Boqueron, Puerto Rico
18.01.192N
67.10.700W

369.8 NM
6.1 Avg. Kts.
9.0 Max Kts.
60.30 Hrs.

Current Odometer: 7040.0 miles

In spite of the lack of sleep over the past 3 days and the fact that we didn’t get to bed before 5am, we woke up about 8:30am. Dale was hungry and wanted pancakes. Well, he must be feeling better.

We were just finishing up breakfast, when I heard a dinghy approaching. Since we rarely visit an anchorage anymore without seeing someone we’ve met before, I figured someone recognized the boat and was coming for a visit. Not this time. We were dragging! The people in the dinghy had tried to raise us on the radio but since we hadn’t turned it on yet, they assumed correctly about a night passage and came to warn us of our situation.

In the light of day we could see that we had indeed anchored at the back of the pack, which consisted of about 2 dozen boats. As we had intended to move closer to shore anyway, we thanked them profusely and proceeded to lift our anchor and select and new spot.

Our new spot was closer to the town dock and not quiet in the middle of the anchored boats. We dropped the anchor, back down and although it did not give us that sharp jerk we like to see, the chain stretched out and appeared to be dug in. The water was muddy so Dale wasn’t going to see anything if he dove in. We went below again and 2 hours later, we heard once again heard whistles and horns that brought us topside.

Sure enough, we dragged again. This time we passed between 2 boats before coming close to the 3rd one who was tooting his whistle for all he was worth. I told Dale that we were making up for lost time. We’ve been very lucky in the past with our anchoring and our luck was holding today considering that we hadn’t hit anyone and our next stop would have been in the mangrove trees further behind us.

By now, the normal winds that pipe up mid-morning were filling in and we were getting gusts in the 20 kts range. Once again, we lifted our anchor and tried again. This time I backed down hard and then waited. Within a couple of minutes, we could see that we were still moving. We picked up and moved to another spot that looked to have a sandy bottom. We dropped, backed down hard, then waited. Again, we were still moving. We did this routine 3 more times before finally, the anchor appeared to set. By this time, we were both exasperated. Dale was adamant about not wanting to switch to the storm anchor and neither one of us could figure out what the problem was.

We took turns for the rest of the day sitting in the cockpit on anchor watch. I’d even set the anchor alarm which would go off each time we swung wide when the wind would pick up. I reset the anchor alarm extending the radius and then sit, wait and watch.

About mid-afternoon, I reminded Dale that we hadn’t checked in yet. He gathered all of our information and called the Customs telephone number that we had used before. This time, however, in spite of our current sticker and the new frequent border crossing number we had been given in St. Croix 4 months ago, the Customs officer wanted to see each of us in Mayaguez. Apparently, this documentation only gives the inspector the option of not seeing you. There was no way we were going to leave the boat today to find a taxi to take us to another city so that he could lay eyes on us. I suggested that we move on up the coast as we had to go in that direction to leave anyway.

We dug out the charts and cruising guides and started studying. There were a couple of anchorages nearby that we could use until we got a weather window as the guides noted the poor holding in Mayaguez. We’ve already had our fill of “poor holding.”

Tomorrow after we listen to the weather, we’ll move on up.