May 2000 - Puerto Rico
We spent a few days in Ponce, PR getting the roller-furling fixed and attempting to solve our electrical problems. The first of these missions was successful, and the second less so; but we at least have a good enough electrical system that we can charge the batteries and run all day without worrying about it. We picked up the Inmarsat hardware and got a stainless steel bracket fabricated. The whole collection is in our storage room (the "crew cabin") awaiting our attention.
The people of Puerto Rico lived up to their reputation as a friendly population. Our friends Robbie Ramos and Fraito, in particular, went to extra lengths to take care of us.
We rented a car, partly to pick up Doug Gordon and Roberta DiPasquale in San Juan (don't pronounce the first "n", and hit the "j" hard: "Sa -WHAN"). We subjected them to two days of running around Ponce, provisioning and buying odds and ends for the boat, under the guise of "getting to see Puerto Rico." On the third day, we decided to visit the ancient Indian ruins at Tibes, despite a persistent drizzle. We drove up what the map showed to be a well-traveled route but which turned out to be a series of detours through the Ponce barrios and (at one point) a school yard. Once at Tibes, we found the archeological digs closed due to the rain, so we toured the museum and started home. Wanting to avoid the circuitous route we had taken, we asked some non-English speaking natives about an alternative route back down to Ponce. We all thought we understood their instructions, but evidently not, as we found ourselves ascending high into the Puerto Rican mountains.
When we saw the neon "Golden Hills Motel" sign in English, we pulled in to ask directions. To our dismay, there was no office, and nobody around from whom to ask directions. The buildings were laid out like a motel, around a courtyard. There were at least 50 garages, some with open doors showing spiral staircases up into the units above. These units all had doors onto a long second-floor balcony looking into the courtyard, but there were no windows -- not one. The grounds were well kept. We had no idea what to make of it. A place for assignations? A very individualized prison (for people with cars)? A really high-class dry storage facility? And why did it have the only sign in English for 20 miles around?
In the end, we returned to the boat the way we had come, waving at our "guides" on the way past.
We weighed anchor that evening in the rain, which persisted most of the night. But from there on, the trip to the Turks and Caicos, which included the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, was charmed. We reached all the way, in beautiful blue-sky weather, with anywhere from 4 to 17 knots of wind. Doug, Andi, and Rob rotated as watch captains, and Roberta filled in as needed. We flew every sail we have on board, at one time or another, read lots of books, and actually got some sleep.
Approaching the T&C, we realized that we would arrive in the middle of the night -- not a good idea in an area of reefs and unlit ports! So we hove to for the night, backing the staysail and using a single-reefed main. This worked extremely well, giving Akka a smooth, easy motion and making about a knot of progress vaguely upwind.
We made landfall the next morning (Mother's Day) at Sand Cay, a deserted paradise, noisy with thousands of birds. There, we finally got to do some snorkeling and explored the miles of sand beaches. Doug and Roberta picked up more beautiful shells than they could carry, and in the end returned many of them to the briny deep. We cleared customs that afternoon at Grand Turk and explored a somnolent Cockburn Town that evening. The architecture is interesting and at least two of the hotels are quite nice-looking, but the entire town smells vaguely of urine -- presumably a smell emitting from the massive salt ponds ("salinas") to the east of the main part of the town.
The big attraction of Grand Turk is the Wall, which is less than a mile from shore. The depth goes from about 40 feet to over 2000 feet in a few yards, and the diving in this unbelievably clear water is said to be as good as it gets anywhere.
As we write this, we're nearing the edge of the Caicos Bank, a largely unexplored area of sand so huge that the early astronauts noted it as one of the three most prominent features on Earth -- the other two being the Great Wall and the Sahara Desert. We bought a local chart last night in Cockburn Town, and plan to try to find our way across its shallow plain to Providenciales ("Provo") today and tomorrow (one anchors out in the middle, at night).
