Boqueron, and Farewell to Puerto Rico

Since our entry into Puerto Rico at Culebra on Valentine’s Day, we have put into eight of its ports, the last being Boqueron, for seven nights, leaving Saturday, March 10 after 26 days in this “nation”. Boqueron is a big “V” shaped bay, with a wide rounded bottom. It is two miles wide at its mouth and perhaps two and half miles deep, indented into the west coast of  P.R., toward its southern end.  It is protected by a big reef across its mouth, with two channels through it, one toward the south, with a big green buoy in the middle, is about .2 miles wide. The other is at its north side and well charted but not marked. We came in through the southern channel and left through the northern one.

The southwest tip of Puerto Rico is Cabo Rojo which means Red Cape, because there are some reddish rocks in its cliffs (sort of like Gay Head on Martha’s Vinyard). It has a large beautiful lighthouse on it and although you may not be able to experience its majesty from the picture, passing Cabo Rojo in our boat, right to left, was indeed a majestic sight!

Our passage to Boqueron from La Parguera was rather fast and we used only the small jib, with no main. It got more exciting after we had rounded Cabo Rojo and headed north, bringing the wind abeam, and very exciting shooting the passage and heading into the bay on a beat in 28 to 30 knots apparent wind. The town is in the northeast corner of the bay, with a big marina for power boats easily seen. To the marina's right is the main yachtie restaurant/bar, Galloways, though when we went there the yachties had taken the night off. Further right is the dinghy dock plaza, focal point of the tourist town.

Then comes a private canal cut into the beach for the big boats of the condo owners whose apartments on both sides, provide pretty good hurricane protection.

They had to build a draw bridge for pedestrians, which connects the town to the right with the beach to the left.

 Finally comes the beach, about a mile long, with palms planted in rows behind it.

The waterfront area is filled with restaurants and bars, many of which are closed during the week. The town fills up on weekends, especially with kids from the colleges nearby who love to strut through the town in their bikinis. The residential areas are set further back from the beachfront with a school, a Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist Church, a fire house, post office, a small market which refills propane tanks, etc. One of the town’s specialties is clams and oysters, small, dug from the nearby mangroves, arrayed in piles on counter tops of  the stands that line the streets, such as this one at dinghy dock plaza.

 I must confess that we did not partake, partly because ice was nowhere evident. Several restaurants offer patrons free wifi but no coverage is available out in the anchorage.

We anchored in 16 feet of water with 80 feet of chain out, and there was plenty of room for more boats. The wind as all along the south coast of Puerto Rico, blew pretty hard every day but died down to dead calm at night. The next three photos show dawn—before the wind stirred the waters-- followed by sunrise and sunset. The first and third are views to the west and the middle one looks east.

 

 

Two of our days here were cloudy and one had a steady light rain while the other had a light shower. These cloudy days were less windy.

You would think that the town of Cabo Rojo would be near the cape itself, but you would be wrong. The Cape itself is south of Boqueron and the town of the same name is north of it. Go figure. Further north, in a different bay, is Mayagues, P.R.’s third largest city and an entry and exit point.
Like San Juan and Ponce, it is a port city.

                                                    During a rental car shopping trip, we looked for the US Customs and Immigration Office in Mayagues so we could know where to go to check out. But like the US Virgins, no checkout is needed we were told. And just to make sure we called the 800 number in San Juan where the information was confirmed.

Highlights of our stay  in Boqueron were the aforesaid shopping trip for which we shared the costs with Jim and Lindy, a lovely retired couple aboard “Snowbird” a  38‘  C&C. They are from a small town about an hour north from Toronto, educated, informed, good sailors and fun.  They have spent the last eleven winters down here, staying in a different island group for the three months they allot themselves and then hauling the boat at a marina for the long nine month summer. They emigrated to Canada from Northern Ireland in the ‘70s. We enjoyed discussions of family, religion, history, politics, good books and other subjects. We hope they will visit us when they pass through New York and we have a standing invitation if we ever get up to the Toronto area.

During our shopping excursion we had lunch at the White Pelican, a Cuban style restaurant on the second floor 10 yards from the bay, in the beachfront town of Joyuda. 

