Pelican sitting on the mooring post about 10 feet from Shadowmere. (every pole in the marina has its own Pelican at times!)
Remember;
“A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week!
But I'll be darned if I know how the hellican?”
Quote from ― Dixon Lanier Merritt
We buy Alan his very own Pelican (think fluffy toy) and he calls it Nige. We are no longer worried about Alan... much. Shirley gets a turtle, I get a frog and Gwen will get a Dolphin. They all have stories to tell !....
Alan and I arrive in Puerto Rico after a 4 day passage from Bonaire on the wind. The girls fly in! Gwen and Shirley. Holiday time. After a day or two acclimatising to the tropics in Marina Del Rey (biggest Marina in the Caribbean) we head to the Spanish Virgin Island of Culebra.
Relaxed sailing, we are blessed with 10 to 12 knots of wind rather than the 15 to 20 I had last time I was here.
Gwen, raises the Jolly Roger and we look around to see what we can pillage and wotnot.
The drink is good
And we even manage to make our own Pina Coladas again
We visit a small island off Culebra and all 4 of us dive from the shore. A pleasant 40-50 foot sprockle.
We get to erect the F*&$% chairs I have been carrying around in Shadowmere since we bought them in Baltimore. (they take up a lot of room and are a bit of a nuisance - they are comfortable when sitting on your own tropical beach though...)
Thar she blows. Mrs McCrum back underwater after a 40 year break. Like a duck to Water...
We also hiked across Culebra to what has been termed the best beach in the Caribbean. Or the Norther Hemispheres depending who you listen to. It was good.
It was pretty nice, bit over marketed as there are many many pretty nice beaches in the Spanish and US Virgin islands.
We spent a couple of days in Culebra - the dinghy dock bar was a big draw - not often you can park your dinghy, climb out and sit at a table 4 feet away and get served good cocktails, beer and food!
We had met Amanda and Micheal from the states in PR and rendezvoused in the lagoon in Culebra and had a meal together.
And then we moved on to the US Virgin Islands. The Spanish ones are part of Puerto Rico but the USVI are a separate overseas territory of the USA. We had to check in although they allowed us to simultaneously check out as long as we left within about 48 hours (or so...)
We skipped St Thomas and went straight to St Johns as I knew it would appeal more. St Johns is mainly a national park (the North coast anyway) and has mooring buoys, good diving and beaches and the bars and restaurants in the main town of St Cruz are lovely.
Our first port of call is this ice cream stall near the dinghy dock. I was given an ice cream on the house because of the long adventure I had had to reach the place - thanks Gwen for arranging it! By the way the lady serving is the spitting image of my cousin Alison (who is now in Canada having been born in Lisburn) I am assured there is no connection. Spooky...
We go snorkelling on some nearby beaches.
Lesser spotted Shirley
Ah, there she is.
We also go to a bar is St Cruz that has an open mic night - but with regulars who turn up and gig together. We enjoy the night -
I really liked the guy playing the spoons! And the guy playing the box!
Three of us trying to get back into the Dinghy, I think the drink is working...
And then we head back, this time going to the second of the two Spanish Virgin Islands - Vieques. We had heard of an amazing lagoon of Bio Luminescence (Phosphorescence) and went to see it - thanks Matt for pointing it out. We anchored in the mouth of Mosquito lagoon near another boat - a Hallberg Rassy 54 which we met later in PR. A bit rolly. We had a snorkel off a nearby beach and then when darkness fell rowed the inflatable into the lagoon. There was a party of Kayakers there who had paid 50 USD for the privilege. Despite its name we heard/saw no mosquitos!
The Bio-luminescence was trully amazing - and I have seen some pretty good examples before - night diving when you switch your torch off and blow bubbles can be amazing too in some places - here the lagoon was shallow and the BL was much better than anything I had seen before.
Lots of small fish darted about leaving a spooky glowing trail behind them. Then big fish came in to chase the smaller fish - 3 or 4 feet long baby sharks or something similar - we could see the dorsal fin and the entire fish - as an eerie green, grey glow and massive trails behind them. Plus of course the boat oars left pools of light behind us.
I didn't mention to the crew until after we had been that a girl had lost her foot in this lagoon due to a shark mistakenly identifying it as a small fish - I made sure we didn't dangle bits overboard. Such a pity that a case of mistaken identity had such consequences.
Unfortunately our cameras failed to record anything - the human eye is amazing in low light conditions. Our cameras less so. This place is well worth a visit!
In the morning we moved a few miles down the coast to have breakfast at anchor off Esperanza to get out of the swell and then we moved onward back to Puerto Rico, accompanied at times by porpoises. We heard later that the HR54 had moved to the same place and had lost her dinghy and outboard - stolen from the shore when they went to a restaurant one night. There had been a number of boats and/or engines stolen from this area. Paradise is not always Paradise.
We went to the "other" marina on the East coast of PR - Palmas del Mar. A quiet adjunct to a sort of golfing community of 3,500 houses. But a lovely marina - mainly empty which is sad and strange. The staff our lovely and helpful, the prices good (buy one and get one free - BOGOFF) and I left the boat here for nearly a month to fly home for a couple of weddings.
The marina has a Pool!
All too soon we say goodbye to Shirley - I am to follow in a week after doing some maintenance to the boat and Alan and Gwen will stay for a bit longer and holiday in San Juan.
When I come back to the boat I will rendezvous with Jens the Swede and Nick the Brit and the three of us will take the boat home - at least to the Azores - a mere 1200 miles from Ireland. If you want further details of PR, the Spanish and US virgin Islands you can look at my earlier blogs