Route recap: June

Saturday June 30: Deshaies, Guadaloupe (map)

We arrived in Deshaies around 8:30 am and dropped anchor. We hung out and had a lazy day: snorkeling, swimming, reading, interwebs, snacking, and chores.

Friday June 29: Leave Gustavia and head towards Guadaloupe

We ate delicious Breton crepes for breakfast.

We made two trips to the chandlery again today in our efforts to fix the starboard freshwater pump. (Maybe it is fixed now; I hope.)

We checked out of Gustavia around noon and set sail towards Guadaloupe. We had good wind for once — we sailed and pinched our way with only a very short tack to avoid Redonda.

When abeam of St. Kitts, we deployed our new drogue to see how it would work. It slowed the boat to around 4 knots.

Wednesday June 27 and Thursday June 28: Gustavia, St. Barthélemy (map)

Nice days in Gustavia: a good mix of errands, good food, boat work and exploring the town.

We have decided that it is not so important after all that we get to Grenada by June 30th. Maybe we’ll stop in Guadaloupe for a few days before we go to Grenada.

Monday June 25 and Tuesday June 26: From Anegada, British Virgin Islands to Gustavia, St. Barthélemy

We upped anchor in Anegada at 8:30 on Monday and, after a lot of sailing and tacking (220 boat miles to go ~100 direct miles), we arrived at St. Barth’s around 4 pm on Tuesday.

Sunday June 24: Anegada, British Virgin Islands (map)

We took a break from beating our way towards St Barth’s and stopped at Anegada for the day.

Saturday June 23: At sea

Beating our way towards St Barth’s.

Tuesday to Friday June 19th to 22: Ponce

Assorted shopping trips and boat work. On Friday the parts we were waiting for from Florida finally arrived (a week late). We set sail towards St Bart’s late Friday afternoon.

Monday June 18th: Ponce (with a road trip to Fajardo) (map)

We (Gayle) drove to Fajardo (100 km) where we shopped at West Marine and the Skipper shop. We did break for a tasty Cuban lunch.

In Caguas, we did a huge Costco shop. It was midnight by the time we got back to the boat and everything was stowed and processed. Tony bought a whole fillet and cut it into filet mignon, chateaubriand, chain steak, and kebab chunks (plus scraos for the feral cats who live around the marina).

Sunday June 17th: Ponce and San Juan, Puerto Rico (map)

Gayle, Pete, Tony and Paul went to San Juan, stopping for spit roast pork at a lechonera on route.

A principal goal for the day was to shop at the West Marine store; however, it was closed for Father’s Day, as was Sears. (No last minute gifts for dads from either of those establishments.)

Paul is staying in San Juan tonight and flying back to San Diego tomorrow. Boo, sniff, we’ll sure miss him; it was great to have him with us. But I’m sure Z. will be happy to have him home again.

Saturday June 16th: Ponce, Puerto Rico (map)

We had a day of errands in our blue Taurus rental car.

Friday June 15th: La Parguera to Ponce, Puerto Rico (map)

We were later than we should have been to up anchor. The 20 kt wind was against us the whole way. If we’d had lots of time, we could have had a sailing day with a series of tacks, but as it was we motored and motor/sailed it — ugh! However, we did get to the dock of the Ponce Yacht and Fishing Club by 3:20 pm. This gave Gayle and Jane time to pick up the rental car before the office closed for the weekend at 4:30. [A shout-out for Ray at Hertz who was just awesome, picking us up at the marina and getting us squared away with the car.]

Friday night found us with the ponceños, at La Guancha, a boardwalk with music and food kiosks and drinks. It was a fun night: we visited four kiosks and sampled different things at each. Our favourite was the Argentinian one, called Tango.

Thursday June 14th: Boqueron to La Parguera, (with a side trip to Mayaguez) Puerto Rico (map)

We got a variety of stories about what we needed to do to check into Puerto Rico: Pete (skipper) could go in alone with the papers to Ponce; then at 9 pm, we got a call from the customs to say that Pete had to go to Mayaguez; then at 8:00 am, we learned that the whole crew had to be in Mayaguez before 9 am. We rallied and called the cab driver and made it by ~9:12 am. Good enough.

After our customs adventure, we headed off to La Parguera — a big bay, dotted with little mangrove islands and protected by a reef. It’s a weekend get-away place for Puerto Ricans. (Pete compared it to the Jersey Shore.) We swam, snorkeled, dove according to our proclivities.

In the evening, Pete, Paul and Tony investigated phosphorescent bay, which they reported a very cool and quite different from bioluminescent bay.

Wednesday June 13th: Boqueron, Puerto Rico (map)

We dropped anchor in the bay and really enjoyed our swims and deck showers. In the early evening we went ashore, ate a few oysters and clams from a street kiosk and then got a cab up the coast to dinner — a very typical Puerto Rican dinner heavily featuring fresh fish and seafood, plantains and yucca in a variety of preparations.

