Ready to leave
05 April 2012
Karen
Thursday, April 5, 2012
After doing our final internetting, laundry, Ice run, and farewells on Tuesday we left Salinas on Wednesday early and headed for Esperanza. Our new friends Dan & Debbie on Lady Hawk joined us on this trip, so we were three boats bopping along banging into the swells and again remembering the old Sailing adage…you know your going the right direction if wind and waves are on the nose…. And in addition to that we needed to dodge net floats all along the coast, some came within 10 feet of the boat, but we somehow managed to miss them all. However, at least we were able to see the lovely hills and mountains of Puerto Rico, not like our trip here. Wednesday was a long 50 miles and we finally made it into Esperanza, Vieques at near 3:30 in the afternoon….Finally, we can turn off the engines and relax.
Thursday was our shorter trip from Esperanza to Brewers Bay, St. Thomas only 35 miles, however the winds were not as predicted and we had 13-18 on the nose with a bumpy south sea for the two hours we were along the southern coast, however, as soon as we made the turn the winds lightened up and we were able to sail with full sail nearly all the rest of the way to St. Thomas. Six hours and we were anchored in a calm, peaceful beautiful bay watching the airplanes takeoff and land just behind us.