Welcome to Puerto Rico

 On April 11, at 4:00 p.m., we left Samana for a 25 hour run to Puerto Real, Puerto Rico.  This was probably the most planned leg we have made, because of the reputation of Mona Passage.  Mona Passage is the area between Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.  The conditions in this area are much more dynamic than any we have experienced before. The trade winds, mountains, and depth extremes work together to create treacherous waters between the two islands. 

I have paid close attention to the numerous accounts, and tried to learn from the successes and mistakes of others. If you plan to make this trip in your own vessel, I strongly suggest you read ‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South’ by Bruce Van Sant. We followed all of his points of advice (starting with the time of our departure), and we had a very good crossing. 

This is the route we took, which might look odd because we followed the land so closely for so long. Conditions are calmer close to land in the evening and over night, because the trade winds die down, and the wind comes off the land. The terrifying part of this route is the possibility of getting tangled in fishing gear in the dark, and it was a very dark night. At one point, I could see a faint light, once in a while, but the radar wasn’t picking up anything in that location. After about an hour I suddenly saw a light right in front of me. I changed course to starboard, and slowed to idle. When I looked closely with binoculars I could barely make out the silhouettes of about 10 small dinghies working nets. Only one had a small flashlight (or possibly cell phone light) to warn off vessels. 

This is the real culprit to the treacherous conditions in Mona Passage…Hourglass Shoals!  All of the area between the two islands is a shoal, but the hourglass shaped portion, immediately off the east side of DR, is extremely shallow in relation to the surrounding waters. The Hourglass area is between 100-500 feet deep.  That might sound pretty deep, but not considering the waters to the north and south. 

I will mention that it is also possible to take a route north of the Hourglass, and turn south only after passing the NE corner of the shoal.  We attempted to take the north route, but experienced very rough conditions as we got farther from land so we returned to the inside route.

I drew the Hourglass Shoal in this picture, to help you visualize. The Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south are both over 20,000 ft deep in this area. There are a variety of currents at play including (but not limited to) currents created because of temperature and/or salinity differences, tidal movement, earth’s rotation…etc.  This water wants to flow, but the flow is drastically hindered between DR and PR just because of the depth.  All levels of currents get forced to the surface here, and that is the primary cause for the large and confused waves. Add a wind event and the word treacherous is born.

Of course, we waited for ideal weather conditions…

Sunset on the ocean.

The next morning the water was an amazing blue!

After 24 hours at sea, it is nice to see our destination. Considering the amount of concern I had about this crossing, I think it went very well. The only thing I would do differently next time would be to go a little farther south of the shoal before turning east.  We still experienced some very bumpy conditions in that area, but nothing terrible.

Since Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, checking in was a breeze with the ROAM app.

Cruising along the southern coast

I love the beautiful blue hues of the water, with the mountains in the background. Can you see the ‘eye in the sky’?

TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System) augments existing radar systems, providing enhanced surveillance and detection of suspicious airborne and maritime activities

As we walk around the small waterfront towns we notice a lot of signs directing us where to run in the event of a tsunami 😳

Homes in the town of Guánica have been repaired after a terrible earthquake caused massive damage in 2020.

Many of the homes here are absolutely adorable!

The dogs are very lazy, and it wasn’t even that hot.

We traveled to the island of Vieques (I was told by locals that it is pronounced like Vegas🤷‍♀️)

This is a fun, vacation/party type of town.

Keith offered me this seat😂…I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it

The harbor walk has beautiful views.

Plenty of photo opportunities 

This mango tree was in someone’s yard. I had high hopes of buying fresh mango when we found a market…but it was not to be…

We found very little in the way of fresh fruits or vegetables, but they had a plethora of canned seafood😬

We were able to do a little snorkeling. There was a lot of damage to hard corals, but a lot of soft corals were present.

Keith took a picture of me diving down to take a picture of a lionfish.

