Our time in Puerto Rico seems to revolve around mostly waiting with small increments of fun here and there. First it was getting through the last week of full time work at my job, now it’s waiting for our final West Marine shipment and next it will be waiting for sail repair. Unfortunately, last week I discovered a rip in our staysail along the leach tape and a few days later a rip in the mailsail, also along the leach tape. The mainsail in general is not in the greatest shape and I’m concerned about the life left in it, especially with the added chafe it will have on the stays doing extensive downwind miles. We’ll see what the sailmaker says.

We stayed in Vieques for about a week until our anchorage became untennable with a consistent swell that was causing an uncomfortable roll. This, however, doesn’t even compare to what we experienced at the anchorage for the bioluminecent bay. Mosquito Bay is one of the brightest biolumniescent bays in the world and the main attraction on Vieques. Certainly, we had to experience this before leaving. We had two options, a kayak tour, or taking our boat to the mouth of the bay, anchoring and goin in by dinghy. We have an electric dinghy motor, which is allowed in the bay. No combustion engines are allowed, no swimming allowed, only dipping your hands and feet. The choice was obvious. We didn’t want to be stuck with tons of other people. We had the means to explore it on our own.

While we knew the anchorage would be bad based on other cruisers reviews, it was quite a bit worse than anticipated. After an hour of rolling around violently and incessantly, we knew we would not spend the night here. Instead we would wait it out for darkness, go into the bay and head back to Puerto Real where we were previously anchored. It’s a pretty easy in and out so I felt good about doing it in the dark.

It is nearly impossible to capture the glow of the water in the bay on camera, but our dinghy motor was trailing a glowing wake, and a hand or foot in the water was like stirring a pot of potion. It was a disney movie like experience. Many other cruisers said that if you swim at the anchorage, there is still a lot of bioluminescence and it’s a magical experience, but with that roll, I wasn’t sure I could board our boat from the water. The best part, and probably the highlight was that you can see the lights from fish darting away from the dinghy in the water and there was a surpising amount of them, small, medium and a few large ominous shapes. On the way back to the boat we got lucky and the sky decided to dump some pretty heavy rain, so not only were we trying to mount a moving bull, but getting completely soaked at the same time. Time to go, now! I wasted no time readying the boat to depart. Before Tony could take a breath I was barking orders. Just as we were pulling anchor, the rain began again and Tony was soaked at the bow dealing with the anchor. We made it back to Puerto Real in 30 minutes and the calmness was a sigh of relief.

We stayed in Puerto Real for a few more days. I worked and Tony fell off the paddle board in shallow water straining his hamstring. Then we tried to get water. We struck out. We could not find a bar or restaurant to sell us water from their hose. The small stores were a long walk and all we could get were a few gallon jugs. This would not suffice. Then Wednesday night the swell picked up from the south and came directly into the achorage. We barely slept all night. It was time to go, but where. We were warned that the east side of the main island is not friendly for anchorages, but we needed to await the West Marine order. I checked Noforeignland again and somehow found an anchorage I had missed, right by the ferry that was supposedly calm and would allow us to easily rent a car. Sold, time to sail on. Other than a challenge raising and lowering the mainsail in a large swell, the downwind sail was easy, fast and pleasant. Once again Patience, our Hydrovane, did all the stearing.

We picked up a car on Saturday. Time to provision and pick up our West Marine order that had supposedly been delivered to the store. Unfortunately the main item, a battery for our new electric outboard was not there. Because it was a hazardous shipment it was on another boat. It was in Puerto rico, but not at the store. This was devastating. we have been limping along with an older electric outboard that has a long shaft and doesn’t stear our tiny dinghy well. We have been nervous about getting this battery and we still don’t have it. We are in trouble if we cannot get it. After spending the afternoon living the American dream shopping all day, exhausted and shocked at how busy Walmart was, we arrived back to the dinghy. I was inside the dinghy loading groceries when Tony screamed, “wholly shit there’s a HUGE manatee under the dinghy!” I stood up to look and sure enough a quite large manatee was checking out the scene. He swam under the dock peered up at me took a breath and hung out. We finished loading the boat and he had mosied over to another portion of the dock. We slowly started to motor out and all the sudden he was following us. Engine off! Time to paddle. We paddled and he followed us while other people watched and took photos, then finally we were able to break off and leave him behind.

On Sunday we went for a fun day. We have not had a real shower, or much fresh water to wash ourselves with for quite sometime. Because we are struggling to find a place to fill water, showers are not the top priority. The ocean is certainly better than nothing, but the salt wears on you after a while. It was time to get in some freash water, so we went to Las Tinajas Falls (AKA Charco Frio) in El Yunque National Forest. We knew it would be packed with tour groups, but we didn’t care. It was amazing! Fresh clear water with rope swings, rock slides and cliff jumps! It was packed, but being on our own meant we could hike away from the crown, scramble up some rocks and find a quiet place to ourselves.

It was a beautiful rainforest, lush and green with huge bamboo tufts and water sculpted rocks.

More shopping followed on Monday. This time off to Costco to stock up on snack type food. It was also insanely busy. Yes Puerto Rico is just and extension of the mainland. The only difference is the endless loud salsa and everyone speaking spanish. It was another exhausting day of driving and shopping, hauling water back and forth to the boat. We hauled about 60 gallons in total back and forth on the dinghy. That prompted me to succumb to looking into getting a watermaker in Panama. They are so expensive and it was the one thing I just was worried we couldn’t afford. The installation of them isn’t always easy and some real estate issues in where it can go. However, there’s a smaller model that will allow us to steal salt water from another sea cock (sea water thru hull) and simplify the installation. We have had virtually no rain since that night at Mosquito Bay, so no way to collect water from the sky. It requires a pretty hefty amount as the deck has to be washed off prior to the collection beginning. It seems this $4+k item may be worth the money after all we have been though trying to find a water source here.

The anchorage we are sitting in is near an old military base. Driving around here is a bit odd, barbed wire fences with numbers on them line the road and the “marina” where we have been leaving the dinghy is strangly deserted of boats. People come and go fishing off the docks and there’s a dinghy sailing school as well, but the whole place feels like a zonbie apocalypse. Stray dogs eat dead iguanas and the police station next to the marina is strangly quiet. I sit here now listening to the on and off jet propulsion of military aircraft flying over us intermittently all day. The military base, alive again, due to the Venezuelan conflict. It doesn’t exactly instill any level of peacefullness in this world. We will likely sail south tomorrow, West Marine order or not, so we can get our sails to the sailmaker and wait some more. I have started paperwork for the Panama canal…