Virgin Islands to Puerto Rico to Bahamas

We haven’t posted in a while so I’ll summarize what we've been up to since December. We had a nice Christmas in appropriately named Christmas Cove on Great St. James Island, USVI and then moved over to Charlotte Amalie to see the new Star Wars movie which we had been talking about doing for months. The kids also got to spend some of their Christmas money buying even more Legos while we were there. We then spent the next week moving back and forth between St. John and Jost Van Dyke doing plenty of beach time and people watching on both while waiting for a few more packages to come to St. John. New Years Eve on the beach at White Bay was very entertaining watching people getting drunk in preparation for Foxy’s famous Old Years Party that night. We learned from Wendel, who has a shop on the beach, that every evening there is treasure to be found in the water because of all the drunks on boats losing things overboard during the day. We went out snorkeling early on New Years Day and Staci came up with a pair of sunglasses and Samantha found $20. Wendel found a big $800 stainless steel anchor that someone had lost and he offered it to us but we really didn’t need it so I brought it ashore for him in our dinghy. Our packages finally showed up on the 5th and we started moving west again. We made our way to Charlotte Amalie so I could get a new high pressure hose for our water maker made to replace the one we had made in the Bahamas last year which was leaking already. I was able to get that done quickly while the kids did school and then we continued on our way.

Christmas Morning.Notice how dark the porthole is above Samantha's head

The beach at the Soggy Dollar New Years Eve

The kids helping raise the kayak

The beach at Trunk Bay

We first sailed to Brewer’s Bay near the airport on St. Thomas, which turned out to be a great anchorage, and the next day had a great downwind sail in 8’ seas to Culebrita. We went into the anchorage there and put an anchor off our bow and tied to a mooring off our stern to keep us bow to the seas but the swell was so big that we were afraid our anchor line was going to chafe through.  There were even people surfing off the point at the head of the anchorage and it looked awesome. We decided to bail out of there just before sunset and made our way into Bahia de Almodovar on the SE corner of Culebra which is protected by a reef that doesn't let any swell come in but you are fully exposed to the trade winds so flat calm with a great cooling breeze. This turned out to be one of our favorite anchorages and we spent several days here over the next couple of weeks. We moved the boat into the harbor near Dewey on Culebra so we could rent a golf cart to tour the island and had a great time. The beach at Flamingo Bay had  huge waves rolling in from the north swell and Nicholas and I spent hours getting tumbled by the surf. After about a week in the area we made our way to Fajardo on the mainland of Puerto Rico to provision and prepare to head to the Bahamas. We rented a car and broke the bank at Costco, Wal-Mart, and the supermarket so we were once again fully stocked and sitting low on our waterline. 

Culebra Playa Zoni

Our cool golf cart 

Vieques

Well, we were ready to go but the weather window for a 4 day passage to The Bahamas was not predicted for anytime soon so we decided to cruise around Vieques, Culebra and maybe back to the Virgin Islands to kill time. After spending some time in Vieques we thought we had favorable winds to make it to St. Thomas but once we got out of the bay the seas were big and confused so instead of spending 6 hours getting beaten up we just fell off and headed for Culebra again. While anchored in Culebra I started to stress out about our batteries because they seemed to be losing their charge more quickly over the last couple of months and I didn’t want them to fail again in the Bahamas where it would cost a fortune to replace them. The decision was made to head back to Fajardo to replace them. We arranged another car rental from Enterprise and made our way back to Costco where we were able get 4 new golf cart batteries at US prices plus a bunch more treats, fruits and veggies. Finally the weather looked like it was turning so we sailed from Isla Palominos to San Juan and anchored in the shadow of a huge Disney cruise ship in San Juan Bay. We stayed a couple of days and then sailed out of the harbor Bahamas bound.

