Our position is 17:58.543N 65:59.767W

We had the promised early night but the loud music of the previous night was repeated so it probably didn’t yield as much sleep as we had hoped and we didn’t get away quite as early as we had planned, but we were soon sailing with full sail and the wind behind us. The radio was repeating a Pan Pan for a capsized catamaran near St Croix with 3 persons on board all day, with no responses. We could only assume it was something sighted from the seaplane as otherwise there should have been someone providing assistance.

As we rounded the south east corner of the island the wind dropped and the motion became much rollier. Our intended destination was Puerto Patillas, where according to the pilot there was a buoyed channel leading to a sheltered anchorage behind a reef. When we arrived it was relatively easy to identify the reef but there was no buoyed channel and the rest of the bay proved quite shallow, with an even shallower patch in the middle. We felt our way in very cautiously and with some trepidation trying to identify the wall that the guide suggested as a good identifier for the right place to be. Unfortunately, as usual, there was a lot of ambiguity about which wall was the one we should be guided by but eventually we decided enough was enough and through the anchor over. The loud music coming from the shore behind the reef suggested it was probably as well we weren’t trying to locate the anchorage there.

Goodbye Vieques                                                                                               Getting ready to pole out the genoa

Approaching Puerto Rico                                                                                Anchorage at Puerto Patillas

can you see a wall?