Island Time
"Downtown" in Culebra
by Christine Kling
Okay, so there I was enjoying lying in my bunk long after sun-up (the blasted sun rises here just after 6:00 a.m.), nursing my beer-soddened head, lazily wondering what day it was, when I suddenly sat up and thought, Holy Crap! It’s Friday! And I haven’t written my blog!
Yes, that is what happens when you spend too much time on a cruising boat in the islands. All of that – including the beer. I call it getting on Island Time.
I spent all day yesterday here in Culebra thinking that I was going to write a well-reasoned treatise on the situation with big publishers and the Department of Justice and Indie publishing and . . . what happened?
We went ashore to the Dinghy Dock Restaurant, met up with a group of four sailors we had met in Salinas, were joined by a single hander we met here in Culebra, we ordered more beer, we went out for Pizza, we ordered more beer, we all told stories following the “first liar doesn’t have a chance” dictum of all sailors’ get togethers, and dinghied our way back to the boat in the dark and – I forgot all about the blog deadline. I blame it on Island Time.
So, instead of a well-reasoned blog, this morning I will provide a slightly hung-over travelogue of our time and around the amazing islands of Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgins.
First of all, let me state that Puerto Rico is the USA. While this seems obvious to me, I can’t get over the number of conversations I’ve had with people asking me if they will be charged extra to use their cell phones or if they will have to pay duty on items shipped here. It is the USA, folks.
The big harbor at Ponce
Anyway, we arrived here in PR in Mayaguez and cleared customs and immigration (because we had arrived from the Turks & Caicos) and motored down to Bouqueron on the southwest end of the island. It is a very big island. After a couple of days there, we took off at 6:00 am and rounded Cabo Rojo to the south coast and we discovered that we had used up all our good luck as far as beating into nasty winds goes. We motored straight upwind, pounding and crashing into 18-24 knots of wind and discovered that the boat could take more than we could. We had intended to go all the way to Salinas, but we stopped short in the major port of Ponce. We anchored, exhausted just off the Yacht Club and after a short dinner, we crashed early. About 10 minutes later the music started up ashore – and then we discovered it was Kareoke Night. There was only one thing that could have kept me awake that night and bad karaoke was it.
There is a book about how to traverse this part of the world by a fellow named Van Sant and he claims that the trick is to get up in the early hours of the morning and to motor close to the island taking advantage of the light offshore breeze that happens from the cooling of the land in the dark. In Ponce, we got up at 4:00 a.m. and motored on to Salinas in blissfully calm seas. Score one for Van Sant.
One of the rain forest visitors' centers
Rain forest waterfall
Hiking paths through the rain forest
In Salinas we rented a car and drove around the island a bit, with the final destination of getting to the El Junque Rain Forest. This is a National Forest area on Puerto Rico that is a spectacular must-see. We hiked a bit on our own, and we took a short guided hike with a young lady who had recently got her Masters Degree in ecology and preservation and she taught us all sorts of things about the special type of forest that grows up in the clouds on Puerto Rico.
From Salinas, we staged out about 15 miles to Patillas by leaving at 5:30 and arriving at 8:30 a.m.
Anchorage off Patillas
We were anchored just inside a reef and though the boat rolled a bit, it was a great place to swim and clean the hull and take care of chores that required clean water. Since our previous anchorage had been in Salinas, a mangrove area, the water had been murkier.
The next morning, if you can call it that, we got up at 3:30 a.m. and left at 4:00 to round the west end of Puerto Rico and we decided we would either to the island of Vieques or on to Culebra, whatever the wind permitted. These two islands are part of the territory of Puerto Rico in terms of government, but they are referred to as the Spanish Virgins because they resemble the US Virgin Islands more in their geography and they are equally close distance-wise to the Virgins. The winds were great when we approached Vieques and it was barely dawn, so we pressed on and made it into the large harbor called Ensenada Honda here in Culebra.
Chart of our location in Ensenada Honda, Culebra
Back in the days when I used to work on a charter boat in St. Thomas, we called this our preferred hurricane hole. It’s got lots of little coves and anchorages and boats galore.
This is as far as I will go on this trip. Sunday, I fly out of the Culebra airport (which I suspect will make flying in to Staniel Cay look like arriving on a jet into a metropolis) and I’ll head out from San Juan. It’s been a great trip, but it’s time to get off Island Time and get to work on being a writer.
Fair winds!
Christine
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