Culebra 4-15

The wind shifts 180 degrees over night, and when Tracy looks out in the morning she sees that we are pretty close to another boat. According to the GPS, after swinging around, be drug our anchor for about 100’ before it caught again. We are holding fine now, but a little close to the next boat. So we pull up the anchor, move back forward and drop again. No problem holding this time.

Take a dinghy run around Cayo Pirata, there is an old beat up dock that we could pull into, but it doesn’t look like there is much on the island. We can see the roofs of some old shacks, but we opt to stay off. We make a quick trash run, and go through the canal that leads to the ocean side. On the way, we see something swimming across the canal that turns out to be a large iguana. Once through the canal, and in the ocean we see 4 moorings that should be well protected in a North-East wind. These may come in handy.

The kids are doing some school work and we are taking it slow today, planning to just move down to the southern tip of the island and wait until tomorrow to sail down to Vieques. At mid-day, we pull anchor and move down to the reef at the end of the island. We saw several mooring balls between the reef and the island on our way in. Its tight and shallow to move through the  boats that are already on the balls. So far, the only balls that are open are right on the reef, and must be meant for very small boats. There are a couple of flat bottom boats that are right on the reef, as well as a couple lovely resort condominiums floating there.  

We continue to wind through the shallows to an empty ball. As usual, the wind has picked up, and its now a steady 20 knots. We pick up the ball without a problem, but notice the cat on the ball that is only a few feet behind us also has an anchor out. I had read that there are some questionable moorings here, and that some of the locals will use an anchor as a back-up.  On shore, we can see none of the shops/restaurants that the area map indicated. We take the dinghy in both directions, but other than a few  private houses, the shore is undeveloped, with no where to land and no access to whatever may or may not be further inland. All this adds up to an uncomfortable night exposed to the wind, worried about the reef and mooring ball. Plan B is to head around the outside of the island and up to the moorings we saw this morning. Its only about 40 minutes to get there, and soon we are tied up and completely sheltered from the wind and waves. There is a reef just off the shore, that turns out to be a great snorkel. Not many fish, but a the reef has some huge coral heads that come right up to the surface and we can swim around. We spot some coral that Delaina and I think looks like a potted plant. Its a big planter shaped cone, with other types of coral or plants inside. Still no lobster yet though. We have a quite night there on the ball, with the usual two or three 5 minute rain showers.