Gilligan's Island, PR
17.56.837N
66.52.279W

We rose with the sun this morning and after maneuvering our way through the reefs, hoisted sail and turned off the motor. We were the purists in the group and sailed the rest of the trip averaging about 4.5 kts upwind out to the deep water and tacking back in to the reefs along this coast. The two catamarans have a hard time pointing into the wind so they powered their way through to Gilligan's island arriving a whopping 2 hours before us. We probably had a lot more fun.

Once anchored, Dale busied himself cleaning the refrigerator strainer as the refrigerator kept overheating and tripping the circuit. Everything is working beautifully now.

He also dove in to check the bottom of the boat. When we left Luperon, we were told that anything more than a couple of weeks there, you needed to have your bottom cleaned. I have been scrubbing the bottom with a brush the first of each month to try to keep ahead of any serious incrustation. When we left, we could see that we had some growth along the waterline on the side that faces the sun, as well as a plethora of small barnacles on the bottom when the boat rocked. He resurfaced and said that tomorrow we'll be digging out the hooka to clean the bottom as it was worse than he had anticipated.

In case you wondering, a hooka is a diving apparatus that pumps air down to two divers without the need to carry tanks on your back. We can dive to about 40' for sightseeing as long as we carry the battery that powers it in our dinghy above us. We do have to be careful in some of the islands, as it is unlawful to fish using a hooka and it is up to us to prove that we weren't using it unlawfully.

Tomorrow we plan on joining the other two boat crews to explore Gilligan's Island in the morning and snorkel the small lagoon in front of it prior to the tourist boat arriving at 10:30. Then we'll head back to the Palace to scrape her bottom.