POSITION 18:17.81N 65:15.25W Bahia de Almodovar, Culebra, PR
Aurelia
Shirley and Michael Webb-Speight
Sun 25 Feb 2007 13:12
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This is a perfectly surrounded bay with the reef
crossing between the headland and a small mangrove covered islet, and a very
narrow entrance on the other side. It took only an hour to motor here from
the main town on Culebra, so we spent the afternoon walking on the reef,
snorkeling swimming and scrubbing the underside of the boat. The kids had a
great time gathering conch in the shallow water and observing how
they can flip themselves over.
S wonders aloud why I am working so hard to clean
the bottom when we are being hauled out of the water on Tuesday for new
paint. Quite a reasonable question I suppose. I had found that by
doing the other half when we were at Christmas Island a few days ago we gained
half a knot - and were able to keep D'accord behind us all the way down
here. Now we have a clean bottom I am sure we can be competitive with the
two larger boats. Shame that we are splitting up today!
We will need to head back to Ensenada Honda which
is the main harbour here on Monday to clear out and pick up our cruising
permit. Once we have that we can come and go from US waters anytime in the
next 12 months. S is feeling very tempted to come back to Puerto Rico -
the main town of San Juan is the oldest city in the USA and apparently is well
worth the look. Puerto Rico has regular referendums on whether to become
the 51st state or go independent - but in the interim maintains its commonwealth
status which provides for some measure of independence.
Forgot to mention when we checked into the US
Virgins the other day at Cruz Bay we were going back to the boat in the dingy
and found 2 dolphins frolicking in the shallow water amongst the moored
boats. Jamie stripped down to undies and dived in, as did Oliver.
They swam very close to them (which they have been DYING to do since we started
the trip). However although they were able to be close to them we realised
that they weren't interested in playing with the kids as they were there for
other matrimonial activities! So we fished the kids out of the water and
went back to Aurelia!
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