Apr 21
Our days have gotten very simple. Get up early to listen to the radio nets, have coffee, and goof off all day reading or playing games. Today it actually rained quite a bit, so that was further excuse to not do anything productive. Pat & Dori on the other hand spent the whole day working on boat projects. We decided that they needed a little more time before they are ready to go, so we are not planning to leave tomorrow as some others are.
Speaking of boat projects, we had a new one crop up. While it was raining heavily during the night, I felt a drip fall on me from the hatch over the bed. There are a lot of places on a boat where you can tolerate a small leak, but right over the bed is not one of them. So the one useful thing I accomplished was to add some sealant to the seam in the hatch frame. This looks like the only place where the water could be coming from.
We spoke to friends Dick & Jane on Cheetah II on the VHF today. They are at Gilligan's Island, about twelve miles away and will be here tomorrow. We left them in Georgetown waiting on a package back in February.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 22
Mid-morning, we heard Cheetah II, Non-Linear, and Island Time on the VHF. They were about an hour away and were trying to raise the marina on the VHF, but getting no response. I called them and said I would go hunt down Javal, the dockmaster, and tell him they were coming. I never did find Javal, but I got him on the radio eventually and warned him that three sailboats coming and would want fuel and slips. He said no problem, just have them call when they get closer. Of course, when they were approaching, nobody answered the radio again, so I walked over to the fuel dock to take their lines. Once everybody was tied to the fuel dock, Javal and the fuel dock guy showed up. Javal said they were going to go to the last three empty slips on our dock, so I walked back to the boat to be there to help them dock. Once they were fueled, they came around to dock. Everybody else was out to take lines, and I was giving them each instructions on the VHF as to what lines to have ready, etc. After it was all done Barb and I joked that we could run a marina.
We visited on the docks with the new arrivals for an hour or so. Long enough to get a sunburn on my head. Later in the evening, we all gathered for drinks up at the pavilion and caught up.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 23
This morning two more boats we now showed up. We met both of these boats in Samana. Sea Bound was getting their engine rebuilt, and Queenie is Michele, the French Canadian singlehander. They are both going to anchor out, but we walked over to the fuel dock to say hello while they were there getting fuel. We agreed to meet later for drinks to catch up with them.
Rick & Sue, a couple who live here that we met when we first got to Ponce, got their "new" boat this past weekend. They bought a Morgan OI 41 that was in St. Thomas. They flew over there Friday and sailed back overnight Saturday/Sunday. We saw them on the docks, so we walked over to the new boat to take a look. They are very excited about it and were happy to show us around. Since they are moving up from a McGregor 28, they are quite happy.
A trimaran with a young British couple, Ian and Sharon, came into the marina today. They were flying the yellow quarantine flag indicating that they needed to check in with Customs. They had just come from the Dominican Republic. Turns out they don't own the boat. Friends recently bought it and this couple is just on vacation moving the boat to Antigua for them. So, they aren't "seasoned cruisers" like the rest of us. When the Customs guys came to the boat, one of the standard questions is "do you have any garbage?" The couple happily volunteered that no, they already took it up to the garbage cans at the head of the dock. Bzzzzz. Wrong answer. As a general rule of thumb, any time an official asks a question that starts with "do you have", the answer is "no". No produce, no meat, no garbage. The result, instead of being chastised, was a $300 fine. And, they had to get the garbage, slap a yellow quarantine sticker on the bag, and put it back on the boat! At least in the Dominican Republic they had a burn barrel to get rid of the international garbage.
Barb spent the better part of the afternoon washing the outside of the boat. So now it's all clean in preparation for our planned departure in a few days when we'll get it all salty again. Late in the afternoon Dori gave me another haircut. It has been two months since I adopted the new doo, and my Sean Connery look was fading. So, I'm buzzed again and working on my accent.
We all met up at the pavilion for drinks and dinner again, and visited for several hours.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 24
Today was truly a wasted day. After listening to the weather guru on the radio, I took the computer up to the pavilion to get e-mail. I ended up there most of the day, surfing the net, reading other boats cruising logs, and catching up on news. Barb went for a walk with Pat from Lone Star on the beach that starts at the marina and goes east towards the Hilton resort and casino. They were gone for a couple of hours. When they returned they both had huge stashes of sea glass. And they said they just got tired of picking it up and there is tons more. Barb even found a little mesh bag to carry it all in.
