CURRENT LOCATION: Anchored near the fuel dock at Ponce Yacht Club, by the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico

17 57.964' N, 066 37.152' W

As you are likely aware, dear Reader, a run-on sentence is one in which multiple ideas are combined in a single grammatical construct without appropriate punctuation. As an aspiring writer, I try at all costs to avoid these unwieldy manifestations of my proclivity for communicating as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time. Of course, the more astute of you have probably noted that I do not always succeed in that endeavor, such is the nature of a busy mind.

Yesterday (or is it Today?) we experienced a run-on day. This is an occurrence where two distinct days become merged into a single entity, without the metaphorical punctuation of sleep. For us, an overnight passage became our ticket from Boquerón to Ponce. But it was not without effort, that we can assure you.

Much like transiting the north coast of the Dominican Republic, the south coast of Puerto Rico will require that we use a certain strategic approach to making eastward progress against the ever-present tradewinds. To make yet another step on the 'Thorny Path' to the Caribbean, we will need to do more night sailing and daytime resting.

Mr. Van Sant recommends taking this coast in very small incremental stages (20 miles or less); however, after being in Boquerón for a week, we were ready to make some substantial progress. In addition, we are in need of some provisioning in a developed-country sort of style. We have heard that Ponce (45 nautical miles away) is a place where we can accomplish this type of shopping.

So, Sunday was spent as a relaxing day on the boat. We watched a few movies on the laptop, and had a visitor (or two) stop by via kayak. The photo below shows our visitors, Rich and his dog Cee Cee. A few days ago, I noticed Rich's boat (also a double-ender) anchored near town here in Boquerón. It looked like the same boat we anchored behind in Oriental, NC at the end of October (just before our departure). When I met him at the dinghy dock in town, I confirmed that my recollection was correct. Cruising takes place in a small world.



Rich kayaked way out to where we were anchored to get a closer look at our Southern Cross. He was kind enough to invite us to his boat for sundowners, so our Sunday in Boquerón drew to a close with a late afternoon trip to town to check the weather on the internet and a brief stop aboard s/v Kelly Rae to socialize with Rich.

Kelly Rae is one of many boats we are now encountering who are heading the 'other' direction. Having sailed offshore from North Carolina to Bermuda, then down to the Virgin Islands, Rich is working his way north and west, running with the tradewinds, while we are bashing our way east and south against them. Believe me when I tell you that his path going forward for the next month looks much easier than ours.

With that in mind, the weather forecast looked reasonable, if not good, for making some additional eastward progress, so we rode Patience back to the big boat at dusk and prepared for a 9PM departure. Even with the island's night lee, making it around the southwest corner of the island, Cabo Rojo, was still a chore: 20-25 knot winds and breaking seas. We had hoped that after we made it past the accelerating winds around the cape and came clear of those shoal waters that things would get easier. They did, but not by as much as we had hoped.

Every night in Boquerón the bay went flat calm at sunset and did not show as much as a single ripple until well after daybreak. It was our hope that this night lee would exert at least some moderating effect to the winds along the south coast. Note the calming waters of the early evening in the photo below (which shows Kelly Rae in the foreground and Prudence at anchor 'way out' under the beam of sunlight)...



The waters south of Puerto Rico were tall, close, choppy, and confused on this night. No matter what tack we took, waves slowed our progress. Therefore, we resigned ourselves to motoring the rhum line directly into the 17-20 knot headwinds. At least this way we were not wasting time going a greater distance on tacks which didn't result in much of an increase in speed. We covered a little over 45 nautical miles in 14 hours (a dismal 3.2-knot average speed).

This type of slow and prodding progress is demoralizing, at best. When combined with the rumble of the engine and the stench of diesel exhaust, it is simply NOT a fun way to spend a sleepless night. Although the destinations and the people are always interesting, the passages of late have become a real pain. Team Prudence is going to have to take stock of our current status and see if any changes to the itinerary are in order. We know of some boats who have turned back. They decided that it truly was 'Better in the Bahamas.' At this moment, I cannot say that I disagree with their decisions.