This was the picture I was taking👍

Rarely are we found getting ready to leave for an adventure at 6:30 p.m., but this evening was different. One of the main reasons for our visit to this island was to see the biobay. 

After dark, on April 22nd, we visited Mosquito Bay, also known as Bioluminescent Bay, Vieques, it is the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world, located on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The bay's mesmerizing glow is caused by high concentrations of dinoflagellates, specifically Pyrodinium bahamense, which emit a blue light when disturbed, according to Discover Puerto Rico.

This is not my picture, but this is exactly how it looked. We took both our GoPro and underwater cameras, but neither had a low light setting adequate to capture this.   It was magical! Everything that touched the water looked like an effervescent fiz.  The paddle stroke made a million tiny bubble lights, even when the paddle dripped the drops created light puddles. If you sat perfectly still and looked into the water it looked like a snow globe with tiny lights blinking into the depths, as the organisms bounced into each other. As we paddled through the bay we could see zigzag streaks of light from every minnow and creature we startled. Some streaks were huge! We paddled to the edge of the mangroves, and the roots glowed all the way down.

It was really fantastic!

Unfortunately, we did not get to explore all of the places we had planned to see in Puerto Rico. We originally wanted to rent a car and visit Old San Juan, and some of the waterfalls in the area. However, we decided that it would be wise to take a very good weather window to get much farther south. In light of the distance we still needed to cover, we decided the prudent thing would be to go south when we had the chance.  I’ll fill you in on our very long cruise in the next blog post.

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Farewell DR

 Before heading back to Samana, we decided to spend our last day at Haitises Parque visiting Paraiso Cano Hondo. It was easy to get to after a short dinghy ride up a mangrove river, and a short walk up a dirt road, which ran between rice fields. It is advertised as an ecotourism resort.  Since I have never visited an ecotourism resort, I’m not sure how it would rank, but my time there felt more like a favorite weekend hangout for locals.

It was a very interesting place…

An amazing number of stones were used in the construction of the buildings, terraces, and pools.

We definitely stuck out here, as visitors. These girls were excited to help me practice my Spanish.They were so happy to hang out with us, and I am sorry to say that I had their names written down, but now I can’t find them😧

The resort tapped into the Jivales River, and diverts its flow through 28 pools and waterfalls.

The construction was quite amazing!

Definitely enough room to spread out and find your own pool.

On March 24, our four day dispacho (permission to visit the park) ended, and we returned to the town of Samana and anchored in the harbor. We were hoping to only be there for a few days, until a weather window opened allowing us to cross the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.  Ultimately, Smana was our home for eighteen days before the winds finally calmed down and we got the weather we needed…

This was a great medium sized town that offered a great glimpse into Dominican culture.

Fruits and vegetables were plentiful, but they came with a warning.  Any produce purchased from a market or truck may carry parasite eggs. The advice was to soak items in a mixture of 1 part vinegar and 2 parts water for 5 - 15 minutes, and rinse thoroughly with fresh water before consuming.  The other bit of advice, for cruisers, is to take a non parasitic (dewormer😳) drug once a month. This is the kind of information that weighs heavily on my mind, and while I don’t think we picked up any parasites (I was secretly hoping for a little weight loss), we did purchase the drug before we left DR…just in case🤞 Of course, every little stomach issues makes me think I have a tapeworm🤣

The spice and herb section of the market was impressive!

Watching the locals fish is very entertaining! I know all fishermen process a certain level of patience, but these people are literally ‘next level’.  For one thing, no one uses a fishing rod. They simply wrap line around anything round…the boy used a piece of plastic pipe!  They unwrap some line, hand toss the hook, and stand perfectly still for hours. Unfortunately, we never saw them catch anything.

