Westing Along The South Coast of Puerto Rico

We anchored one night in Playa Salinas, five nights in Ponce, one off Isla Caja de Muertos (literally, Island of the Box of Death, but translated figuratively as Coffin Island) and two behind Islas Cana Gorda (which the Cruise Guide calls "Gilligan's Island.") So all told, nine nights since Vieques and 92 miles closer to home.

On a Sunday afternoon after a 49 mile sail from Vieques, Playa Salinas looked to us like a pleasant, friendly, sleepy little family-oriented vacation center for Puerto Ricans, located in a well protected cove. We regret that we did not give the town and its restaurants much of a chance to impress us; but most businesses were closed. The cove is entered from an “inland waterway” behind some barrier islets of rock and mangroves. We entered this waterway from the sea through an inlet named Boca del Inferno, but it was not scary, because we had furled sails to avoid having to make a pair of gybes under sail in the mouth.  After a few miles inside we came to the entrance to the Cove containing Salinas. The prevailing depth marked for the cove’s entrance was six feet but our fathometer did not show less than 6.5. 

Next day we sailed the 23 miles from Playa Salinas to Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second largest city (after the capital, San Juan) and a commercial port city.  We started by slanting out between some reefs but then the wind was too far directly behind us to sail directly for the mouth of Ponce Bay, so we kept a course a bit further off land to keep the wind at 150 degrees off the bow and rounded north to the port after passing south of Coffin Island. Coming upon that island from the east, it looks like two islands and it is only when you get closer that you can see that they are joined by a relatively low lying plain. 

Counting its low lying adjacent island it is more than a mile and a half long and is now a nature preserve which offers hikes. As seen from land (background below) it could look like an Egyptian mortuary with the head and body at one end and the feet sticking up at the other.

There is also a legend that a pirate buried his lady there in a coffin.

Ponce is located at the back of a bay that is about three miles wide and one mile deep which has a well marked shipping channel.  But unlike the great port cities in the US such as Neuva York, Boston, Baltimore and San Francisco, where the commercial waterfront is the edge where the water meets the city’s streets, the waterfront of Ponce is in a narrow inner bay at the eastern end of the big bay, quite remote from urban life. And the Ponce Yacht and Fishing Club, 

outside of which we anchored, is outside the commercial port, on (and sheltered by) a barrier island that has been joined to the mainland by a road and reinforced on its seaward side against the sea.  so the city is foreground, then the bay, then the big freighter in the commercial port and finally, in front of a row of trees, the YC.

Next is a view of the town in the background between two freighters taken from ILENE.

 Ponce YC is quite a nice large private club with halls for dominos, tennis, a swimming pool, a gym as well as showers, and a laundry room and fuel dock. It galls us a bit to pay for anchoring, which is supposed to be free, but the $10 per person per day gets you access to the showers, laundry and the dinghy dock.  Also, the office of the YC allowed us to sit in the office and use the WiF.

In the office we met Fafa, who owns a Freedom 30 and gave us a ride to the mall for shopping.



We also met Bob, here playing with Alphie,

a realtor from Sunapee NH, sailing “Brass Tacks,” a classy 2006 Caliber 40. 

Bob was waiting a few days for the arrival of his son from the west coast, who will help him sail Brass Tacks back to Florida to be sold.  We shared a meal with him aboard ILENE and he reciprocated the next night on his boat.  We shared taxicab rides to town, about $12 each way, and during one of them, Lene mentioned that we had also shared meals with two French-speaking ladies further south. He said: “Do you mean Manu and Michelle of Teepee?  I just hung with them, and their friend Marie helped me sail Brass Tacks up here from Antigua.”  And Bob also knows  John and Missy of “Tenacious”, who we had met in the marina of Spanishtown, Virgin Gorda.  So it is a small ocean out here after all.