This evening we joined the gang at the pavilion for happy hour. Those of us who have been here a few weeks passed on some local knowledge to those that just got here for their land cruise tomorrow. We also met the owner of the trimaran that Ian & Sharon are on, who joined them for the rest of their trip to Antigua. They are going to leave tonight and go directly to Antigua in two days.
We are starting to plot our getaway from Ponce. It's funny how easy it is to get comfortable in a marina with the a/c on. The weather east of here is improving, although when the squalls go away, the wind will shift directions so that we will probably have it right on the nose as we move east.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 25
We have decided to leave tomorrow to continue our adventure. We went up to the office to settle up our account since we will probably leave before they open in the morning. We had paid for two weeks when we arrived, and now it turns out the monthly rate is cheaper for us. So they refigured the bill at the monthly rate and only charged us the difference. The monthly rate works out to about the same as three weeks at the weekly rate.
Lone Star has been trying to get a guy to come fix their a/c the whole week they have been here. The guy came today and fixed a leak and charged the system and thought it was working. After he left though, it quit again. Since we would like to travel with them, we decided to wait another day before departing. Since we paid for a month, we're good until next Monday without paying for anymore. So, we made plans to go into Ponce with Sol Y Mar tomorrow and see a museum that Pat wants to see.
For dinner, we went with Pat & Dori and Michele from Queenie over to La Guancha - the boardwalk across the water from the marina - for dinner. We went to the same restaurant where we had encountered the New Jersey waitress last week. Tonight, she wasn't there, so ordering became more of a point and speak bad Spanish affair, but it all worked out. The menu is clearly in Spanish and English, so we pretty much knew what we were getting. We joked that we are all getting the hang of more Spanish than we knew two months ago, and once we leave Puerto Rico, we won't need it anymore. I'll have to start trying to remember the French I learned in high school thirty-five years ago. Unfortunately, high school French taught me a lot of grammar rules, but even after three years of it, I couldn't have had a conversation.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 26
Late in the morning, we had a cab pick us and Sol Y Mar up and take us to town. We started our day with lunch at Cafe Thomas. Pat and Dori had been here for drinks a week ago, and we have been told they have very good food. It is fancy by cruiser standards, but it was also almost empty, so the fact that we were obvious touristas in our shorts and t-shirts wasn't a problem. There's something about eating in a fancy place with excellent service while dressed very casual that I've always liked. My money's just as good as anybody else's regardless of how I'm dressed. Anyway, lunch was very nice.
After we ate, Pat & I went to the Ponce Museum of History while Barb & Dori went shopping. The museum is free, but unfortunately all of the signs explaining things were only in Spanish. It was amazing that we could figure out the gist of most of them based on knowing the context. We were about halfway through the place when a young man who worked there strolled through and asked us in good English how we were. We answered, and once he knew for sure we were stupid Americans who only spoke English, he apologized that the signs were Spanish only. He then spent half an hour with us, explaining things. His English was quite good, and he seemed genuinely excited to have this opportunity to tell us about Puerto Rico and Ponce. His help made the whole experience much better for us instead of us guessing at stuff.
One very interesting part of our conversation with the young man at the museum was understanding a little more about the question of Puerto Rico becoming a state instead of it's current status. He explained the current status a little more to us and some of the arguments on both sides of the debate. It you are interested in this issue, check out this website about the subject.
About 15:00 we met the ladies at Cafe Paris, a small sandwich shop and had a couple of beers at their outside tables while watching the people go by. Just as we finished, we spotted a cab and flagged him down to take us back to the marina. Once back at the marina, we found Lone Star still with no a/c. The guy had found that a new valve he had installed was defective, so he has gone for a replacement. Since they are still not ready to go, and since the winds are blowing hard, as forecast, during the afternoons, we decided to not leave until tomorrow late night.
Sol Y Mar had us and Lone Star over for dinner since we are staying. Dori made lasagna, Barb cooked carrots, and Pat brought a salad. We ate and then played Catch Phrase again. We actually had a more civilized game than our previous ones had been. We ended up staying until midnight playing the game.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 27
OK, we are really going to leave today, but not until tonight. The wind is blowing strong again during the day, so we plan to leave about midnight. Overnight, the winds die off to nothing. Now I know, it's a sailboat and we need wind. However, the prevailing winds here are almost always right from the direction we need to go. So, we decided we would rather motor in calm conditions, than bash into waves for eight hours.
