Isla Culebrita

Amanda took the ferry from Culebra to mainland Puerto Rico to fetch Margaret who flew into San Juan on Friday afternoon. They spent Friday night in San Juan, took surfing lessons Saturday morning and took the $2 ferry back to Culebra Saturday afternoon. They seemed to have a great time surfing despite the bruises. While they were sightseeing in San Juan, I was continuing with the boat chores. I installed a 40 amp alternator on the genset which promptly broke off after about an hour running. And I reinstalled the reef lines, only to find that I had installed the shorter of the two reef lines as the second reef line so it was too short. We had bought new lines for the reef lines, the red reef line was previously the second reef, the green reef line was the first reef. I guess the previous owner had damaged the second reef line and moved it to the first reef line (which is shorter). Anyway the bottom line is that the colors are reversed which will take some getting used to. I had to fish the lines through the boom twice which was a major pain in the butt.

I was waiting for the girls at Mamacita's after the 3pm ferry but got tired of waiting by 4:30 and went looking for them. The ferry had just arrived and we met just as they had gotten off the ferry. We had a few drinks at Mamacita's before going back to the boat. One of Mamacita's signature drinks is the bushwacker which they charge $8 for. I was watching the bartender make them and realized we had all the ingredients on the boat. Equal parts vodka, rum, baileys, amaretto, kahlua, and coco lopez. Delicious. After a pitcher of bushwackers we dinghyed back to Mamacita's for dinner which was also delicous.

Sunday morning we took the publico to Flamenco beach and lounged around for a few hours enjoying the wonderful water and beach. We don't often make the effort to make a special trip to the beach living on the boat, but had a great time. The water was warm and calm and we had pina coladas and empanadas.

After returning to the boat we had our Thanksgiving dinner. Amanda made turkey, stuffing, mashed potatos, gravy, cranberry, pumpkin pie (from scratch!) and we had picked up some bread at the local Culebra bakery, Pandeli. It was a delicious dinner and we are still enjoyin the leftovers. We tried to run the air conditioning to counteract the heat generated by the oven, but the boat gods had other plans. After about an hour, the main drive belt on the genset broke.

Monday we wanted to show Margaret some more of the local environs and so headed over to Isla Culebrita. The typical anchorage is on the north side, but since there were 5 ft northerly swells it was a bit too rough on the north side. We saw a bunch of empty moorings on the south side so picked one up. We literally have the whole island to ourselves. There is no one else here. The south side has a lot of coral and we enjoyed snorkeling for a while. Margaret spotted a 6 ft nurse shark which was exciting. After snorkeling for a while, the girls read their books and I fixed the generator (sucessfully). Amazingly we are miles from mainland Culebra, but I am still managing to pick up a wi-fi signal. We brought a great wi-fi antenna back to the boat, and it has already paid for itself in the first week. I can see a couple houses on the hill a few miles from here, so we must be picking up one of them.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we are planning to sail down to the south coast of Vieques and explore some of the anchorages down there before delivering Margaret back to San Juan to fly home on Saturday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The past couple of days have been a final push to get the boat ready before my sister Margaret comes for a visit on the 27th. We managed to put the sails back on, reinstall the main lazy jacks, flag halyards, and jib topping lift, maintained the winches, and a bunch of other things. Kevin went up the mast twice to reinstall various lines which we had taken down in preparation for hurricane season. We try to be as productive as possible from 7am until it gets too hot to do anything. It's been soul-suckingingly hot and humid here. We have a weatherstation/clock that tells you the temp (88-plus degrees inside the boat) and the humidity (50 to 60 percent). It also has an indicator that is either a happy face or sad face depending on conditions (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, etc.). We have yet to see the happy face displayed. :(

We are anchored in a harbor lined with mangroves so the mosquitoes are unrelenting as well. One of the bartenders at Mamacita's calls Off! the "eau de Culebra" because everyone has to wear it to keep the bugs at bay. This morning we had Thanksgiving brunch at Mamacita's; they had awesome food and the drinks (bushwhackers) were just what we needed. Tonight we are grilling steaks on Solstice. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Carlos Rosario Marine Preserve, Culebra

We left the Puerto del Rey Marina at first light on Sunday, making the three-hour passage to Culebra under power. Both engines seemed to be working fine and neither one was belching black smoke so that's always good.

