The week started with a bang as we rented a car and headed out supply shopping. Our first few stops (three different auto shops) were engine related so not much fun….just buying oil and filters and such. We did manage to find a Chick-Fil-A on the island and we did pretty well ordering in Spanish until we hit a block and then the cashier spoke perfect English for us. One of the major perks in Puerto Rico! Fortified with Chick-Fil-A, we headed into Walmart. Our shopping list covered a notebook page front and back but as you know, once you get into Walmart, the list expands exponentially! By the time we made it to checkout, our cart looked like one of those game shows where they give people a cart to fill with as many items as they can in 15 minutes and then they win the items for free. We had the cart filling part down pat…unfortunately, the free part never manifested itself! After closing my eyes and swiping the credit card, we headed to our next stop which was Home Depot. In life, you don’t realize what your favorite smells are until you are away from your normal haunts for awhile. Walking into Home Depot, I realized that the universal smell of Home Depot is one of my favorite smells on earth. Trust me! If you are ever away from Home Depot for a long period of time, walking through that door is like coming home. Next on the list was my search for some beauty products which turned into an impossible task for the day (at least 4 different stores!). I did discover an amazing Puerto Rican store called Salvo Farmacia that reminded me of Dollar General. It didn’t carry any of the products I wanted but it was fun to explore. Finally, the grocery store. The grocery store was huge so again, we had to walk every aisle to be sure we did not miss anything! By day’s end, we had walked at least 10 miles and were exhausted so we headed back to the boat to rest for the next day’s shopping events.
On Tuesday, we drove to Fajardo area to hit the boat stores. This trip was a definite homecoming because Fajardo was where we took our sailing lessons back in 2017. We found most of our boat items that we needed and decided a few others could wait until we reached Colombia where the prices might be better. Since we are so thrifty (thrifty, I say….cheap, Bill says), we stopped by a bicycle shop to pick up some used tires. The tires are somehow going to keep our dock lines from wearing so fast. Bill just gave me a five minute explanation that I still don’t understand so I’ll explain it to you once he gets it all rigged. All I recall from his explanation is that this solution will save us about $200.00 so I’m all in! Bill made several friends at the tire store who enjoyed licking the salt off his legs (see picture below for the frolics…ha ha). Tuesday’s shopping was much less strenuous than Mondays and we even had time for a dip in the pool when we returned. The rest of the week has been boat project after boat project as we prepare Galt for the trip to Bonaire. Changing oil and filters, cleaning out cabinets, organizing, talking to dealers in the States, lining up crew for the voyage with Bill and multiple other odds and ends. Our main item we need for the trip is a handheld GPS that supports weather reports and emergency contacts. I spent an entire morning on the phone with West Marine trying to order the Garmin Inreach Mini which would work perfectly. When we were at West Marine the day before, there were three different options so I investigated which would be best and the Mini won the vote. The first store I called was Fajardo: Clerk: “We don’t have any in stock but the San Juan store does.” Me: “Great! Can you have them send it to your location and we’ll come pick it up?” Clerk: “No, we can’t send items between locations. You have to go there and get it.” Okay….so I hang up and call the San Juan store. Clerk: “Yes, we have a Garmin Mini.” Me: “Great! Let me pay for it and we’ll pick it up on Monday.” Clerk: “You have to be a West Marine gold member to pay over the phone.” Me: “Okay, sign me up to be a gold member.” Clerk: “You need to do that online.” Sigh. I hang up, go online, pay $25.00 (they had no problem taking THAT payment!) and then call back to the store. Me: “I am a gold member now. I need to pay for the mini.” Clerk: “Okay, hold for the cashier.” Hold 15 minutes. Disconnected. Call back. Hold 15 more minutes. Disconnected. Call back and finally get cashier. Cashier: “Garmin Mini2, that will be $520.00 with tax.” Me: “Not the Mini2, just the Mini. It’s $299.00 on your website.” Cashier: “Hold on a minute.” Clerk: “Uh, we don’t have the Mini 1. Just the 2.” Me: “Then you can just sell me the Mini 1 that is on display. That will be fine.” Clerk: “We don’t own the displays. We can’t sell them.” Every time I deal with these things outside the US, I appreciate more and more the thought process of Americans versus the rest of the world. So, we have no GPS system yet and the hunt continues. No such thing as two day Amazon delivery here and Amazon can’t guarantee that the item will arrive prior to our departure window so we are pursuing other avenues that will hopefully fall into place this coming week. Other than the hunt for the GPS and the never-ending search for a 12V battery that is compatible with our existing batteries, our next week will just be more projects and preparation. Oh, I forgot the highlight of our week…we broke down the electric toilet and cleaned every part and reassembled. That task sums up the joys from the week! Until next week, go to Home Depot and enjoy the smell as well as the customer service folks that can think outside of a box!
