East down the Puerto Rico coast

After a enjoyable time in Puerto Real and topping off our fuel tank with every drop of cheap fuel we could take on, we needed to begin our passage east toward the Spanish virgins! Unlike our other passages we weren't going to get a unusual beneficial weather window, forecast was the normal one for this time of year, wind out of the east 20-25 knots.


Reality hit us as we rounded the point at Cabo Rojos and the lighthouse guarding it, bam 4-6 ft waves and 20 knots on the nose! So we started a seemingly endless series of tacks out to sea and then back toward shore, motor sailing our way east carving out eating careful to stay just enough off the wind to avoid the bashing and the filling loosening battering that heading to close to the wind produced with our flat bottom production boat!

We decided after 6 hrs of this beating to tuck tail and head for a he safety of a anchorage about 19 miles from Cabo Rojos called Gilligans island! Protected from the waves by mangroves and reef it would allow us to rest and rethink our plan to sail the south coast of Puerto Rico toward the Virgins. But before we made it a combination of a gust ( around 25knts) and a big wave, was too much for the sun rottened straps attaching the clew car on our deeply reefed roller furling main, it blew out sounding like the report from a shotgun! We took here up into the wind ( easy because we were motors ailing like usual), we quickly rolled the sail up and continued toward our next anchorage.

We huddled with our buddy boats and mapped out a new strategy, we would take advantage of the catabatic winds coming off the mountains at night that knocked down the east wind and waves, this should make for a tolerable motor sail overnight to our next anchorage Salinas.

Set the alarm for midnight and we snaked our way out the anchorage and we're happy to encounter much better sea state than the day time. This made for a beautiful motor sail down the coast with the lights from the shore only a few miles away!

We arrived early the next morning at daybreak with plenty of light to find our way into the salinas anchorage, and a busy one it was, but as usual there is always room for a few more boats and morning found us well hooked and beginning to look for a sailmaker to repair the damaged mainsail!

Light House on the far south western corner of Puerto Rico!




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The busy anchorage at Salinas with the mountains in the background!




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