Our whirlwind month-long tour sailing the Eastern Caribbean islands has come to an end. Well – technically we still have lots of sailing in the Virgin Islands left, luckily! We managed to visit every island between the Virgin Islands and Antigua except for Anguilla, which we feel okay about missing. We experienced St Martin/St Maarten, St Barths, Barbuda, Antigua, Nevis, St Kitts, St Eustatius, and Saba! It has been an exciting but exhausting month. We are looking forward to getting back to Puerto Rico and resetting before Matt’s parents come to visit!
Dolphin escorts
We depart for Puerto Rico, once again setting sail with a nice sunrise view. Not more than a couple miles into our journey, we are joined by another pod of dolphins! Spotting dolphins – especially when they are racing the boat up at the bow – is one of the best things about living on a boat. We once again have a friendly pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins escorting us out of St. Croix. So far, every journey involving St. Croix has involved dolphins! First, a large pod of dolphins helped make our rough journey from Vieques to St Croix more palpable and then I spotted a couple more dolphins on our overnight from St. Croix to St. Martin. On our way back to St Croix from Saba, we had a pod of dolphins with us over 50 miles! And, now – this!
The dolphins are so incredibly graceful. We like to say they are “racing” our boat, but really they can swim so much faster than we travel. They are just playing and showing off; relaxing and rolling over to lazily swim backwards. This pod has a couple large, older dolphins – as evidenced by all the spots.
Tangent: Young Atlantic Spotted Dolphins do not have any spots. This makes them look more like a bottle nose dolphin. However, as they age spots begin to appear and will cover nearly the entire body by full adulthood. The spots generally begin after the dolphin’s first birthday and become darker and larger with age.
Trawling for fish
At the end of last season Matt decided to get enthralled with fishing. He’s been doing a lot of reading and research about the different species and tactics for catching them – focusing on trawling (having fishing lines out behind us while moving). He received a bunch of cool new fishing gear and lures for Christmas, and he outfitted a second fishing pole while we were in Fort Lauderdale for hurricane season. Sea Monster is definitely outfitted to catch some fish at this point.
Today is a great day and passage for fishing, so we’ve been trawling two lines out behind us the whole way. Surely we can catch one fish. After quite some time, we finally hear that thrilling sound of the fishing reel spinning. I yell to Matt, slow down the boat by putting the engine in neutral, and watch as Matt begins to reel in our fish. The fish is putting up a decent fight, so we’re excited about the prospect of something large(r) that might be possible to filet and eat. Although let’s be honest – I’m not going to be fileting nor cooking nor eating the fish. That’s all up to Matt. As such, I’d bet there’s a good chance he would release any type of fish besides maybe yellow fin or blue fin tuna. I could be wrong, though.
As the fish gets closer, we’re disappointed to see that it looks like a barracuda. I’m still holding out hope that maybe it’s a wahoo. I don’t really know what a wahoo looks like, so seems pretty reasonable it could be that at this point. As Matt pulls the fish on-board, it’s confirmed that once again he has caught a barracuda. Why do we only catch barracuda? So annoying. Last year we were trawling in 20 feet of water over the Great Bahama Bank. Looking back, it makes a ton of sense that we were catching barracuda left and right. That’s perfect conditions for barracuda and not the typical conditions most experienced fishermen would seek out. We are (or at least Matt is) more educated this year, though. We aren’t trawling in shallow barracuda filled waters. We’re trawling on passages over deeper water. Still – barracuda.
Tangent: Barracuda are actually considered to be edible fish – some say quite tasty. The biggest well-known risk with barracuda, though, is the likelihood of Ciguatera – a poisoning commonly found in the flesh of reef fish and predators of reef fish. Getting Ciguatera is essentially food poisoning on steroids. It can last for weeks or months. The specific toxins are originally made by a small marine organism that grows around coral reefs. Small fish then eat the toxins within the coral, and then those small fish are eaten by bigger and bigger fish. The toxins become more concentrated moving up the food chain.
At least the barracuda brought some additional excitement to our journey. This has been one of the fastest passages yet with all the dolphins and now a fish! I snap a few photos before Matt releases the barracuda back into the sea – likely to be caught again by another disappointed fisherman.
Marina life
We pull into our designated marina on the east side of Puerto Rico just before closing time. After hailing the marina a few times on Channel 16 with no answer, we decide to enter and attempt to find our slip by ourselves (looking for J8). Of course, I can’t find any dock letters or numbers. There are not that many empty slips though – especially not ones that fit a boat of our size. We’ve got it narrowed down to two potential slips when I decide to try calling the marina office. The receptionist indicates that the dock master is on his way to help us tie up.
Turns out we had chosen the right slip! Pretty sure we could have manuerved into the slip ourselves this time (there is no wind or current!), but it’s always easier having someone to throw a line to. Within a couple minutes we are safely secured in our slip and getting power cords set up – hello, air conditioning! The dock master gives us the lay of the land and assures us that we can wait to fill out all our paperwork at the office until tomorrow morning.
I take Monster for a short walk while Matt gets things organized around the boat and taps into the free marina WiFi. Around sunset we are relaxing on the couch inside a cool salon with plans of pizza and Shark Tank for dinner. What a life.
This is our first night at a marina since we last left Puerto Rico approximately one month ago. For over 30 days, we have stayed every night on the hook! That feels like a pretty big accomplishment and is the longest we have ever gone since owning the boat without being at a marina. That’s a good amount of money saved, since anchoring typically doesn’t cost anything! Which is good because marinas cost an arm and leg just to tie up your home to a piece of wood/concrete.
While we are relishing in the comforts of being at a dock, the main reason we came in is so that we can pick up Matt’s parents tomorrow. They are finally coming to stay with us for a week – their first time on-board! We’re very excited to have them come visit and want to make sure the boat is in as good of shape as possible. That means lots of cleaning and not so fun maintenance projects. This will be the first fresh water wash (other some quick cleanings during rain showers) that the outside of the boat has had in over a month. Much needed.
The next morning, after a 2-hour wash down of the boat, we begin to do laundry and inside cleaning. Laundry is never easy on a boat, but we’ve always taken comfort in our portable washing machine making it a lot easier. Unfortunately, like everything else on our boat, the washing machine decided to stop working recently. After a lot of troubleshooting and tinkering we were able to get the spinner side to work, but the wash motor seems to be ruined. Now we have an even more labor intensive method of doing laundry that includes the wash and rinse cycles by hand. Here’s a short post of what laundry use to entail – now just double the effort, add a plunger looking device, and a nice arm workout and that’s what we’re working with. Luckily, Matt’s parents are bringing us a new washer!
By late afternoon we’re exhausted but happy that our guests will arrive to a clean boat inside and out this evening! Here’s a quick look at the guest quarters.
Next up is the Spanish Virgin Islands!
