed anchor, and headed out of the harbor again. |
Hilltops Leveled for Development, Puerto Patillas |
||
| We ran south to clear Punta del Soldado, then angled southwest, following the deep water, toward Isabel Segunda, on Vieques, then out to the west around Escollo de Arenas, the long shoal off the west end of Vieques. This is territory familiar to generations of Navy navigators, and as we passed the former base at Rosevelt ("Rosey") Roads we wondered what would happen to it. Probably it will take a lot of time, as we know from our experience at home with the former Brunswick NAS. |
The Snug Harbor at Salinas |
||
|
Since it is about a nine-hour run from Culebra to
Salinas, and since we got a fairly late start, we decided to stop for the night in the harbor of
Puerto Patillas, a little fishing town where we have often anchored. Here we found the same development pressure
we had already seen elsewhere. Whole tops of hills were leveled and terraced, ready for building.
The next day we moved on to Salinas; with the heavy southeast sea running we decided not to go in through the reef at Boca del Infierno but to take the safer route that is also used by tugs bringing fuel barges to the power plant at Aguirre. |
The Mountains Over Salinas in the Morning |
||
|
Last year there were very few boats in the harbor and we heard all over that the marine businesses in the town
were suffering, but this year the situation is quite a bit better. Many of the boats are European; I think the
US is relatively cheap for them just now. We enjoyed spending time with Daniel and Emanuelle of Xiphos, for
example, a French couple we had first met in Great Harbour on Jost.
We also met an American couple from Boston, Scott and Dessy and their young son Scott Jr., and Henry, who has single-handed his ketch all over the Caribbean. It seems that a lot of people find Salinas a congenial place to settle, and it is certainly an easy place to live aboard a boat. |
Mangroves at the Marina in Salinas |
||
|
The big push for me in Salinas was to get ready for our first guest, our granddaughter Alena who would spend
10 days of her Spring break with us. To this end I worked at getting the guest cabin bunks installed and making
arrangements with Tradewinds Sails and Canvas to have mattresses made.
The boat had her own ideas, however, and our second day in Salinas the generator sounded a little rough, so I went below and found electrical smoke pouring out. Evidently at least one of the windings is toast. This threatened to slow things down because I need substantial AC to run power tools. So we rented a car from Sid, the local Hertz rep, and found our way to the Guayama mall where we bought an air-cooled generator that we figured would be useful at home during power outages. The dinghy outboard also decided it no longer wanted to run, so after some conversation (at Drake's Bar, of course)with the local mechanical guru we decided to buy a new one. Prices in PR for such things are high, so we finally ordered an engine from North Atlantic Inflatables, in Portland. They were very easy to deal with and shipped the engine down post-haste. Before the engine arrived, however, we rowed back and forth in the little pram we had bought before we left Chebeague. This was all very well for us, but for heavy items like the generator (about 120 lbs.) we towed the inflatable dinghy, which was a heavy pull on a windy day, but we managed all right. |
Alena With Marianne's Cockatoo Zoe | ||
|
In the end we got the generator to the boat, hoisted it aboard with the outboard davit, and hooked it up
(with a little modification) to the boat's shore-power circuitry, so we had AC power.
On the 15th we again rented a car from Sid and drove to the airport in San Juan to pick up Alena. Her flight arrived in the evening and it was almost 11 before we were back on the boat, so she had a long day. The next day we took her around to Tradewinds Sails to meet Marianne, the proprietor, and her cockatoo Zoe. There was an immediate mutual attraction between Alena and Zoe, so Tradewinds became a daily stop. |
Climbing in a Mangrove Thicket (BNP Photo) | ||
|
Barbara taught Alena to row the little pram, and Alena loved it. About every day the two of them would row up
a little channel in the mangroves and explore, climbing on the mangrove roots and looking for crabs. She is very
determined and athletic, but we were surprised she learned so quickly.