We found that the wireless network that comes from La Guancha, across the water is working today. This is the free network provided along the boardwalk. According to friends who were here before us, it had worked but stopped just before we arrived. We have had to carry the computer up to the pavilion the whole time we've been here to connect. This morning, I tried the other one just for grins, and it worked. So we have enjoyed using the net from the boat all day.
We had lunch up at the pavilion with Pat & Dori. After lunch we took a short nap of only about an hour. We are leaving at midnight, so any extra sleep will help. We got our last long hot showers for a while late in the afternoon. It'll be back to quick ones on the boat for a while from here. In the evening, Barb went to bed for a few hours before midnight. I know that even if I lay down, I won't go to sleep in anticipation of leaving, so I didn't try. Once we're underway perhaps I can nap since Barb will have had some sleep already. The wind has died down to almost nothing, so we should be off at midnight.
GPS N 17-57.886 W 066-37.011 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8843.
Apr 28
Midnight came and we made the decision to leave. As we were preparing to leave, I turned on the navigation lights. I usually don't double check that they are actually on, but for some reason tonight I did. So of course, they weren't. The stern light was on, but neither the red nor green bow lights were on. I went over and told Pat that I was ok with going anyway as long as we stayed close so that if we encountered traffic, I could contact them on the radio and just clarify that there we two sailboats together going the same way. He was ok with that, so we left.
The wind in the marina was only about five knots from the north. This would be the island night lee that we want to take advantage of. We had originally plotted a course north of Coffin Island as close to the shore as we could to stay in the night lee. It occurred to us though that we would be more likely to encounter fish trap floats in the shallower water near shore. So we decided to go to the south side of Coffin Island where the water depth drops off to over a thousand feet very quickly. Well, it sounded like a good plan at the time, but that took us about seven miles offshore, well out of any night lee that we may have enjoyed. We found winds over twenty knots from the east, so once we were south of Coffin Island and turned east, we were bashing right into the wind and a four of five foot chop. For the non-sailors, there are two kinds of wave actions we deal with. Swell is the general rise and fall of the ocean which occurs from winds far away from where you are. It is measured in feet as well as period, which is the number of seconds between each swell. We have been in a ten foot swell with a ten second period before, and it is just like rising and falling on an elevator. Chop on the other hand is the waves that are generated by the local winds. Choppy waves are generally close together and unevenly spaced. Twenty knots of wind can easily kick up a four or five foot chop. Often you get to deal with swells and local wind chop at the same time, and they don't have to come from the same direction. What we found offshore last night was a perfect example of an ugly ride. There was a couple foot swell coming from the southeast, which is coming from out in the Atlantic and wraps around the eastern tip of the island. Then there was the wind chop that we were bashing right into. We have been in worse, and we only slammed into the trough between the waves once every couple of minutes, but it is just an ugly ride. The cat was sick before we were a mile outside the marina, so he got to spend the night closed in the head with his liter box, so any mess he made was confined to where it's easy to clean up. Neither Barb nor I felt sick, but this part of the getting there is not my favorite. These conditions also slow us down considerably. At full throttle I'm only able to make 5.0 knots. If the conditions were calm I should be able to make 6.5 knots. I'm sure it can't have anything to do with the copious amounts of marine growth on the bottom of the boat. I'm sure looking forward to the fabled trade winds sailing that we should get once we get to St. Maarten and south.
The trip took us nine and a half hours, so we were pulling into the anchorage at 09:30. The last mile and a half into the anchorage was a due north course, which meant the waves were coming directly on our beam, causing us to roll quite a bit more. When you are going into the waves you hobby horse but when the waves are on the beam the boat rolls back and forth even more uncomfortably. The good news was that once we weren't bashing into the waves and wind, our speed picked up more than a knot, so it was only fifteen minutes or so until we were behind the point of land that defines the anchorage and the water smoothed out. The anchorage is tucked up in the corner of a bay which has high hills to the north and east, and is further protected from the south by a reef that breaks the waves. We pulled in to within a quarter mile of shore and dropped the hook in about nine feet of water. We could get a little closer, and there is only one other boat here, but why bother pushing my luck getting any shallower? The anchor set immediately, as it usually does and we were here. About a quarter mile south of us we can see the waves breaking on the reef, but in the anchorage we just have a little six inch wind chop and it's quite comfortable. There is a gentle rocking from the residual swell that makes it past the reef, but it feels much more natural than the jerky feeling in the marina when the swell made us tug against the dock lines.