The past few days have been spent fixing the genset (Kevin) and cleaning up the interior of the boat (me). Kevin spent a backbreaking day hunched over in the genset locker, cleaning parts, fixing connectors, and sweating like crazy. His hard work paid off, as he was able to get the engine to turn over after seven straight hours of labor. We now can recharge our batteries when they get low, which means that we can run the watermaker (which also works -- hooray) to keep our tanks topped off. Kevin definitely has the magic touch when it comes to anything mechanical. He is ecstatic to be back on the boat and in his element.

For me it has been more of a struggle. First off, every cabinet, closet, locker and interior storage space was filled with what looks like light yellow dust but is actually mold. Every time I opened a new cupboard I was thoroughly appalled and disgusted by what I saw (and smelled). I had a few minor psychological breakdowns. I didn't want to touch anything, let alone cook and sleep here! Eventually I just threw on a respirator and started cleaning. All the dishes and galley cupboards are now spotless and I've worked my way through about 80% of the rest of the boat. It's slow going but I am getting there.

Yesterday afternoon we were able to do some snorkeling. We are on a mooring in a marine preserve and the reef is just a few hundred feet from the boat. The coral heads are teeming with sea life. We've pretty much had the place to ourselves except for a couple of daycharter snorkeling excursions. Today after lunch we will head into Dewey (the only town on the island of Culebra). Hopefully there will be a package waiting for us containing the parts Kevin needs to fix both toilets.

Leaving the Marina

[Kevin's Post]After five hectic days in the marina we are ready to get going. Everything is put away and all the critical systems appear to be working. I fixed the instruments this morning, there was a corroded connector on the autopilot preventing any of the instruments from getting power. I got one of the toilets working, after tearing it apart four times. Ironically, afterwards I found a big box of spare parts for the toilets that would have solved all my problems. I had already ordered spare parts which will be waiting for us in Culebra. Between the newly found parts and the new parts I ordered I should be able to get the other one working. Aren't you glad your toilets work on gravity alone? Ok, I know, enough about the toilets.

Some ex-boater friends of ours, Mike and Renee, previously of Jacumba, are now living in St. Kitts and stopped by Solstice while they were in Puerto Rico doing some shopping. It is difficult or even impossible to find decent clothing, housewares, etc., at reasonable prices on many islands in the Caribbean. Many locals will travel to Puerto Rico just to go shopping, or have family bring things while they are visiting. It was fun catching up with them and hearing about life on St. Kitts. We had some drinks on the boat, then went to a local pizza place.

Tomorrow if all goes as planned, we are motoring about 20 miles to the west coast of Culebra. We haven't had time to put the sails on yet, but since our destination is straight upwind it doesn't make much difference. Trying to sail straight upwind on windpower alone is way too much work for anyone but the purist. Besides, it will be a good shakedown for the engines after their lengthy storage.

In the Water

[Kevin's Post]We couldn't have asked for better weather for our launch than what we had yesterday. There was hardly a cloud in the sky and very light winds. We were both pretty nervous about maneuvering the boat for the first time in 18 months and discovering exactly what equipment did and did not work. Our objectives for the day were to back the boat out of the travelift bay, head over to the fuel dock to top off the diesel, and tie up in our slip. Hopefully without hitting anything. I had run both the diesel engines for a while in the yard, so I knew the engines would at least start, but we weren't sure what other problems might appear. Before we were even in the water we discovered that all the navigation instruments were dead. No depth sounder, no wind speed, no wind direction. Wind speed and wind direction are useful tidbits of information when trying to dock a 10 ton boat. Fortunately the wind was light so the lack of instrumentation wouldn't complicate things too much. We backed out of the bay and were pleased to discover that the transmissions on both engines seemed to be working just fine. We were also pleased to discover that the starboard engine was no longer belching black smoke like it was before we put the boat in storage. I had spent a day in the yard replacing the exhaust elbow on this engine thinking that it might be the problem and apparently it was. We docked at the fuel dock like old pros and after fueling radioed ahead for some dockhands to help us tie up in the slip. The whole thing was fairly anticlimactic really.