Our days quickly developed their own routine. Mornings Barbara and Alena would busy themselves about the boat or walk ashore, perhaps to the panaderia (bakery), passing every small dog and cockatoo on the way. After lunch they would go off in the pram, coming home muddy and happy. |
Barbara and Zoe | ||
|
Meanwhile I worked on the boat, oscillating between
progress in construction and putting out fires. So I would take a break from the bunks and replace the pressure
switch on the fresh water pump, for example.
Most evenings we went to Drake's, where we would all check our email and Alena would post pictures on her Facebook wall. Then, though we sometimes ate out, we would usually come back to the boat for supper as it began to get dark. Alena had her first really ripe local pineapple and pronounced it really different, and the same for the mangoes (free from the fishmarket). |
One of the Brushfires (BNP Photo) | ||
| We knew there were manatees in the harbor; There are warning signs all over with a 5 mph speed limit. One morning I saw a dark shape in the water, and it emerged as a manatee. It was joined by two others, both smaller, and we think it was in fact a family. They swam around the boat for maybe a half-hour and seemed especially interested in the dinghies. Sometimes they disappeared under the water and then came up again. Sometimes they appeared to nuzzle each other. |
Manatees Nuzzling | ||
|
Neither of us had ever seen one this close. A friend later said one can attract them with lettuce or cabbage leaves.
Some days we walked into town to the post office for mail, and someties we walked to the market for groceries, which we hauled back on a wheeled rig of the sort that flight crews used before everyone had rolling suitcases. One change from last year is the appearance of a new supermarket, "Selectos," just a mile from the marina. It replaces the old "Grande," across from the post office, a mile-and-a-half away. The road to Selectos leads through a former sugarcane field, a remnant of the sugar plantation days, and here and there is a stand of cotton, gone wild. |
Sunset, Salinas (ABP Photo) | ||
| Barbara enjoyed buying vegetables at the stand opposite the post office, whose proprietor works from his truck and has set up a tarp from the truck to a fence across the sidewalk. The shaded area is equipped with folding chairs and his friends drop in and chat in the slow periods. He has, among other things, ripe tomatoes, peppers, and softball-sized avocados. As Barbara shops he attends her with a bag for her selections, and when she is finished he calculates a total whose rationale we have yet to determine, but that is never very high. |
A Stand of Cotton on the Way to Selectos | ||
|
On one trip ashore Barbara and Alena went to the fish market and bought some very fresh red snapper, and to the bakery
for fresh bread. On the way they spent a while talking to a friendly grandfather and his small (maybe two-year-old)
grandson who were feeding a very large number of fighting cocks.
Salinas is apparently a cock-fighting center, and the town, or at least Playa Salinas, the shore suburb, houses a huge number of these roosters, who all make their presence known early in the morning. |
Red Sponges and Oysters, Salinas (ABP Photo) | ||
|
All over the south coast the cane fields are being burned over, for whatever reason, and the air is often filled with
a molasses-flavored smoke.
One consequence of the generator problem is that our watermaker will not work, so we have to carry water. This too has become a regular routine. Every trip in and out with the dinghy we carry a couple of water jugs, filling them at the marina and emptying them into our tanks. We determined that we should buy more jugs the first chance we get. |
Street Scene, Salinas Playa | ||
|
Our original intent was to leave for Boqueron, where we have spent time before, as soon as Alena arrived, but
between waiting for parts and the number of things Alena found to do in Salinas that plan soon evaporated. We did
not want her to go home without at least once going somewhere on the boat, however, so we decided to go to the
near-by Isla Caja de Muertos, a park run by the city of Ponce, about two hours away.