Sol Y Mar anchored behind us a few minutes later and we had a brief chat on the radio before nap time. We did a few boat chores, like clean the salt water off the dodger so we can roll up the front panel and get a breeze in the cockpit, had a sandwich, and then stretched out in the cockpit for naps. We both dozed and slept lightly until 15:00. Sleep was constantly interrupted by jet skis racing by. Puerto Patilla is a small little town with a nice small public beach, and nothing like a resort from what we can see. But, it is Saturday, so I guess people just are out on there own jet skis to play. And the smooth waters inside the reef which provides us with a nice anchorage also provides them with a great place to be able to go fast without dealing with waves.
Once we were both awake, I decided to look at the inoperative nav lights. I had the main power panel apart a few days ago for another project, and since it's in the middle of the boat it makes sense that there may be two wires on the switch - one forward to the bow lights and one aft to the stern light. Maybe one came off. So I took the panel out again (I wish it were hinged) and checked. There is just one wire on the switch. I don't have any idea where they split, but it isn't right off the switch. Next I took my meter to the bow. I opened up both lights to find salt water corrosion inside both. I tested the voltage on the wires and it was good, so the problem is corrosion of the electronics themselves. These are not simple light fixtures. They are expensive LED fixtures, and the second brand I have tried. When I installed them I sealed every hole with silicon to avoid this, but they do get drenched with a lot of water force when we do these ugly passages, and apparently the sealing wasn't good enough. I just took them off and have sent an e-mail to the small company that makes them to see if this would be covered by the warrantee or not. Even if they will replace them under warrantee, it's such a pain in the ass to keep dealing with stuff like this. Meanwhile we'll just do without.
We spoke to Sol Y Mar on the radio and agreed that we don't want to repeat last night again tonight as we originally planned. We had planned to just get some rest here and leave in the night again for Vieques. But, the forecast is for the same conditions, so we are going to stay at least an extra day here. With 20/20 hindsight, if we had aborted the departure because of my lights, we wouldn't have had the bad ride and we would be somewhere where shipping new lights in would be easy. But we didn't, so we'll deal with it. Meanwhile we should have a nice night's sleep on the hook. Barb made chicken quesadillas for dinner and we tried to listen to the Buffett concert from Dallas, but the Sirius signal cut out juts as it started. So an early bedtime happened instead.
GPS N 17-58.582 W 065-59.617 Nautical miles traveled today 45. Total miles 8888.
Apr 29
About 04:00 we had a shower pass through, requiring the run around and close all the hatches dance to happen. Usually one of wakes up at the first sound of rain, but this one either came so fast, or we were so sound asleep that we had a noticeable square on the bed. Barb (a.k.a. Super Woman) pulled the rear hatch closed so hard that she bent one of the bars that holds it open. In her defense, that bar had never slid right and had to be coerced sometimes, and I had just woken her out of a deep sleep to get rain in her face as she attempted to close it.
We got to sleep late today since the early morning SSB weather net doesn't happen on Sundays. Just as we were getting up, another boat we met in Ponce was entering the anchorage. Alize left at midnight as we had, and reported that they had a similar rough ride. It's interesting to see the difference that being right near the shore makes, because we had only a hint of a breeze all night in the anchorage, while it is blowing over fifteen knots just a mile away. Barb made us a nice breakfast and we listened to the Cruisehiemers net on the SSB. In Ponce, the SSB reception was terrible because we were in a marina. The other boats nearby as well as electrical interference make a huge difference. Here in the anchorage we are still too far away to hear the net controller who is in the States, but we can clearly hear the relay person in the Bahamas as well as lots of other boats as they check in. Soon we will be too far away to check in with them at all, and we will miss that daily contact with the net controllers as well as the ability to keep tabs on the whereabouts of lots of boats we have met along the way.
I launched the dinghy after breakfast for the first time in a month. It fired right up even after sitting. I then put my mask and fins on to look under the boat and see just how bad the growth on the bottom is getting. For the non-boaters, the bottom of a boat is painted with special paint that chemically inhibits stuff from growing on it. This paint has a life of anywhere from one to three years generally, and then it quits working and stuff starts growing. Our last bottom job was in New Orleans when we first left cruising two years ago. I had them use the top-of-the-line paint that costs over $300/gallon and expected it to last three years. My thoughts were that then we would be in Grenada or Trinidad for hurricane season and we could get it redone with the "good" paint that you can't buy in the States anymore for environmental reasons. The environmental reasons aren't so much that it hurts things in the water, as the dangers to the people applying it and sanding it later. But it does a much better job and lasts longer. Anyway, when I got under the boat, I was dismayed at how much growth there is. I had the bottom cleaned in Luperon by a diver, so to have as much as there is two months later is bothersome. Either the Luperon guy didn't do that good a job, or the paint is shot. I will probably have to don my dive equipment and clean it again myself before we get to Grenada where we get it repainted.