Sunday June 10th to Wednesday June 13th: Big Sand Cay, Turks and Caicos to Boqueron, Puerto Rico (map)

We spent four days at sea doing the passage from Turks and Caicos to Puerto Rico. We sailed for the first three days – using our diesel to charge batteries and make water. We sailed and tacked a lot because the wind was generally from the south east and we were headed south east. The final tally was well over 500 miles through the water.

This time our watch schedule was four hours at night and six hours during the day, with two people per watch — except for the 2 pm to 8 pm watch when we had three people.

Saturday June 9th: Grand Turk to Big Sand Cay, Turks and Caicos (map)

We left Grand Turk (and the interwebs) in the early afternoon and enjoyed a perfect sail south to Big Sand Cay. This is my favourite anchorage to date: a deserted island with beautiful white sand and we had it all to ourselves.

Friday June 8th: Cockburn Harbour, South Caicos to Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos (map)

We sailed (in a series of tacks) from Cockburn Harbour to Government dock in Grand Turk. We had diesel delivered by tanker truck to the dock — it was good service after 5 pm on a Friday afternoon.

Thursday June 7th: Cockburn Harbour, South Caicos, Turks and Caicos (map)

We spent the day in Cockburn Harbour. In the afternoon, we had lunch, checked out town and did a little grocery shopping.

Wednesday June 6th: From Provinciales to Cockburn Harbour, South Caicos, Turks and Caicos (map)

We were off the mooring ball soon after 6 am for our 12-hour trip to South Caicos. It was nice sailing at the start and nice sailing at the end and horrible motoring straight into wind for 5+ hours in the middle (with 2/5ths of the crew suffering mal de mer).

We had a pleasant evening at anchor in Cockburn Harbour: Pete and Paul went snorkelling, Jane and Gayle swam off the boat, and Tony did a night dive to look for mating glow worms.

Monday June 3rd to Tuesday June 5th: Assorted Locations around Provinciales, Turks and Caicos (map)

More dives (Tony) and snorkelling (Pete, Gayle, Jane). We moved from mooring ball to anchorage and back. On Tuesday afternoon, Tony took the dinghy to the Sharkbite restaurant in Turtle Cove and picked up Paul J who arrived from San Diego.

Sunday June 3rd: Moored off the west end of Provinciales, Turks and Caicos (map)

We left the marina in the early afternoon and motored to the west end of the island. Tony did a couple of scuba dives and the rest of us enjoyed a fine snorkel.

Friday June 1st to Sunday June 3rd: At Turtle Cove Marina, Provinciales, Turks and Caicos (map)

We spent a couple of nights at a marina after arriving at Turks and Caicos. The marina called for a customs and immigration officer to come to the boat to check us in: very convenient. Gayle did an amazing job cleaning the deck with our power washer and the marina’s fresh water. And, we all enjoyed a land shower or two.

Following the guide boat through the reef into Turtle Cove Marina.

Almost in the marina now.

12 thoughts on “Route recap: June

  1. The water looks beautiful…I bet the snorkling and diving was amazing…so fun.

  2. Hi from rainy San Francisco! Miserable and wet this morning and then I get the update email – bah! Looks just horrible – you poor guys 🙂

  3. You can’t be doing this…. and sharing it with us envious mortals!
    Amazing, I hope you have a splendid voyage
    Keep a couple of seats just in case one can jump in at one of your stops
    cheers and congratulations!

  4. Do you radio ahead for the pilot boat; and is it necessary for those sober enough to find their own way in?

    • The entire marina entrance is surrounded by coral so they offer the pilot boat to save the boats and the coral. Any travel even late in the day required that we had watches posted…it may have been just us being paranoid, but better safe than sorry!

  5. Sounds like a great time to me. Wish I was with you. The water is quite blue, noot like ours in SC. Following your progress, and look forward to your blog.
    Weent to Shaneys graduation yesterday and it was very nice. We miise you and Pete, but will show pictures.

    • It is all beautiful and thank you for following along on our adventure. Xoxo. G

  6. yeah,Looks lovely. WHat about the Glow worms?
    :Love to all Jane Steiner

  7. Do you plan on going to the American Virgin Islands? I lived on St. Thomas in 1968 and have heard horrendous stories about unchecked development since. It used to be sleepy and indolent, except when a liner docked and spewed its passengers ashore to avail themselves of one of the few duty-free ports of call in the world (then.) The locals were surly towards them, of course, and didn’t much like me until they discovered I lived under worse conditions than they did on the wrong side of the island in a former reformatory next to goat herders and a few subsistence farmers. The welfare agency of New York City essentially ran the island since most everyone was on the dole. Not the happiest place I ever sojourned
    You know, on second thought, you might want to sail on by.

  8. Just got the info on your adventure from Don T and the blog site from Andy S. Have a great time! How can you not? If you hit St Thomas look up Vince and Linda on the Drumbeat!. That’s who we’ve sailed with out of there. Nice folks.

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