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.