So it was that one Tuesday morning we weighed anchor, scrubbing the chain of grass and barnacles as we did so, and headed out of the harbor and off to the westward. |
Adjusting the Sling on the New Outboard (BNP Photo) | ||
| We went inside the "Media Luna" reef (shaped like a half-moon), past Cayos de Caracoles and Cayos Cabezazos, and around the northeast end of Caja de Muertos. The island has beautiful beaches that are much used by people from Ponce who come out in their boats and anchor just off the beach. There are ferries that bring hundreds of people out on the weekends, especially in the summer, but during the week at this time of year things are pretty quiet, which suited us just fine. |
The Vegetable Man Across From the Post Office, Salinas | ||
| We swam from the boat in the water that was as clear as the water in the Bahamas, a big change from the mangrove harbors of Salinas and other places on the south coast. The morning after we arrived we went ashore and walked a well-maintained trail (a road, really) along the shore until we reached a second trail that branches off and led to the lighthouse. |
The Lighthouse at Caja de Muertos, Approaching in the Boat | ||
| The landscape is completely different from Salinas -- it is more like the desert of Arizona except for the vines that grow everywhere. As we branched off the main trail we went from a dirt road to volcanic rock, porous and brittle. Everywhere there are stands of organ-pipe cactus, and a helpful placard explained that the cactus grows when woods are cut down, and it is in turn displaced by shrubbery and eventually new trees. We could see, indeed, places where the cactus plants appeared stressed, covered with white fungus or even rot. |
Desert-like Trail on Caja de Muertos | ||
|
We finally reached the lighthouse, which was originally a grand structure. Like all the lights on Puerto Rico,
it is a tower growing out of the center of the keeper's house. In this case the many windows were plastered up and the
original light structure was in disrepair. Although the light itself is said to work, we did not see it either of the nights we spent there.
This is the last of several lights built in Puerto Rico by the Spanish government. It was completed in 1877, just in time to be turned over to the US after the Spanish-American War, and the finish was originally somewhat more elegant than that of the light on Culebrita, for example. The view from the lighthouse is spectacular and makes the climb worthwhile. |
The Lighthouse on Caja de Muertos | ||
|
We have anchored off Caja de Muertos before, in other years, and Barbara remembered reasonable snorkeling off the
northern end of the island, and since snorkeling was high on the list of Desirable Activities for Granddaughters,
we moved to the north end after returning from our climb. After we were anchored, Barbara taught Alena how to use fins
and a mask and snorkel. At first she was fighting it, but very quickly she got the idea and found she enjoyed it
a lot.
|
Lava Rock on Caja de Muertos | ||
|
Among other things, they found on the bottom a stainless wire drink-holder that a young conch had become
trapped in. I succeeded in springing the shell out of its cage and we soon discovered that it was now home
to a small hermit crab, so we tossed him back overboard to enjoy his new freedom.
The drink-holder was probably lost by accident, but the incident shows how dangerous anything an animal can get trapped in is. The conch shell was very small, and its original occupant probably died because it was unable to find food after growing to the point it was trapped. On the way back to Salinas, Alena steered part of the way and after a short period of uncertainty steadied down and ran a very straight course. It is really surprising how fast she picks up abilities, even with no nautical background at all. Of course steering took great concentration from her as a beginner and tired her quickly. She was soon happy to be relieved and spend a while with her grandmother on deck watching the islands go by. Very shortly before we were due to turn north into Salinas harbor, however, a pair of dolphins daced by across our path, much to Alena's (and our) delight.
|
Organ-Pipe Cactus, Caja de Muertos | ||
|
Friday the 25th came all too soon, and Alena said good-bye to Zoe the cockatoo and to Nancy at Drake's.
She was all excited about going home, but sad to be leaving us and the boat, and the world she had made here
in Salinas. In the morning we once again availed ourselves of one of Sid's cars and headed back to the
airport. After lunch at Subway, only one of us was allowed into security with Alena, and this job fell to Barbara,
so I waited in a bar and took advantage of its Wi-fi.
From the airport we went to West Marine and bought our water jugs, and then headed home. |
Alena Steering | ||
|
The next day, Satuirday, the guest cabin mattresses were finally finished and they are beautiful, in a Persian Green
fabric (Alena slept in the saloon, as one would on many sailboats). We are not expecting any more parts, and our
mail has now gone on to Boqueron, so Monday morning we will leave and go west.
We will have one more slight adventure here; we had intended to buy fuel in Ponce, but found that it is about fifty cents a gallon more expensive than at the marina here. The only catch is that the marina is not really meant for boats of our size, so we will slip in to the fuel dock early in the morning, before the wind is up and hope to get out again before it is too strong. |
Alena Again (BNP Photo) | ||