Spanish Virgin Islands – Puerto Rico
Passage St Croix to Culebra – Puerto Rico
Wednesday 28th March 18
The passage is only 40 miles but the wind is supposed to start around 15 to 20 knots and then increase in the afternoon to 20 25 knots and as it is likely that we will have a fine reach, as the wind increases, we will end up with it even more forward, so we depart early fron Christiansted, around 6am. The sun has just come up and there is little wind in the harbour. Fortunately it does not take long to find the wind as soon as we are out of the shelter of the land. We have a fast passage quit exhilarating at times, with peaks at 7.5 knots of boat speed. We are aiming to Culebra, a small island off the mainland of Puerto Rico. The main bay is well sheltered but we need to keep well into the buoyed channel, the reefs around us are all too visible. At the bottom of the bay, which is huge, we find Time after Time and Fairy Queen, Nicole and Ron, our Dutch friends we have not seen since Grenada. They spent the hurricane season in the ABC and then to Jamaica. Plenty of stories coming.
Francine and Allen come and pick us up for Mizzen walk, we catch up on the new of the last 10 days, it does feel like we left them in St John ages ago! We will need to check in at the airport but that can wait till tomorrow. On the way back from shore we go and say hello to Fairy Queen and then all the stories come out… not a late night though, apparently we are hiking tomorrow.
Thursday 29th March 18
Culebra
Up early again, the customs at the airport opens at 8am and we are there it should not be too long and we will not be delaying the hike. It would have been fine if we had had the boat papers with us! Ian picked up the wrong rucksack so he had to go back! Still by 9.30 we are all done and we can join the others for the walk along the island. It is much drier here than we have seen previously. Mizzen is breaking the trail and it is not so arduous, very low hills are still affording magnificent views. We are soon back in the village of Culebra though and we decide to go and have lunch on Flamenco beach, the most famous beach on the island. On our way, we are distracted by a tempting smell. We all succumb to the roasted pig sold from a van on the side of the road. A nice young man is giving us recommendation on what to have. We have a hard job keeping it under wrap for the half hour it takes to walk to the beach. Flamenco beach is spectacular, white sand for miles, sea of the most fabulous colour and rollers to take your breath away. Simply stunning… what a place for a picnic. Back into town, we hunt for an ice cream to round up the afternoon. We have sundowners on Time after Time with more stories swapped. The harbour is busy with little motor day tripper boats all out for the Easter break, music is blaring out all evening but we don’t mind as the Latino music is fantastic… all you want to do is get up and dance.
Friday 30th March 18
Culebra
Quiet day today, we are getting ready for our passage back to the UK and we need to fish out our warm weather clothing from under the bed. So we create a fabulous mess… while we are at it we collect all my treasures in one place. Ian is insisting that we take them back so we don’t weight so much…we might go faster on our passage down to Trinidad. By 4pm we have had enough and the boat is nearly back to normal. We think there will be some action in the town square…we saw a stage being build so there might be some music going on. We go and check it out on Mizzen’s walk… not much going on, it will all happen tomorrow. well never mind, we find a jam session going on in one of the bar on the front and Nicole and Ron joined us. That will do, although it is not the type of music we were expecting here. Still a nice couple of hours and on the way back we do find the place that play local music with dancing. And when I say dancing I mean dancing… everyone is up and it is just amasing how they all move… all ages, all shapes and all colours! Love this!