Another scene that caught our attention, while at anchor, was this repair team. I saw a man carrying a ladder across the bridge…I did not think he was going to do this with it😳

They were successful in restoring lights to the four arches on the left👏

During our 18 day wait we completed numerous boat projects, and found some time for a little snorkeling and island exploration…

On one snorkeling excursion I spotted two squid. We have seen squid before, and their behavior is always the same. When they first notice us, they shoot away…super fast, but they usually don’t go far. If I swim in the direction of their departure I will usually spot them again about 30-50 ft away. We will repeat this sequence two or three times until they get used to seeing me, and apparently no longer feel threatened. Eventually, they just let me hang out with them, and it makes me sooo happy♥️

Good bye my friend.

On April 11, we left Dominican Republic for Puerto Rico. I will give you the details of our crossing in the next blog post.

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Waterfalls and Caves

 On the last day we had the rental car, we decided to travel north to El Limon waterfall.  The ‘brochure’ advertised a beautiful 1.5 mile hike to the falls.

The first 100 ft was downhill…

Most of the remaining 1.5 miles was uphill…very uphill!

The scenery was beautiful, and whenever I felt it impossible to take another step up, I just stopped for a moment and took pictures. I have a LOT of pictures 🤣

I thought this overlook meant we were almost there…we were not!

Smarter people chose to have horses carry them up the mountain. We were happy to step aside to let them pass.

The view of the falls (from the top) was amazing, but now we had to go down, down, down to get there.

The waterfall made a very strong current that was impossible for me to swim against (especially with my exhausted legs) so I worked my way around from the outside edge.

The hike was sooo worth it!

Since we have Starlink we never buy SIM cards in the countries we visit. The downside to this is we have no internet connection when we are off the boat.  After visiting El Limon, we wanted to drive to Las Terrenas to visit a nice grocery store. I decided to use Aqua Maps (our navigation app) on my iPad since cell service was not required. For the most part, this solution worked well. We made it to the store with no problem, but our trip back to the marina got interesting.

On this map, it’s hard to tell what type of road is shown (since land maps are not the purpose of this app).

I saw no reason to follow the main road for many miles in the wrong direction, so I suggested we take this secondary road. The red part was not paved, and ended up being five miles that felt like fifty! Purple was paved, so we were good once we reached the purple. Keith did a masterful job of off road driving, but in retrospect it probably wasn’t the best idea to take our little rental car on that route!

Definitely living ‘off the beaten path’! The camera really doesn’t capture the ruts and hazards of this road, where 5 mph was probably a little too fast! When we passed locals they definitely gave us the ‘crazy gringos’ look😳 The road looks well used, but mainly from trucks, tractors, and we saw one jeep.

With the road trips behind us, it was time to leave the marina, and visit Los Haitises national park. After receiving our dispatch, which allowed us to visit for four days, we were off. A thirteen mile hop across Bahia de Samana put us in a magical land of lazy mangrove rivers, sheer rock islands, and historically significant caves!

The mangrove roots and trees are huge!

There are over 400 caves in this national park. Many of them contain 500+ year old pictographs from the Taino Indians. The ink was made from jagua juice, dyes extracted from mangrove bark, charcoal, manatee fat, and bat droppings.

Birds and fish

Humpback whales spend two months, every year, in the Bay of Samana, as it provides the perfect environment for birthing calves.

Warrior

?? Aliens? These were very common pictures, seen in numerous places.

Another mystery was found in this cave.

It is not easy to access, with no clear trails.  Keith had to nose the dinghy up to the rock ledge, and I climbed up to explore.

Once inside, I saw that the ground was littered with shells.  All appeared to be approximately the same size, and these shells are easily 8-10 feet above the high tide line.

Here’s the really weird part…on one side of the cave there is a wall about 3 ft high and 15 ft long that is made entirely of these shells. 😳🤷‍♀️

How did they get here? How did they die?  How old are they?

I don’t see how they could have been deposited here naturally.  This sight reminded me of oyster shell mounds I have seen in the Chesapeake.  I won’t say any more, because I don’t want to contaminate your ideas.  What do you think happened here?

My next post will finish up our time in DR…we are almost caught up to ‘real time’😂

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