About noon, we dinghied ashore with Sol Y Mar. The cruising guide says that you can land at the dock by the police station, and to just ask their permission. Well, as cruising guides tend to be, that was out-of-date information. The dock by the police station was destroyed by some storm since the guide was written, as were every other dock in the village save one. There is a fisherman's co-op dock that is the only intact dock available. We tied up there and asked a guy working on his fishing boat if that was ok. He said sure, so we thanked him and walked into town. We found one restaurant across the street from the public beach that looked like a possibility. The public beach area has a nice relatively new looking area, which includes parking and six or eight kiosks like we saw at La Guancha in Ponce. Each kiosk sells drinks and some kind of food, mostly fried empanadas. We grabbed beers form one and walked on to the beach. The beach here is a dark sand/mud mix and lost of pebbles. But there are lots of palm trees and shady areas, and several ramadas with picnic tables.
After a little time there, we walked back past where we had landed and looked for the restaurant that we are anchored off. We found it about a quarter mile down the street, and it was open. We found a much nicer looking place than the exterior view from the water indicated. There were only a few tables taken, so we had our choice of water's edge tables to sit at. The ladies and I ordered sissy drinks with umbrellas, while Pat wisely stuck to beer. The three drinks ordered were a Pina Colada, a peach Daiquiri, and a Papaya Frappe. When the three drinks came, the Pina Colada was identified by the pineapple wedge garnish, although the drink was blue. Of the other two the one that was supposed to be Papaya was the distinct color of peach, while the last drink was yellow. We all tasted all three, and none of them could have been identified by taste. They were all fruity and had plenty of alcohol in them, but we didn't order more. Our waiter was not a ball of fire about speed of checking back with us, and when he brought the food he had no ideas who's was who's, and he had misunderstood Barb's order entirely. The food was ok but not outstanding. To bad the experience wasn't better, because the location is great. While we were eating, we kept seeing something pop up in the water a little ways off the shore. We thought it was a turtle coming up for air, but eventually realized there was a large dark spot moving around, and this was what was coming up for air. We finally concluded that it was a manatee. The fact that we noticed that the speed limit buoys said "manatee zone" helped us figure it out too.
We walked back to the beach area, stopping at a little colmado (small grocery) to see what they offered. We got beer to go and a loaf of sandwich bread. They have fresh French bread each day also, so we may have to come back for some of that. As we walked back to the dock, Barb found a five dollar bill on the ground. It wasn't even wet or dirty, so it couldn't have been there long. We took the dinghies back to the boats where we changed to swim suits and went in search of the manatee. From the boat we could see that it was between us and the shore. I took my mask so I could hop in the water near it if we saw it, and Barb had the glass-bottom bucket. We idled over in the area and put the engine in neutral and just drifted. We saw him pop up, and I idled closer to where he was. We were within ten feet or so and could tell that because of the water swirls when the animal would swim. Unfortunately, the water was shallow enough here that the manatee's swimming was stirring up too much mud to see anything. After a few minutes of seeing the swirls and the nose once or twice, we lost track of it.
Manatee hunt over, we dinghied west along the coast. The further west we got, the more we got out of the protection of the reef from the swell of the ocean. We were cruising parallel to the coast, a few hundred feet offshore, so as each swell came in, we rode up and over it sideways. We went a couple miles west of the anchorage, and found what looked to be a beautiful beach with palm trees and no buildings at all. Unfortunately, there is no way we can safely land the dinghies here. We would have trouble getting them off the shore to leave through the breaking waves. There was a river that went inland nearby, and it looked like the entrance might be deep enough to dinghy up, but I was chicken to try it since if it was too shallow then I'd be faced with the same issue of getting back out. We went back towards the anchorage but angled out south some to check out the inside of the reef. We found several coral heads inside the reef that were just deep enough to drift over and look through the bucket at. Unfortunately, it looks like most of the coral is dead, but we saw a lot of little tropical fish and some live coral.