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We have been on the move this week from St. Thomas to Vieques to mainland Puerto Rico. With the exception of one day, it was a quiet week spent eating lots of good food and jumping into the marina pool. On Monday, the Pirate Museum in Charlotte Amalie finally opened so we got to see lots of treasure from ships that had sunk in the St. Thomas area. It was a small museum but it was very interesting and worth the visit. The gift shop had a lot of jewelry made out of old coins which tempted me but I settled for a deck of pirate cards and moved on! Tuesday was our day of good and bad excitement. Our plan was to head over to the island of Culebrita for the night which would have been an easy three hour jaunt. Until the anchor excitement occurred. On Galt, we have a winch (called a Windlass) that pulls up the anchor when you step on a button. It is usually my job to step on the button while Bill guides the boat forward slowly. I stepped on the button as usual and the windlass began to haul in the anchor. It was chugging along nicely until the anchor just stopped. The windlass was still working and spinning but the chain would not budge. Bill came up to look and we decided the anchor was hung up on something. In the past when the anchor has been hung up on a rock or something unknown, Bill just maneuvered the boat around until the anchor pulled loose. No matter which way he tried to move, the anchor would not budge. So, Bill grabbed his snorkel gear and dove overboard to see what the problem was. Whenever someone in snorkel gear resurfaces and asks for a sharp knife, never a good sign! The anchor had become entangled in a huge pile of old chain and rope that someone had left on the bottom of the bay. Bill managed to hack through the rope which was holding us to the bottom of the bay to let the boat float free. He climbed back onboard and we proceeded to haul anchor. The windlass continued to struggle so Bill was manually hauling the chain as I stepped on the button. As the anchor came out of the water, we saw a mass of huge chain encompassing the entire anchor. We were discussing next steps when a man went by in his dinghy. I waved at him for assistance and he was kind enough to come over and help us unwrap the mess. I was very concerned he was going to lose a finger because each time he pulled loose a section of the chain, the weight of the chain would immediately drop and drag into the water coiling the remaining chain even tighter around the anchor. After several dicey minutes, he had safely extracted the anchor and we hoisted it aboard. We began chugging our way through the anchorage into the main channel when….the engine stopped. We have not had engine issues recently as Bill has figured out how to the be Larry the Lehman Engine Whisperer but our luck was definitely running low on this particular morning. Bill dashed down and worked his magic and the engine roared back to life with no further issue. However, given how snake bit we were this day, we were nervous about heading out to a deserted island for the night and decided we should not push our luck. So, we voted to head straight for Vieques which would have some options should we need further assistance.
