Isla de Culebrita
18.19.128N
65.13.738W

Underway again! This morning Dale returned the rental car, I tried to confirm that my x-ray had been taken care of and we readied the boat for transit. Along the way, we finally met our neighbor Loretta who was starting laundry of epic proportions. We had met her husband Marshall a few days ago when they first arrived in the slip next to us.

We slipped our lines about 9:30 and said a fond farewell to Roosevelt Roads. We still don’t know if AAFES is taking over the marina or not but hope that they do, so that we’ll have our Puerto Rican home to return to in the future.

We headed out to the turning basin, unfurled our sails, then sailed in the direction of Vieques. The wind was a modest 12-15 kts with seas in the 2-4’ range. We got as close as we could to Punta Caballo before tacking back towards Culebra, dodging a Coast Guard buoy tender working in the area.

Orpailleur and St. Christopher left about an hour before us and we thought we were catching up at one point. However, in my infinite wisdom, I believed that since we had a good wind in the direction we were going, if we continued on the same tack, pinching as high as we could, we could round to the north of Culebra and scoot in with everyone else. It never works that way and I should have known it. Apparently, we actually were catching up with everyone until they tacked back behind Culebra (the normal route) and watched us taking off for points unknown. Although I was able to pinch quite high on the south side of Culebra, we needed to dodge the rocks that lead from Puerto Rico, after that, the wind started to die and we were well on our way to Africa when I turned the wheel over to Dale. About 4 pm he turned on the ‘iron genny’ to insure we made it into harbor before dark.

We arrived in Culebrita about 5:30 pm. St. Christopher, Orpailleur and Summer Breeze (our Trini neighbors) were all sitting in their cockpits watching the sunset as we scurried around trying to set an anchor bridle into the swell. (Dale refused to set a stern anchor again.) In spite of my “short cut” it was a wonderful day of sailing. The winds never rose above 18 kts and the seas were kindly, rarely above 4’ even on the exposed Atlantic side.

Dale dropped the dink and made the rounds saying hello to everyone as I set about gathering something for dinner. Gerry & Nicky joined us later for left over party snacks before we all called it an early night.