On May 25th 2014 we sailed into a little bay on the west coast of Puerto Rico escaping the Boqueron rap festival and in search of laundry facilities. There's a marina and small town called Puerto Real, with one shop, a couple of closed café's and a small marine supplier. It was to be our jumping off point, where we would set sail for the Dominican Republic, crossing the infamous Mona passage, and our first real voyage on board Picaroon.

On the 10th of September 2015 we sailed back into Puerto Real, having just crossed the southern reaches of the Mona Passage, ending our circumnavigation of Hispanola and an overnight passage from Casa de Campo on the south west tip of the Dominican Republic.

We had planned on sailing from there to Ponce, but as dawn broke we were still almost seventy miles, and at least fourteen hours away. With hardly any wind we had been motor sailing and hand steering Picaroon for almost twenty four hours, and we'd had enough. The coast of Puerto Rico was a vague outline still twenty five miles away when we made the decision to change course and head for Puerto Real.

What little wind there was on our crossing of the Mona passage was right on our nose so it was a pleasant change to head north east and be able to raise some sails and turn the wheel over to Cpt. Morgan , our new shipmate, in charge of the windvane steering. We sat back in the cockpit, enjoying the liberation of the helm when the wind began to die, and before long we we're almost becalmed on a silky flat sea, with just a hint of a swell, and a whisper of ripples on the surface.

The flag, that served as our wind indicator hung limp on its halyard. There was nothing moving, certainly not Picaroon, and so it was back to Mr engine, Sir, if we wanted to be in port this side of next Christmas.

Crossing the Mona passage eighteen months ago was filled with trepidation for we two novices, with its reputation of being notoriously difficult, and it lived up to its promise. We suffered big seas and languished beneath a thunder storm for almost ten hours, it was horrible.

This time we chose our weather window very carefully, and as we were crossing the southern edge perhaps Neptune would be a little kinder to us, as we were away from the nasty shoals and cross currents that prevail further north.

After eighteen months circumnavigating Hispanola, via Cuba and Jamaica this twenty four hour passage turned out to be little more than tedious, with surprisingly enough no traumas, and no incidents what-so-ever. The stars shone brightly, a crescent moon rose a couple of hours before dawn, and the radar failed to pick up any sign of squalls the whole voyage.
The only incident I can recall was the wind vane dropping out of its clamp, but as it was tethered with a safety line, and not in use at the time, it hardly constituted a crisis, more a mild irritation as I was in the middle of making up a flask of Earl Grey tea when the call came from the helm. " Colin, the vanes dropped off", "which vane?" I said, stupidly, as we've only got one. It took all of a couple of minutes to have it stowed safely on deck and then I could get back to the serious task of decanting the earl grey from the pot to the flask.

At about one in the afternoon we dropped anchor in front of the small marina, cracked open a couple of Presidente cervezas, followed by a couple of Brugal rum and tonics and mused on how curious it was that we had returned to the very place where we had set sail all excited and naïve to the rigours and traumas we would encounter.

We had fulfilled our ambition to circumnavigate our adopted island home of Hispanola, and arrived where we began, back in Puerto Rico, it was a sort of homecoming, and we had, for want of a better phrase graduated from sailors to seadogs.