A few minutes into the trip, Bill asked if I was going to cast out my fishing line. Since we have not caught a fish in over a year, I doubted our luck was going to change but Bill said, “Maybe it’ll be our lucky day since the morning was so bad!” I cast out the line and after an hour of dodging seaweed patches, I got tired of holding the rod. I tied the rod to the bench and ignored it. About five minutes later, the line whirred and Bill said, “Must be a fish!” to which I replied, “Nah, it’s just going to be a large patch of seaweed”. Then, the line started to spin off the reel at top speed and we knew we had definitely hooked a fish! I grabbed the rod as Bill helped to untie it from the bench. Bill slowed the boat to reduce the pressure on the line so I could begin to reel. For the next fifteen minutes, I would wait for the fish to relax the line so I could reel in a bit before he tightened his pull again. Soon, my arm strength gave out and I handed the rod over to Bill. He played the pull and reel game for the next fifteen minutes and we still had no idea what we had caught. I only knew I was going to be very mad if it was a barracuda! As Bill got him close to the surface, we could see it was definitely not a barracuda and it was something BIG so the excitement kicked into full gear. Bill handed the rod back to me and I would reel as Bill hand pulled the line. The last minute it took to get the fish over the rail and onto the deck were tense because at this point we knew it was an amazing tuna and if it kicked off the hook after all this work, we would have been devastated! Finally, the tuna flopped onto the deck and Bill ran to get the rum. When you poor rum into a fish’s gills, it numbs the fish so it is not in as much distress. While Bill took care of the fish, I collapsed onto the bench exhausted. After taking our prize pictures, Bill went to put the fish in the refrigerator and the fish was so large that Bill had to take off the tail to fit it in the refrigerator! We don’t have a scale on board but we judged it to a 20 to 25 pound black fin tuna. With our luck on the positive side, we sailed our way into Vieques where Bill cleaned the tuna and I vacuum sealed and froze 12 meals from it! So, our rough start to the day ended in victory and we both slept very well on Tuesday night after downing several Advil each! The rest of the week was easy going and we visited several restaurants on Vieques that we had enjoyed on our previous trip and then we sailed over to mainland Puerto Rico into the Palmas Del Mar Marina where we will spend the next month preparing to cross over to Bonaire. The marina has hot showers, a pool and multiple restaurants as well as a Walmart down the street so Marina Sally will definitely be enjoying her stay! Magen’s Bay was as beautiful as we expected. It was hard to capture it in a picture because the white sand stretched for about a mile. During the day, hoards of cruise ship passengers landed on the beach but after 4pm, it became our own private paradise. We were amazed how quickly the beach chair boys could clean up at the end of the day. They were like ants and had those chairs and umbrellas stashed about 5 minutes after the cruise passengers departed. We had a beach day on Monday and the water was awesome. I’d like to say we enjoyed our lunch at the beach snack bar but our hotdog and one slice of pepperoni pizza were $17.00 and they didn’t even give me any toppings for the hotdog! On Tuesday, we taxied over to Coral World Ocean Park. For a small aquarium park, it was very impressive. They had dolphins, sea lions, sharks, turtles and birds. There was a large circular aquarium where the fish seemed to think they were swimming to Hawaii instead of going around the same circle pattern all day. I must admit that taking pictures of animals in a zoo was much easier than catching them on the Serengeti! The park had presentations every 30 minutes to talk about the animals but I think the most interesting fact of the day came from a poster on the bathroom wall. Did you know that a parrot fish poos out 700 pounds of sand per year? I did not! So, next time you are lying on the beach, give that parrot fish a little thanks.