After we were secure in the slip, we began to test the equipment we couldn't check out in the yard. We were relieved to find that the air conditioning worked just fine and also the water pump (for the faucets, showers, etc.) The outboard doesn't look or sound pretty (it never did), but at least it started up and runs in forward and reverse. Neither of the toilets are working and the port shower sump is DOA also. So, it looks like we will be using the marina facilities for a while until I can fix these problems.

It would have been nice to relax after 5 days toiling in the boat yard, but we only had the car for another 24 hours so had to hurry and provision the boat. We were up very late last night and early again this morning trying to organize in the hours we couldn't be out shopping. Today it was go, go, go as we tried to hit Sam's Club, Grande (local grocery store), K-mart, West Marine, Pep-Boys, and also get the propane refilled. Miraculously, we managed to get all our errands done and return the car on time. We'll spend the next few days getting things organized and making repairs and hopefully leave the marina after the weekend.

The marina is very large and has a golf cart service that picks you up and drops you off at your boat. Today we shared a cart with a couple on another boat a few slips down and they invited us over for drinks this evening. We took some rum we had bought in St. Vincent a couple years ago and spent the evening chit-chatting about boating life and sipping rum & cokes. Not a bad end to our first day back in the water.

Go for launch!

[Kevin's Post] Solstice is officially ready to splash tomorrow. If they can get the travelift to the boat without getting stuck in the mud. That's a big "if". We awoke this morning to the sound of thunder and pouring rain and knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant day in the yard. Driving to the boatyard the roads were so bad I was wondering if we were going to end up as one of those half submerged disabled vehicles we always see on the local news in AZ during monsoon season. With every puddle I'm thinking, "I wonder how deep that is?" The water pressure in the storm drains was enough that we saw at least one manhole cover that had come off and others had geysers coming through them shooting several feet in the air. There were plenty of Puerto Ricans out driving though so I figured it was safe enough, and we did make it to the yard just fine. We are very motivated to get this boat in the water. If it rains much more, the water will come to the boat and we won't need the lift.

We spent the rainy day finishing a few odd chores and organizing the interior of the boat. There has hardly been room to walk around for the past several days as every square inch of floor space was covered with stuff we hauled in from Phoenix. So we made the best of the rainy weather by focusing on interior chores. We also needed to make room for provisions. Before we head out for any length of time, we try to stock up on as much non-perishable and frozen food as we can fit on the boat. Every place we go generally has small markets, but the choices are limited and prices are high. In Puerto Rico, the grocery stores are excellent, other islands not so much. They even have Sam's Club here. It's not quite like your Sam's club, they sell stuff like whole pigs and septic tanks in addition to the regular fare. We made one trip to Sam's Club today to get the unrefrigerated items and spent almost $700. We'll go again for cold/frozen items either tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm still looking for someplace I can store a pig on the boat.

If all goes as planned, tomorrow we will be sleeping on the boat in a slip at the marina. Keep your fingers crossed.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Bolt

It's Sunday afternoon and I am sitting in the air-conditioned hotel room typing this, while Kevin is toiling away at the boatyard in the hot Puerto Rican sun. He won't allow me to help work on the boat today, but more on that later.

Yesterday morning started off so smoothly. We had found exactly the type of oil Kevin needed for the two saildrives. We had also discovered a leftover can of bottom paint from our last haulout that was three-quarters full. It will be just barely enough to cover the bows and transoms and a few other areas that are bare to the gelcoat. Kevin got to work on changing the saildrive oil while I started masking for painting the bottom. I was just finishing that task when I heard some quiet cursing coming from under the saildrive. Moments later, Kevin walked up and said "We are screwed. I stripped the threads on the port saildrive plug." He was holding a tiny bolt in his hand and I said, "That's no problem, I'm sure you can take that bolt over to the chandlery and find another one that's a similar size and shape." He shook his head, "No, you don't understand. I didn't strip the threads on the bolt, I stripped the threads INSIDE the saildrive itself." Oh. This was a major problem. The saildrives are the parts that attach the propellers to the diesel engines. They are underwater all the time so the bolt has to fit perfectly to prevent water getting in, but it also has to be removable so that you can change the saildrive oil every year or so. Our saildrives are old models that aren't sold anymore, and even if they were it would be very expensive to replace the whole drive. So Kevin was right. We were indeed screwed.