From out here it looks like we could land the dinghies on the beach inside the reef. But as we tried to approach, we found there was a large shallow area that we couldn't cross. The annoying local jet skiers are cruising up and down this stretch of beach at high speed, so the water must be deeper along the beach. We slowly poked back towards town until we found a place where could barely cross the shallow into the deep channel that parallels the beach. We landed on the beach and the ladies took a short walk hunting for sea glass. While we were here, a family came walking down the beach. The lady said hello and asked us if we were enjoying ourselves. I suppose she could surmise from the dinghies that we were from the anchored boats. We said we were and she said "Thank you for visiting our country". We replied "Thank you for having us". As we had nothing to drink, we didn't stay long. We went back to the public swimming area paralleling the beach and tied up to the remains of the police dock. Pat walked over to one of the kiosks and got us all beers. As he came back, we noticed a dark cloud coming over the mountain, so we boogied back to the boats since our hatches were open. The shower ended up passing just north of us, where it was clearly raining in town but all we got was a tiny sprinkle. We did get a nice rainbow though. To quote our friends John & Kathy from Miss Alice, "No rain, no rainbows".
Barb made salmon cakes for a light dinner, since although lunch wasn't that great, there had been lots of it. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset with the sun peaking through clouds as it set. We relaxed until after dark, and were asleep pretty early again. Life on the hook tends to revolve around the sunrises and sunsets.
GPS N 17-58.582 W 065-59.617 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8888.
Apr 30
I was up to listen to the weather this morning. The forecast we have doesn't look too conducive to moving for a few days. Unfortunately, Chris Parker confirmed what we thought. The wind and seas will be straight from where we want to go and steadily increasing over the next three or four days. There may be a low pressure system developing in the Bahamas Friday that would give us a perfect window to move Saturday, but it doesn't look good before that. I guess we'll just enjoy a few days of reading and maybe have to clean the boat bottom while we wait and hope the low develops. After Chris's forecast, we spoke with Alize and Sol Y Mar to confirm that we were all thinking the same way, and we were. After we finished our conversation, we were hailed on the VHF by Lone Star. Turns out they had left Ponce last night at midnight and were about an hour and a half away from us. So, we'll have more company to wait here with us.
I sent e-mails to the company I got the LED nav lights from to see if they would replace them under warrantee. The warrantee is one year, and I bought them thirteen months ago, although I installed them a week under a year ago. I also am not sure if they will warrantee them if the problem is that salt water got in the fixtures even though I did everything I could to seal them. I got a reply that yes they would repair or replace them, so Barb and I walked to town to see where the Post Office is. I did an internet search and found the zip code, but could not get their locator to show me a map of where it is. When we got in to the dock, we found everything closed. All of the beach kiosks were closed as was the restaurant across from the dock. We walked the several blocks to the colmado and found it open. We got a couple of beers and I was going to ask directions to the Post Office. The young girl behind the counter apparently spoke no English because she had to show me the amount to pay for the beer on her calculator. I figured if she couldn't handle even the numbers in English, asking directions would be futile. The place was quite busy, so we stepped outside the door. The next guy who came out looked like a local, but I asked if he spoke English. He replied "Yes, I'm from Philadelphia and here on vacation." So much for judging somebody by their looks. William told us the Post Office was "downtown". We didn't realize there was much more to town than what we had seen. It turns out "downtown" is down the road we are on quite a ways. William says it's a mile. Well, a mile isn't too far to walk, but it was already 15:30, so we decided it could wait, as we didn't want to get there after they closed. William didn't seem to grasp that we didn't have a car, but he wanted to talk. We finally got across to him that we were on boats and he was amazed at that. Of course then he was at our disposal if we needed anything. He apparently grew up here and only moved to Philadelphia as an adult, so he knows everybody and where to get things done. We thanked him for his help and went back to the boat.
At the dock, we met Daniel from Mi Delphine, the only other boat that was in the harbor when we got here. We chatted briefly and learned that his wife had flown back to the States yesterday, so he will be single handing on to the Virgins. We went back to the boat and prepared an appetizer to take over to Lone Star this evening. We met Sol Y Mar and Alize on Lone Star at 18:00 for appetizers and drinks. As these events usually do, the appetizers were enough to satisfy my eating requirements for the evening, and we sat and drank and talked for several hours.
GPS N 17-58.582 W 065-59.617 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 8888.