Living Aboard Archives - Page 2 of 5

South Coast of Puerto Rico

Cheri Cheri's Posts, Cruising, Cruising Life, Living Aboard, Puerto Rico, Travel, WordPress July 8, 2017July 13, 2017Cayo Aurora, Consort, Cruising, Gilligan's Island, La Parguera, live aboard, liveaboard, Puerto Rico, sailboat, Sailing 0 Comment

December 2016 – After turning the corner at Cabo Rojo, we headed for La Parguera. Mike and Marjolaine on Basta passed us on the way.

We pulled in to La Parguera just before lunch, on a weekend, during Christmas week. To say it was busy there would be an understatement. We put down the anchor long enough to have lunch, and then turned right back around. Being constantly buzzed by motorboats is not our idea of fun. Our goal in stopping there was to see the bio-luminescent bay nearby. It was to be a moonless night, and that makes for good viewing. Read more

The Mona Passage and West Coast of Puerto Rico

Cheri Cheri's Posts, Cruising, Cruising Life, Living Aboard, Provisioning, Puerto Rico, Travel February 11, 2017April 10, 2017Boqueron, Cabo Rojo, Caverns, Consort, Cruising, Dominican Republic, Lighthouse, live aboard, liveaboard, Luperon, Mayaguez, Mona Passage, Puerto Real, Puerto Rico 0 Comment

Iguana on the rocks at Cabo Rojo lighthouse

Much lore surrounds the Mona Passage, and it can sound downright intimidating if you just listen to the stories, but our crossing was pretty anti-climactic. We could have used a better wind angle, but the sea conditions were fine. Swells were moderate, but the period (how far apart they were) was long. It was a good motion: enough to remind us that we were on a sailboat, but not enough to throw us around or do any damage. We needed to go ahead and get out of the Dominican Republic, so we couldn’t wait for a perfect weather window, but what we got was good enough. We made an early morning departure from Los Haitises Park in Samana Bay.
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Crooked Island

Cheri Bahamas, Cheri's Posts, Crooked Island, Cruising, Cruising Life, Giving Back, Living Aboard, Projects, Travel October 7, 2016October 7, 2016Bahamas, Boat, Consort, Crooked Island, Cruising, Fish, Giving Back, Hurricane Joaquin, Hurricane Matthew, Landrail Point, live aboard, liveaboard, sailboat, Sailing, Snorkeling 0 Comment

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Bird Island Light from a distance.

A quick note first – hurricane Matthew just blew past Crooked Island. Our thoughts are with the people there, and in the rest of the Bahamas. With all our hearts, we hope no harm came to them.

We left Rum Cay determined to sail – not motor – to our next destination. We couldn’t be sure, until we got away from the island, exactly what the wind would be doing. To accommodate the uncertainty, we set a number of potential destinations in our chart plotter, and decided we’d make the eastern-most one that the wind would allow. Clarencetown, Long Island if the wind was south of east, Crooked Island, Plana Cays, or Mayaguana if we had a little more luck and the wind was pure east or north of east.

It turned out that we could not have been luckier if we had tried, because we ended up at Crooked Island, which we would have otherwise passed by, and it was just amazing. Not just the island itself, which would have been enough, but the beautiful people we met there, both on land and on another boat.