Of course these types of things always happen on a weekend so the Volvo mechanic Kevin tried calling did not pick up. After quite a bit of thought, Kevin went to Sears with the idea of picking up a tapping set to make a bigger hole in the saildrive. Risky, but what else could we do? He also went into the office to postpone our launch two more days, to Tuesday instead of Sunday. While he did that I took an inventory of all the canned food we had left aboard the boat. Note to self: next time don't leave ANYTHING edible aboard. Most of the cans were fine but very rusty on the outside (yuck). But there were a few where the tops and bottoms were puffing out. Mmm...botulism, anyone? So quite a few cans went into the garbage bin. I'm still not sure we want to eat the stuff that's in the rusty cans, but we'll clean them off and see if they're okay, I guess.

Kevin returned with a tapping set and a slightly bigger bolt and started work on drilling out the hole in the saildrive. Meanwhile I kept going with the prep work for painting. I began wet sanding the areas where the new coats of paint would go and by the time I'd finished, Kevin was also done with the new threads for the new bolt. After shortening the new bolt with a hacksaw, it fit perfectly. Way to go, Kevin! We had an hour left until the yard closed so we wanted to get at least one coat of paint on. We were both painting, but I was wearing a bunny suit which was very hot. Stupidly, neither one of us were wearing masks. After forty-five minutes I started feeling headachy and nauseated from the fumes and went to sit in the shade. Kevin finished up the first coat himself and we cleaned up and went back to the hotel, which is where the fun started.

We both showered and were planning to celebrate our saildrive victory at a local sit-down restaurant, rather than yet another night of fast food. But what's that saying? "If you want to make God laugh, make plans". Before we could leave for dinner my headache went from mild to severe and I was soon puking my guts out. Kevin did a quick internet search on my symptoms and suspected I had heat exhaustion and dehydration, so he ran out to get some gatorade and pedialyte. But I couldn't even keep two sips of any liquid down without making another mad dash to the bathroom. It felt like the mother of all hangovers. After four hours of misery, Kevin finally convinced me that we had to go to the hospital.

We drove to the hospital around 10pm, past an odd gathering of fifty or so men on horseback weaving in and out of traffic (???! At first I thought I was hallucinating, but Kevin saw it too so I guess that's just the typical party scene on Saturday night in Fajardo). We managed to find the ER and there were a few staffers who spoke English, thankfully. The doctor advised that I was definitely dehydrated from not drinking enough water, but that the paint fumes were what probably did me in. I was given a bag of IV fluids laced with pepcid and reglan to quell the nausea. (Which, ironically, were the exact same medications we gave to our cat Boris every day for the last few months of his life...it was weird to be on the other end of the needles this time). It didn't take long for me to start feeling much better and by 2am the fluids had finished. I was discharged and we headed back to the hotel and fell into bed, exhausted.

So today poor Kevin is slaving away at the boat, while I lounge at the hotel. He plans to put a couple more coats of paint on (while wearing a MASK this time!) and run both engines. So it's not a total disaster and we are making some progress. In fact I *think* we might even still launch on Tuesday as planned, but I can faintly hear God laughing (and I can CLEARLY hear loud peals of thunder) so we'll just have to wait and see what old Solstice throws at us next.

"Life of Leisure": Day Two

I won't bore you all with the long litany of tasks we had set for ourselves this morning. Instead let me summarize: if it moves and it's not supposed to, use duct tape; if it doesn't move and it should, break out the WD-40. That last part came in very handy today. Seized bolts were the theme of the day: three bolts on the starboard engine, every bolt on the "Beast" (our dinghy outboard), the zippers on the dodger were stuck, the windlass would not budge an inch, and even the lock to the front door needed a jolt of dubya-dee.

Did I mention that it was 91 degrees (a record) with 69 percent humidity? Recently living through two dry Arizona summers did not prepare us for the amount of perspiration a single person can generate in those conditions. Kevin was soaked through by 9:30 am. He valiantly replaced the starboard exhaust elbow while standing in an ever-expanding puddle of his own sweat (the ambient temp inside the boat was considerably hotter and more humid than the daily forecast). I was ankle-deep in squishy mud while cleaning the waterline and I kept smelling this awful smell...by midday I realized with horror that it was me -- not the mud -- that reeked. Ah, this glamorous life!