One highlight of our visit to Ponce was Carnaval.
It is quite a big deal in the islands but we had never sought to time our visit to any given island to coincide with its Carnaval. Bur here we were and here it was, so we went and the loud Latin rock music was performed by "Ricky J and Swing," four very energetic and entertaining young men backed up by five variegated horns, three percussionists an electric bass and a keyboard. They did highly athletic synchronized dance moves behind and with the lead singer, a la mode Diana Ross and the Supremes, but on steroids. Like at the opera, before supertitles, I missed the humor in their banter but the audience standing in the city square didn’t miss it and were quite amused. Small groups of ghoulishly dressed werewolves, etc., wandered among the crowd. It was held in the central square, which by day houses not the courthouse, like at home, but the cathedral

and the firehouse museum (in Bergenfield N.J. High School's colors).
The square was lined with stands selling souvenirs and refreshments and bars were set up. That loud music of which I have been complaining was fun to watch and hear in this spectacular context. Regrettably I forgot to bring the camera but we were given a poster of the event.

\We spent another day visiting cultural and historical sites in the City. In the hills to the north of the city is the cross, built on the site of a former lookout tower. 

We got stuck, alone, in the glass sided elevator in the up position at the level of the arms of the cross for about ten minutes; the door would not open to admit us to the arms nor would the elevator go down. We were given bottles of water upon our release and toured the associated Japanese gardens

before the main event of the site - - a tour of the Museo Castillo Serrailles, (view from the cross)

a mansion, built during the depression for $40,000 by the family which makes Don Q rum. View from its gardens, below:

During the tour we met Al and Kathy from West Orange, NJ, who were on the island for a two week golfing vacation. They gave us a ride back down to town and after a mofongo lunch we visited the Ponce Museum of Art. It is quite an impressive building with a Lichtenstein sculpture out front.
It has a pretty good collection for a city this size, from the 1500’s to present, with a large number of famous European and North American artists. One piece that reminded me of home was by an American artist unknown to me, done in the 1880s:

"Rio Hackensack.”

Another day we rented a car with Bob to drive to the northeast corner of the island to climb in the El Yunque tropical rain forest. But the car  rental company got us a late start and it looked like rain was coming so after getting almost all the way to San Juan, we started to retrace our path on “Interstate” 52, and got off at Guavate, to partake of the famous pork served there at Lechonera El Mojito. Ilene had the fish.

After lunch we took Route 1 back to Ponce (think of Route 1 vs. I-95 in the northeast) and saw some beautiful mountain vistas and then did some provisioning.

The water in the small Yacht Club bay did not look really clean enough to use as the raw product for making fresh water and the watermaker demands special attention if not used to make water at least once per five days, so we left and decided to anchor in the lee of Coffin Island. We thought we would take the nature walks but the wind was strong and a beat, and by the time we had gone the six miles, which beating made ten miles, we were beat too and the wind continued to howl. We doused our reefed main and small jib and were sheltered by the island from the big seas, but the wind deterred us (and maybe in my case old age contributed as well) from dinking ashore to see the nature center. (This photo was taken days before, from the other -south- side with the mainland as background)

Next morning we ran back to Ponce, fueled up and sailed to what the folks here call Gilligan’s Island. It is actually an anchorage between Punta Jacinto, Punta Ballena, and Los Cayos de Cana Gorda. The last are three, closely situated little mangrove islands protected by a windward reef.  Here you can see the surf pounding on the reef through a gap between the Cayos, and that whitecaps have reformed behind the Cayos.

Again, no big waves got in but the wind was 30 knots when we were anchoring and continued almost until dark. Hence no touring of the beach on the Cayo or the town on Punta Jacinto. Next morning at sunrise, all was calm.

We dinked in to the town, which was actually a resort, the CopaMarina, and were greeted by Paul and Lindley of Bedford NY.

 He was a sailor for 40 years and they engaged us and offered us a ride to the town of Gaunica, about six miles away, so both couples could provision.  We had lunch with them in the hotel's outdoor restaurant while the refrigerables remained cold in the fridge in their room. Paul is also a photographer, www.paulthomassetphotography.com, so this next shot on the resort's dock, is a good photo.
We planned to visit the beach at Gilligan's Island, but the wind was ripping again in the afternoon so we just hung out, read, etc.
Posted from La Parguera, P.R.