Across the Mona Saturday, March 1, 2014

Anchor up at 9:15 am and headed out the bay. This has been one of the most beautiful anchorages we've visited. As we neared Cabo Cabron we spotted spouts from several humpback whales. We are well familiar with humpback whales from the many we see in our home waters in Prince William Sound. We rounded the cape around 11 am in calm seas and no wind, passing a bunch of fishing boats working in close to shore. There were lots of fish trap floats about 1/2 mile off the shore in 200' of water all the way to the cape, and we finally moved farther off to avoid them.

At the cape, we set course to pass north of Hourglass Shoals, an area known for rough, confused seas where the deep Puerto Rico Trench rises up to within 200' of the surface, and the converging currents coupled with the normal tradewinds conspire to make a good place to avoid. The winds were forecast to be under 12 knots all night, dropping to light and variable by Sunday morning, with seas around 4' the whole time. That was close, if by close you mean winds rising to and staying between 17 and 21 knots all night, with seas getting up to about 6'. In any event, we could hear other boats making the crossing calling each other during the night, and once again we were thankful for our AIS ship identification receiver that shows all the ships within a 15 mile radius, together with all pertinent information, like name, destination, registry, dimensions, speed, point of closest approach to us on each of our current courses (recalculated continuously), time of closest approach and o ther details. If it looks like we'll be passing too close, we call them and make them aware of our position and course. They have always volunteered to steer off a bit if necessary.

The wind and seas eased off a bit when we got within the last four hours of the crossing, and we came into Puerto Real, Puerto Rico in calm conditions almost exactly 24 hours after departing Puerto del Valle, DR.

We went directly to the fuel dock and topped up our tanks, then used the abundant free water to hose the salt off the boat and fill our water tanks. Then we moved off the docks into the bay and set the anchor.