Back to Work

This morning we arrived at the boatyard with a mix of anticipation and dread. Funny thing about boats: parts break, rust, seize, and/or disintegrate whether you are using it constantly or not. So we weren't sure what to expect after eighteen months of Solstice sitting idle.

The day started off with a light drizzle. It's been raining all week so when we pulled up to the boat we saw that it was perched above a shallow sea of mud and muck. We climbed up the ladder and removed our flip-flops immediately so as not to track gunk everywhere. We needn't have bothered. The cockpit was covered in sludgy slime and small pebbles. There was even a small garden of weeds sprouting on the underside of the bimini ceiling. With a sigh we went to the door. There on the doormat was a soggy dead tree frog. No joke. I think I actually said to Kevin, "You know, we don't have to go inside. We could just turn around and go back home. No one has to know." But Kevin could not be tempted.

Our spirits were lifted the minute we opened the door. First off, and most importantly, the boat did NOT smell like bilge and mildew (much). So that was a great start. Other pleasant surprises were that our new wi-fi antenna and flat-panel TV had both arrived without incident and were waiting for us in the salon. Priorities, right? So we got straight to work unloading the van with all our luggage (three fifty-pound duffle bags). Then it was time for the moment of truth: removing the new table from the crate. Kevin had packed it so well it was practically encased in carbonite. We had to rip the spray foam off in chunks before we finally got to the saran-wrapped table itself. Not a scratch...success!!!

Elated from that small victory we got to work re-installing the trampolines. The entire front of the boat is made up of two big sheets of mesh instead of hard fiberglass. We had removed both of them for hurricane season, which made walking around on deck kind of risky since neither of us wanted to start off cruising season with a nasty fall. While we were working on that, our boat caretaker Betsy rolled up and apologized for not having the boat decks clean and ready for us before we got here. She then proceeded to thoroughly clean every surface of the boat exterior. So overall we are pretty pleased with the shape the boat is in. Don't get me wrong, there are a million things to do in the next few days before we can get the boat back in the water: change about five differnt kinds of oil, run the engines, re-install the outboard, un-seize the windlass, load the anchor chain, and wax the fiberglass to name a few. Oh, and touch up the bottom paint. Which is going to be difficult since we just found out that our brand of bottom paint was discontinued at some point in the last eighteen months. Oh well. The yard closed at five and we had hot showers and cable TV waiting for us back at the hotel. There's only so much you can do in a day.

Puerto Rico!

[Kevin's Post] Our day began today at 4:30 AM Phoenix time, and now sixteen hours later I'm laying in bed in Fajardo listening to the tree frogs which are so loud even the blasting air conditioning can't drown them out. Back in Phoenix we spent the last several days packing up the nearly 300 pounds of junk we wanted to bring to the boat. Our bags must have been a TSA nightmare with a wide variety of unusual metal and electronic items scattered among dive gear, books, clothes, and other sundries. I think we have about half a diesel engine in there. Each of our three duffels were carefully weighed and arranged to come in just under the 50 lb limit. Adding to the fun was the 85lb crate containing the new boat table. I've been worrying about how we were going to get this to the boat for months now, turns out the cheapest way was to just check it as baggage and pay the oversize/overweight fees. I had to custom design the crate specifically to come in under the max weight and dimensions allowed by American Airlines. The whole table is encased in spray-in polyurethane foam and sandwiched between two pieces of plywood. At check-in we explained that it was a table. The woman checking us in said she always travels with her table too. Everyone's a comedian. I haven't opened the crate yet, but judging from the outside it appears to be in pretty good shape.

We didn't arrive in San Juan until 8:30PM local time and by the time we got to Fajardo it was nearly 11, so we haven't been to see the boat yet. That will be first on the agenda tomorrow. We are spending a few nights in a hotel until we can get the boat in the water. We were tentatively planning to launch on Saturday, but the forecast is for unusually rainy weather due to the remnants of Hurricane Ida, so that will probably slow down our preparations. Driving to Fajardo, everything seemed pretty dry so we're hoping the forecast is wrong. Tomorrow will be an interesting day, as we discover what kind of condition the boat is in after sitting unused for 18 months. More to come. . .