Friday, March 14, 2014 Salinas, Puerto Rico 17d, 57.5m N; 66d, 17.5m W

We had a pleasant 2 hour sail to the mainland village of Salinas, at the head of a well-protected, mangrove-lined bay located inside the eastern side of the much larger Bahia Rincon. We spotted our friend Herman on White Wing anchored here. We had last seen him in Luperon, where he had spent the previous year. We originally met Herman in Georgetown, Exuma two years ago. He's planning to spend another year based here in Salinas.

We went out one night for dinner with several other boats, including John and Cassandra of Topanga, who we first met at Big Sand Cay, Turks and Caicos, when we had stopped off there for a swim and to make dinner before we made the overnight crossing to Luperon, DR. This evening's dinner was to help John celebrate his 35th birthday, and we all had a great time.

On Monday, we rented a car with Herman and drove it across Puerto Rico to San Juan, the capitol, on the north side of the island. We went to the West Marine store there, where I bought a new Rocna 25, 55lb anchor for Taiga. I was never happy with either of our main anchors; a 65lb CQR and a 60lb Max, and I had been interviewing other cruisers about their anchors for a couple of years. All the Rocna owners were happy with their anchors. We also took our EPIRB (emergency locating beacon for Taiga), to a service center, where they installed a new 5-year battery and tested the unit. Between the battery, the service, and a new hydrostatic release, the charges came to $600. Hopefully we'll never have to use it.

On Tuesday, we drove over to Ponce for shopping 'til dropping. We hit Home Depot, Walmart and an ATM machine, before dropping our car back at the rental office in Salinas. We also stopped at the Salinas Post Office, and sure enough, there was our Garmin Chartplotter.

On Wednesday we deployed our secondary anchor and hauled up the Max for the last time. Then we ran out all 250' of the anchor chain into the dinghy so we could swap it end-for-end to get the mostly unused end out on the working end, and the more worn end down in the bottom of the anchor locker. Then we shackled the brand-new Rocna on. As expected, it fit perfectly into the anchor roller I had designed and built last year in Charleston. As a point of information, we rarely use more than 100' of anchor chain. In most anchorages we try to set the anchor in less than 20' of water, usually in 10'. If the water is 10' deep, we will deploy 50' of chain and test the holding by backing down with slowly increasing engine revs. If it's good, we'll then attach the bridle to the chain, consisting of a 20' length of 3/4" three-braid nylon rope attached to each of the bows, letting this out until the nylon is taking the load to each bow. So with 50' of chain, and another 20' of nylon to the bows, we have a scope of roughly 5:1 in 10' deep water. If we expect very high winds, we'll sometimes go to 7:1 scope. If the bottom holding is poor and we expect high winds, we might deploy a second anchor at 45 degrees off the first.

While discussing boat equipment I'll take a moment to praise Garmin for their immediate response to my inquiry when my chartplotter had a problem. Not only were the tech support guys helpful, but they passed my initial inquiry to the right department who got back to me by email within a day. Then, when I sent the unit in, they went ahead and honored the warranty, even though my purchase date was slightly past the warranty period, because I hadn't actually installed it for another two months after I bought it. And, they got it back to me exactly when they said they would. Raymarine and Simrad could take notice, because their service is notoriously bad and cruisers do talk to each other.