We started off the New Year in Salinas, Puerto Rico. The bay was a great place to hang out for several weeks. Hanging out was something we haven't done in quite a while. Seems like we have been on the move (1,000 miles to windward) for the past two months. The bay was really well protected and tucked up in the mangroves. We saw Manatees for the first time! They are huge and swim along in a lazy sort of way. It was fun to see Manatee and Dolphin almost every day in the bay. They would cruise right next the boat just to take a look at us.
We rented car and spent several days sight seeing inland Puerto Rico. We visited the Rio Camuy Caves. The caves were three huge rooms with lots of beautiful underground formations. They claim Rio Camuy is the world largest underground river. IT sure was big and long. One of the rooms of the cave is suppose to have so many bats (5 to 10 thousand) that they darken the sky every night as they exit the cave at dusk! We didn't go in to that room of the cave, thank goodness! We also visited the Puerto Rico National Rainforest Park. They say it's the only rainforest in the United States. What about Hawaii? Anyway it was a beautiful park complete with paved trails with little plaques describing trees and birds you were seeing. Very lovely and informative....but not near the thrill of wondering through the tangled unmarked and untraveled rainforests of Panama. We went to Old Town San Juan for dinner. We spent several hours in commute traffic just trying to get into the city for dinner! Welcome back to the good old USA. Yes, I guess we have gotten spoiled a little. San Juan is a beautiful Old Spanish walled city. It was settled and developed around the same time as Cartagena and Santo Domingo so had a very similar charm. The city was still lit up with Christmas lights in all the parks and arches. The lights spanning all the streets. It was very pretty. Puerto Rico is a very pretty island although it took us a little while to get us to being in developed areas again. We had a wonderful time. It's somewhere we will definitely visit again someday.
We left Puerto Rico and headed out to visit some of the offshore island that make up the Spanish Virgin Islands. Our first stop was the island of Vieques. We stopped at a pretty little bay with beautiful crystal clear water. We were in the process of backing up to set our anchor we our transmission went out again! This time it literally fell out...it dropped completely off the engine! This was the third time in 60 days we had no transmission. This was getting very old! Sometimes sailing is not all-good times and pretty suns sets, although the sunsets were pretty on Vieques. The transmission case and several of the engine mounting bolts were completely broken and sheared off. The fishtrap line we had wrapped on the prop must have caused the damage. The vibration we had been feeling wasn't the prop at all (no wonder we couldn't find anything wrong with the prop) it was the transmission half-broken off the motor. More boat projects! The bay we were in Vieques was completely deserted. So we needed to sail back to Puerto Rico for repairs. We got up early the next morning planning to sail into Fajardo, Puerto Rico but for the first time since we have been in the Caribbean the Trade winds had died. Across the entire Caribbean the wind was only blowing 5 knot, around us it wasn't even blowing 2 knots. So with no motor and no wind we sat and waited, one day, then two days, then three. On the forth day we got tired of waiting, we still only had 5 knots of wind but we went for it and sailed the 18 miles to the town of Fajardo it took us 8 hours to ghost alone in the light breezes. We sailed into Fajardo, dropped hook and immediately went to work on finding someone to work on the Transmission. We needed to get things fixed in a hurry we had guest coming to visit in St. Thomas in less than two weeks! We were lucky again we were able to get the Transmission fixed in only 3 days! This was pretty amazing given we needed a whole new transmission case and mounting. We got the transmission back on the boat at 5:00pm and were gone the following morning before 7:00am.
We had a wonderful sail to the island of Culebra. Culebra is at the end of a little chain of reefs in the Spanish Virgins. Island Culebra is halfway between Puerto Rico and St. Thomas. Culebra has some beautiful bays and snorkel spots. We realized that we have been a little spoiled by Panama's San Blas islands. What's considered great here was very nice but doesn't touch the beautiful untouched and pristine condition of the San Blas islands. Culebra is part of the USA National Parks and Wild Life Reserve. We saw lots of birds and turtles. We spent most of our time there finishing up the huge list of boat projects so everything would be ready for our guests. We did get in one hike to the top of the island. AT the top is an old "Faro" which had been damaged by a hurricane but still was working. The views from the top were great!
We sailed to St. Thomas to meet Sharon's sister Shelly and her husband Mike. They will arrive January 30th. They are the first of our Caribbean guests. The trade winds are back in full force it has been blowing 15 to 20 consistently. We worked on the boat like crazy to ensure she was in ship shape for our guests. We will have guests all of February and most of March. It should be great fun!