Isla de Culebrita
18.19.128N
65.13.738W

Today was just another beautiful day in paradise. Dale and I started our day with a swim to the beach and then a walk back and forth the entire length of the beach. Shortly after we returned, Gerry & Nicky came around and we all jumped back in and went for a snorkel by the reef just a short distance from us.

After snorkeling the Tobago Cays, I’m either spoiled or the reefs here are in worse shape than they were a year ago. In any event, I took our new underwater camera and started playing with it. As luck would have it, the fish just wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to compose a good shot, so eventually I learned to use the widest angle I could and hope one would swim in front of me. As you can see, I got a few shots with fish in them.

We returned to our respective boats for lunch and agreed to meet up again after lunch to hike over to the Culebrita ‘baths.’ Once again I jumped in to play with my new toy but everyone else took in the sights without taking the plunge.
On our way back, we were delighted with the observation that almost all of the moorings were occupied by sailboats today. Not only were they sailboats but all were live aboards. It’s the first time we’ve seen more sailboats than motor boats in this anchorage.

We finished our day by sharing a pot luck dinner with Linda & Jerry (Summer Breeze), Gerry & Nicky (Orpailleur) and Tom & Jordan on St. Christopher. Summer Breeze is heading back to Jacksonville, so we’ll catch up with Linda & Jerry on down the road. Tom & Jordan are heading to St. Thomas in another day, so we’ll more than likely say our final farewells to them there.

In a way, I suppose you can say that this is the beginning of the end of our sabbatical. We’ve both started talking about heading back to work and where to live. We’ve got six more months to go but already our trip is starting to feel as if its almost over. We’ve had a great time and answered the big question of whether we could live in such a small space 24/7, without killing each other. Jordan says that we’ll have more of a hard time returning to our ‘normal’ lives and not being together all of the time. She believes that we’ve gotten too used to having the other around as best friend, sounding board and partner in every sense. In other words, we’ve succeeded in the biggest goal of all: renewing our commitment to each other and why we work in the first place. Isn’t that what a sabbatical is all about?

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.

Culebrita
18.19.160N
65.13.624W

The New Year dawned brightly and by 9 am, we were hoisting our anchor to make our way from Culebra to Culebrita, a smaller, uninhabited island further to the north. On our transit we stayed behind the reefs and scooted between the two islands but once we rounded to the north on the western side of Culebrita, we were bucking into a 6-8’ swell with short intervals. Very uncomfortable and not what we were expecting.

We had to be very careful making our approach to Culebrita’s bay as we needed to turn broadside to the waves and enter between two opposing reefs into shallower water. We watched as a power boat went zinging past us into a surprisingly empty harbor . We thought for sure he’d pile up on the western reef but he powered his way through without hitting a thing. If you recall our previous visit here, we watched a dinghy pulling a water skiier hit that side of the reef, ruining their whole day.

Once entered, the reefs cut the waves down considerably but a nasty swell wrapped around them and made its way inside. We and MTNest took the most protected mooring balls available and set about settling the boats and prepared to go hiking over to the north-eastern side to Culebrita’s version of ‘the baths.’ As we were sitting, Dale decided to keep the rocking to a minimum by putting out a stern anchor to keep us into the swell. In such shallow waters though, we elected to go stern to the swell, accepting the fact that we’d have a slap on our hull, instead of bow to which would position our keel in extremely shallow water. A sizable wave could have us bouncing off the bottom; not something we wanted to chance.

We waved to Mike, Terri & the girls as they headed over to ‘the baths’ while we threw out the anchor and winched ourselves into position. All the while, more and more power boats were coming in and, like us, wanted as much protection from the swell as possible. Of course, this was in the same corner as we were in. As we left the Palace to go swimming, we saw a steady line of them coming in and hoped none would snag on our anchor line as they squeezed more and more into the same space.

It takes a while to make your way through the mangrove trees that line the water and across the rocks and boulders to where the tidal pools or “baths” are. We caught up with Mike, Terri & the girls as they were leaving, so we ended up having the pools to ourselves for a couple of hours. We hadn’t taken our snorkel gear, so we didn’t get to get a good look at all of the fish that are in the nurseries but we could clearly see that the pools were protecting tiny fish and a few good sized ones.

We joined Mike, Terri & the girls for dinner and a few rounds of Mexican dominos later in the evening and agreed to leave early in the morning when the weather is usually calmest. According to our weather information, the wind and waves are not expected to subside before Friday when Ally has to catch a plane out of St. Thomas, so we might as well go ahead and leave now.