CURRENT LOCATION: Tied to a mooring ball near Cayo Pirata, in Ensenada Honda, Culebra, Puerto Rico

18 18.400' N, 065 17.842' W

This classic joke line is brought you by our aquatic friends in Ensenada Honda. I suppose their status as 'friends' is currently a debatable label. They are causing Sheryl to loose sleep. Over the last few nights, we have been reading in the v-berth (just before bedtime) and heard strange noises reverberating through the hull. It sounds exactly like someone underwater is knocking on the hull. As we soon discovered, that is exactly what the sound is.

With flashlights in hand, we went topside and shined a beam of light through the water. Several different types of fish like to swim around our hull at night. An interesting behavior we observed in several of these fish is an unpredictable, sudden and rapid acceleration (presumably chasing a food source). These bursts of speed are driven by several quick and powerful flicks of the tail. It seems that the 'knocking' we hear is due to a fish tail being near the hull when they throw it into gear and go from zero to sixty.

If it only happened occasionally, it wouldn't be too bad. However, for two nights running someone has organized a fish party over by the boat with the green hull. And the party runs all night long. Fortunately, I sleep right through the aquatic celebration, but my sweetie has been suffering some sleep deprivation as a result. Hopefully, this was just some sort of piscine holiday weekend and tonight it will be comparatively quiet in the underwater world.

On a separate note, regarding human acquaintances, this weekend we met the crew of s/v Blue Moon, Kuno, Tatiana, & Renata, and they joined us for Sunday breakfast. Unfortunately, their stay in Culebra was a short one, and they hauled up their anchor soon after breakfast. They are headed northwest, toward Florida, and the clock is ticking toward the end of their current 6-month cruising sabbatical. We wish them safe travels.