18:01.4N 67:10.5W

 

We have been complaining for a while that we never catch tuna, only mahi mahi.  When crossing the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico we caught two tuna, a yellowfin and a skipjack.  Both quite small, just a couple of meals each, but twice as many as we have ever caught before.  If Bertie or Daniel had been onboard we would no doubt have eaten some as sushi, but we just filled up the freezer with tuna fillets.   

 

Checking in at Mayaguez was not trivial because the customs office at the port has been closed down and we had to take the dinghy along to find the customs office in town.  On the plus side, our US cruising permit, which was issued in Virginia last July, is still valid and can be used for cruising in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin islands, so the actual check in process was fairly quick.

 

Once checked in we sailed down to Boqueron, where there is a good anchorage and cruiser-friendly community.  Boqueron is a holiday destination for Puerto Rican locals which makes it a lively place at night.  The downside is that they like their music loud here.  The boats all play loud music, they played some very loud music at the weekend fiesta and, worst of all, we had to suffer the Friday night karaoke which you could hear quite clearly from the anchorage.  Still, Boqueron had a beautiful long beach for Andrea to shell hunt.

 

Boqueron has quite a few mooring balls, but after our bad experience in Luperon we prefer to anchor if possible.  Funnily enough another yacht broke free of its moorings and we spotted it as it was being blown towards the shore.  The owner was nowhere in sight, but a guy paddled out on a paddleboard to try and rescue the boat.  Andrea and I went over in the dinghy to help and we managed to tow the boat to another mooring, although Andrea cut her hands on the barnacled old mooring line.  We never did see the owner return to his boat.

 

There are annoying insects for an hour at sunrise and sunset, but the insect-eating birds fly around doing their best to control them.  A couple of the birds took a fancy to Anastasia’s boom as a potential nesting site, until I chased them away and stuffed a towel into the hole at the end of the boom.  No doubt we will forget the towel is there and the next blog entry will be on the subject of how to remove towels when they get jammed into your reefing lines.

 

Insect-eater taking up residence in the boom

 

Boqueron at sunrise