Entering San Juan Harbor

Our passage to Mayaguana, Bahamas was good. We thought we would have to motor for the first day but it turned out we were able to sail until about 1 a.m. the first night when the winds died so we ended up motorsailing for the next 14 hours. Late in the afternoon of the second day we turned off the motor and had a cracking beam reach and broad reach sail for the next day. We caught a MahiMahi early in the morning of the third day right as I put the handline out. I didn’t even have it fully secured when the fish hit but was able to pull it right in so it was fish for dinner. The winds were building to 20+ so we decided to turn downwind and sailed due west passing south of the Turks and Caicos and the turned NW as the wind eased to make landfall at Mayaguana. We had to enter Abraham Bay just after midnight with no moon and reef all around us. We had researched the entrance as best we could and it seemed the Garmin charts we use were very accurate in this area but it was still nerve wracking as hell and we only went in far enough to anchor. The next morning we moved in close to the settlement of Abrahams Bay and I went in to clear customs which went very smoothly. Mayaguana is the southeastern-most island of the Bahamas and seems pretty forgotten. We explored an old US missile tracking sight on land and dove the reef and an old sailboat wreck. It felt great to be back to the great diving and beautiful waters of the Bahamas.

The girls on night watch on our way to The Bahamas

 The next couple of days were predicted to be light winds followed by about a week of 20-30 knots so we took advantage of the light winds and motorsailed to East Plana Cay. This place was awesome. Again we had to enter a reef-strewn anchorage but did it in the early afternoon with great visibility to be able to read the bottom. We dove the reef on the west side of the entrance channel where we saw more fish than we had seen in all the Caribbean combined. A monster Nassau Grouper appeared and curiously watched us. I got close enough to easily spear him but doing so in this beautiful place would just seem wrong. Hurricane Joaquin was centered right here when it was wreaking havoc on the Bahamas so the beach was loaded with amazing shells. We spent a couple hours collecting and walking the beach. It was obvious this place doesn’t get many visitors as it is not a tenable anchorage in prevailing winds. The next morning the wind was already building higher than the 10-12 kts. that were predicted so we raised anchor and headed for Samana Cay 30 miles north. 

Samana Cay is another out of the way cay that is mostly visited by fisherman that come up from Crooked and Acklins Islands. The entrance to the anchorage at Propeller Cay is very narrow through lots of coral heads and in the Explorer Charts it says should only be attempted in settled conditions with good light. We were a little nervous getting there because the seas were around 4’ and the skies were overcast but as we neared the island the NE swell was greatly reduced and the clouds opened up for us to make our way through the narrow channel. The anchorage here seems to always have a surge so we had to rig a bridle to point our bow into it so we weren’t rolling too badly. We had read that this place had great fishing and reefs teaming with sea life but after diving on quite a few heads we didn’t find this to be true. The island really got battered by Joaquin so we wondered if it had destroyed a lot of the sea life or it’s just been overfished.  The beach was great to explore and we found a bottle that looks very old. After we had been anchored a couple days we ran out of propane in our big tank so I went out to switch to the other tank and found it empty also. We had it hooked to our grill and we think the propane leaked out over the last 2 months. So, with the prospect of eating nothing but cereal, cheese and crackers, and cold canned food for the next 5 days we decided to high tail it to the closest place to get propane which turns out was a two day sail away. We raised anchor and went out the west entrance of the harbor which was very shallow and winding with lots of coral. We ended up bumping our keel on some rock or dead coral but made it through without to much trouble. The sail to Landrail Point, Crooked Island was fast in 20 kts. downwind. We anchored in the dark and rose  before sunrise to go the rest of the way to the southwest end of Long Island where the propane guy was.  Landrail Point was devastated by the hurricane also with lots of houses in ruins and much of the vegetation destroyed. 

Houses on Landrail Point

We sailed to Long Island and got our propane, spent a couple of days in beautiful Dollar Harbour, and then sailed up to Thompson Bay, Long Island where we are now. Our friends Bill and Bess from Alibi II are here and have been helping out with relief efforts so we spent a very full day helping out some locals by removing debris and starting to rebuild one of their homes. Tomorrow we are going to do it again. We met some other boat families here and have had quite a few beach bonfires. We love this place.

Carpenter in Training

Working on Delbert's house

Awesome worker

Dollar Harbour 

Daddy and his girl making dinner