If you haven't checked recently, there are a couple of new videos I've uploaded to youtube...highlighting our time with Charles and Carol.
Our adventure continues...on to the Spanish Virgin island of Culebra. You ask..."what are the Spanish Virgin islands?" They are part of the Puerto Rican commonwealth, located just east of Puerto Rico, and consist of Culebra and Vieques, along with numerous smaller islets. Large sections of these islands were used for military bombing practice and maneuvers since the early 1900's. They've been released back to the local government/people, but there is some residual anger among the population for the lack of stewardship of the military to clean up the bombs and mess left from over 50 years of use. Some interesting links, related to the military's use, are below:
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| Flying wing and wing to Culebra... in 15 knots of wind with no whisker pole... quite a challenge! |
Along the way from St. Thomas to Culebra, we saw Royal Caribbean's "Allure of the Seas" (the largest cruise ship in the world), with its load of passengers headed to port for a day of souvenier shopping, daysailing, snorkleing and visiting the beaches. Our friends, Charles and Carol, got a lot closer look of the ship as it passed us.
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| "Montana Sky" on a parallel course to Culebra |
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| Rain squall overtaking us from the east. Remember the wing and wing? We decided to take the sails down a bit... |
We made it about 2/3 of the way across, when the weather caught up. The rain didn't actually make it, but the waves kicked up from the storm were larger than 6' on our stern...not bad at all, until it combined with the larger 12' North swells that had already been hitting us on the beam. Oh, and I forgot the wind...even though we didn't get the rain, the wind whipped up to about 25 knots from the east. Pretty "sporty" conditions...making over 7 knots downwind in confused seas with a double reef in the main, no genoa out, tossing us around like a cork on the top of champagne..and just when we thought it couldn't get better, we had "fish ON"....Karen grabbed the helm while I started to reel in the pole. I looked off to the north at the oncoming swells, quite a bit higher than the boat, and I had a grin on my face. Sorry, we don't have any photos of the drama, as we were a little busy.
The wind started to ease up a bit as we neared our destination for the afternoon, and we turned into the protected bay on the lee side of Culebrita and grabbed a mooring. I don't think we were there for more than 15 minutes, before a guy on a small powerboat near shore started shouting. I thought he was yelling at someone on shore, so I continued tidying the boat up after our sail. After about 4 or 5 times, I glanced over to what he was shouting about...and he was pointing out towards us....there was a large whale and calf about 200 yards behind the boat. The whales remained on the surface, with the calf swimming back and forth along the cow. The calf was about the size of a large porpoise. Pretty neat!
They must've stayed on the surface for about 5 more minutes, before another sailboat came over. The boat circled around the whales, which immediately dove away.
Charles and Carol arrived about an hour later (they took a side trip into Ensenada Honda)and we all headed into Bahia Manglar, a protected anchorage on the eastern shore of Culebra. That evening we had "sundowners" on their boat and watched another whale breach about 4 times in front of us, just on the other side of the reef. Looked just like something out of the movies!
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| NW shoreline of Culebrita |
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| ...the small black spot above the words |
While doing some snorkeling along the west side of the island of Luis Pena, I discovered an interesting artifact...an unexploded artillery shell! It was in about 20' of water. I thought of free diving down to check it out, but figured it might be a bit unstable...any undo movement might be the undoing of me.
About 4 days later, Karen and I heard a loud "whump" sound coming from the island of Vieques (about 14 miles to the south). There was a large column of smoke rising, which we think might have been some of the ongoing disposal of old ordinance that they find...or an unlucky boater chose a poor place to anchor.
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| Unexploded artillery shell on seabed |
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| Charles' and Carol's sailboat, "Montana Sky" |
We really had a great time in the various anchorages, sharing the excitement of Culebra with Charles and Carol. So much diving...and dinners...and games of Farkle. Have any of you tried Farkle, yet? I highly recommend it!
Unfortunately, Karen became ill and had a really tough time...lot's of chills, fever, aches and pains. A few days of this, with the help of Charles and Carol (both trained RN's) and nothing seemed to benefit Karen, so we went to Dewey for a visit to Dr. Del Toro (nice man) and we were told she needed to get to Fajardo, Puerto Rico and get some blood tests and CT scans to make a good diagnosis...we were thinking something wrong with her Gall Bladder or ?? Karen toughed it out, on a 1 hour ferry ride and a taxi to the hospital. With a lot of anitbiotics and time she got better. We'll still need to get her some backup tests when we return to the US, but she appears fine now.
Here's some of the sea life we saw on the numerous dives we all took:
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| French angelfish |
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| Boxfish |
Karen took this wonderful photo of the sunset over Puerto Rico...about 16 miles to the west.
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