After our Magen’s Bay adventures, we went back over to St. John’s to visit Lameshur Bay which was in the St. John’s National Park. In 1987, Bill had attended a summer study abroad program to do research on the reefs in Lameshur Bay (yeah…tough way to spend a summer at the age of 22!). We arrived to find the bay almost empty which was a surprise because it is usually hard to get a mooring. Bill asked the national park ambassador (evidently a “ranger” has gone the way of the “stewardess” and a “fireman”) if the camp was still there. Finding out that parts of it had survived the last 35 years, we hiked to the camp and went down memory lane. Most of the buildings were still standing but mother nature was in full force reclaiming the area. It was fun to see where Bill had spent his summer all those years ago and to hear about the research he had been doing. After a hot hike back to the beach, we jumped in the water for some snorkeling. The reef had a good amount of huge coral formations and I saw another Porcupine Fish which made me smile. I think if I ever need a therapy pet, I will choose a Porcupine Fish. After Lameshur, we tried to go to Salt Pond Bay but the moorings were all taken by the time we arrived so we changed our plans and sailed over to Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. Charlotte Amalie is the capital of St. Thomas and we had visited previously during times of The Stupid. The city was very different this visit with people everywhere and all the shops and restaurants open. We found a local joint that had a huge food bar and we got enough take away for at least two meals each. We wanted to visit the Pirate Museum but it was closed so we might stick around another day and see if it opens on Monday. Our next stop will be to revisit Honeymoon Bay where we were a couple of years ago and then we will be tracking our way back to Puerto Rico to get Galt and Bill ready for the trek to Bonaire. We are definitely looking forward to the price drop in Puerto Rico for groceries and we won’t miss the $40 per case beer prices! The blog may be a little late next week but I will get it done when possible. Have a wonderful week and I hope Spring is in the air for you all! Our last day in the BVIs, we took the short sail over to Soper’s Bay. When we arrived, every mooring in the bay was full but luckily, the marina had room so we pulled in for the night. The marina had a small grocery store so we bought some last minute, over-priced supplies before checking out. Customs and Immigration at West End was a complete nightmare compared to the easy check in we had on Virgin Gorda. The ferries from the USVIs land at West End and immigration made private boaters wait until the entire ferry load went through immigration first. After waiting for one ferry, we got in back of the line to wait for our turn. As we walked up to the window, the immigration agent said he could not help us because there were more ferry people. At this point, we were about 90 minutes into these festivities so I lost my cool and yelled at some folks. I usually try not to lose my temper but when we were routed outside to wait some more while charter boats were getting checked in, I had to make a little noise. When we were finally checked out, we headed back to the marina for a much needed drink and dinner. When we got back to the boat, a superyacht had pulled in next to Galt. As the crew tied off all the lines, the families that had chartered the yacht began to disembark. They had several elementary school aged children who began running excitedly up and down the dock. “Look at it!” “It’s like a pirate ship!” “It even has a pirate steering wheel!” “That’s the coolest boat ever!” It took me a minute to realize they were talking about Galt! I am sure their parents were thrilled to know they had spent at least $350,000 a week for their fancy yacht when the kids would have been happier with a 40 year old sailboat!
The next morning, we fired up our pirate ship and headed over to the US Virgin Islands. Our trip was only 3 miles so definitely one of our easier jaunts! We pulled into Waterlemon Bay and grabbed our mooring. Our friends that we met last year in St. Vincent were there so we wanted to be sure to see them before they headed over to the BVIs. We met early the next morning for a short walk over to a national park that was an old sugar plantation. Sugar cane never did very well on St. John because the soil was difficult and St. John is also very mountainous. This particular plantation was built in the early 1800’s and was only in operation for 30 years because once the slaves were freed, no free men wanted to work that hard to get the sugar cane to grow. We spent the afternoon snorkeling in somewhat rough waters but I saw the funniest fish! After searching the internet, I finally located him. He was a Porcupine Fish. He had a huge round head with giant eyes and he kept peeking at me from under a rock. I fell in love with him immediately and I was very glad my daughter (who loves all things cute) was not with me or I would have a Porcupine Fish living in my bathtub! The next day, we moved Galt over to Maho Bay where we spent the rest of the week. It was one of those rare weeks when we had rain and since our mooring was a comfortable spot, we just stayed. We taxied over to Cruz Bay one day for lunch, groceries and ice cream so that was a successful day! Tomorrow, we will sail over to St. Thomas to avoid some odd wind directions expected early in the week. Odd wind directions tend to make some anchorages very rolly and rough so we are going to hide in Magan’s Bay which should be well protected. It is supposed to be one of the world’s top 10 most beautiful beaches so we are looking forward to judging for ourselves! |
AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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