It’s been a while since my last update, but life has been busy. After a month spent with family in Chicago while Ralph lived aboard in Culebra, I returned “home” to Altona in San Juan mid April. After the usual provisioning run, we scurried rapidly to Boqueron in the west end of the island.

The highlight of the south coast sail along Puerto Rico was the company that visited Altona in the anchorage at Puerto Patilla… a family of manatees. At least 4 of them spent a leisurely 15 minutes or so swimming under and around our hull, checking us out, and it was wonderful! I was tempted to grab my snorkel and submerge to swim with them, but was afraid I’d scare them away. It was a wonderful experience, though, even from the deck. What marvellously curious and gentle mammals these are, and they seemed to have a white juvenile with them, which I’d never seen before.

The south coast is lush, mountainous, and beautiful. We stopped briefly in Ponce, but the anchorage was really noisy, with revelry from the bars clearly audible well into the early hours of the morning. I was desperate for some peace and quiet, so we didn’t stay to do any sightseeing.

Boqueron, a west end staging area, is a nice tourist town with a pretty waterfront and a lot of young travellers. Apparently it’s a spring break destination for students, with the requisite number of bars and friendly places to eat, but the noise seemed to stop at a reasonable hour. The beach is gorgeous and the downtown waterfront is lined with shops and food stalls, with piles of oysters and clams. The bay is spacious but adequately protected from every direction except west, which was fine as the prevailing winds are from the east and we enjoyed some marvellous sunsets. We met the crew of Windy Liz, Gail and Ray, and decided to make the crossing to the Dominican Republic together. The crossing was uneventful, although we did have to motor sail part of it due to light winds. We sailed into Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic and dropped anchor in Santa Barbara de Samana, commonly known simply as Samana. Total time: 23 hours of smooth sailing, excellent for a 151 mile nautical mile crossing (with a little help from the iron sail.)