We later had a shared dinner aboard after which Lene taught them some new card games. Still another time, we shared a mess of mango pancakes. Jim is a retired engineer and was very essential and generous with help for two of our mechanical problems. 

The first was the oil change which was overdue. ILENE came with a built in electric “X.change.R” pump which makes the oil change easy. But by pressing switch B before switch A, I had caused it to stop so I dinked over to Snowbird to borrow the old fashioned hand pump, which pulls the stuff out through the dip stick hole, which always takes a long hard time, makes a mess and gets out most but not all of the black waste oil. But Jim came with his pump and helped me disassemble the electric pump, guessing, correctly, that it was the impeller I had burned up. Then it turns out that the oil filter is supposed to be only hand tight and I have a plastic wrench marked “Yanmar Oil Filter” but it did not fit the filter so another trip to Snowbird and Jim let me borrow his wrench with a rubber strap with which I was able to get the old filter off.

The second distress call came when we were about to leave. Lene had run the engine in the morning to make the refrigerator cold and everything worked fine. When she turned on the ignition switch at about noon, nothing happened except the beep that occurs when the switch is on but the engine is not. My guess was that the problem was the wiring behind the switch and we started disassembling its cover plates to gain access while Jim dinked over with a jumper cable His idea was to bypass the switch and go directly from the battery to the starter, with his fear that the starter motor was defective. We carry a spare starter motor but I had hoped that that big disassembly and reassembly job would not be required. Once everything that had just been carefully packed away in the aft compartment for the passage was removed, giving access to the battery and the starter, Jim looked in and saw a red wire. Where did this come from? he asked.  He stuck it back in place, Lene turned the key, and Yanmar purred back to life.

Other things we did here were to hire a diver, Macho, to scrape the barnacles from ILENE’s bottom. I can do this down to a depth of about two feet deep, but he did the lower bottom, after directing us to move from the northeast corner of the bay to the southwest corner, where the water was much cleaner so he could better see what he was doing.  We also bought a new pump to replace the one that pumps water overboard that flows from the refrigerator, and the aft shower and sink into a plastic sump. The marine store assured me that Atwood, the manufacturer of the sump unit, had said that the new pump was a replacement for the existing model which no longer works. But the new unit’s discharge hose would not connect to the discharge hole in the side of the plastic sump box. One was an inch higher than the other. The Chandler graciously gave me a refund.

We toured down to Cabo Rojo lighthouse which gave great views of the sea and land from its height on the cliff. Lucky to catch the lightin this shot, which blinks only once every 20 seconds.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   


                                                     The  people on the cliffs give a sense of their size.

And the surf crashes at their foot.

We had watched the sailboat below trying to sail west against the wind; here she is after giving up and heading back to Boqueron. Wait til nightfall!

Happy campers:

We also finally tried and succeeded in getting weather reports from the single sideband radio. A fellow named Chris Parker broadcasts his intelligently analysed reports about the wind and wave speeds and directions for various parts of the Caribbean, and then answers questions from paying subscribers who are planning passages, always asking the same question: When is the best day to go?" Based on his advice to others we decided to leave Puerto Rico on Saturday for the 300 miles to Big Sand Key in the Turks and Caicos, because the strong winds were expected to moderate for a few days starting then. We met up with Jens and Hanne, of Copenhagen, sailing their 37 foot “Viau.” Jens organized a meeting with us and Jenny and Albert of “Magus”, Tammy and Joe of “Tamara Sue” and Chip of "Balmacara" who single handed the 400 miles he went to Great Inagua at Galloways. We all shared information about our boats and agreed to try to speak on set channels at 8 am and 4 pm, on VHF if we were close, or on SSB if we were too separated for the 20 mile range of VHF.

Here is Miguel, at his post at dinghy dock plaza. He is a graduate of InterAmerican University in art, and has one of our boat cards and a magnifying glass in his left hand and a T shirt with a now familiar image stretched on his easel.

Curious Alphie looking down through a hatch with the boom overhead. 

Posted from Providentiales, Turks and Caicos