Lesley's new puppy

We got some pictures from the breeder yesterday - think this could be Lesley's new puppy.

Old San Juan

We are still playing tourist - have been exploring Old San Juan and the Forts Castillo San Felipe del Morro and San Cristobal.  We followed the old walls for about 2 miles then had to stop for lunch at the Old Harbor Brewery.

Today we went back and explored some more and had a nice lunch at St Germaine Bistro.

The old town looks and feels like a really old town.

Arecibo

We drove out West yesterday with the intention of touring the Arecibo Radio Observatory and then the Rio Camuy Caves.  We had originally planned to visit Old San Juan but the place we wanted to have lunch only has brunch on Sundays so we are doing that tour later today.

We stopped at Arecibo and had a nice tour.  This thing is very large and even the feed point is larger than many dishes I've seen.

View of the feed area as you approach the visitors center.

Dish - wire mesh.

One of three pylons that support the feed point assembly.

Feed point - this thing is steerable and is really really big.

We then headed over to Rio Camuy Caves but the crowd was so large and the traffic was so bad we turned around and headed back to the boat.  We think we have already seen the best Caves - Karchner Caverns State Park, Cochise County, Az.

On to Old San Juan after breakfast.

Tourists

Tomorrow we are headed in to old San Juan and will play tourists exploring the old Fort and Castles in the area.  Plan to take the big camera with us tomorrow so will have more photos to add afterwards.  We also plan to visit Araceibo (huge radio telescope) and Camuy caves early in the week.

We hit Costco this morning and bought a few things and also a stop at Home Depot.  Pretty much set now for our departure from PR - weather permitting, 4 Jan with day sails around the South Coast and then clear out of Mayaguez for the Dominican Republic and a planned stop at Ocean World.

Fridge is working again

The guys from Mayday Marine showed up yesterday morning as promised at 7:30.  We spoke briefly about our problem and then they asked me what I wanted to do.  I asked them to vacuum the system and then try a recharge.  After about 4.5 hours on the vacuum pump and a recharge the freezer is working again.  It appears that there may have been some small amount of moisture in the system that was freezing and blocking the capillary tube.

Just in case though I have a new evaporator and add on filter dryer on board should the problem reappear.  Coastal Climate Control sent me the new parts on the 24th and I had then by the afternoon of the 26th.

We moved all of our frozen items from the beach house back to the boat and are now ready to move along on the 4th of Jan.

Working on a boat in Exotic Places!

We were happy to get the boat back together and move her back to a slip yesterday.  After finishing the battery equalization I turned the freezer back on but it did not seem to be acting correctly.  This morning the freezer was only down to 38 so it wasn't.  I'm assuming that we have enough moisture in the refrigerant to freeze at the capillary tube or even worse have a chip blocking the capillary tube.  Have a reefer man coming to look at the system Friday morning.  Hoping he can vacumn the system and then recharge to fix the problem.  But, just in case, a new evaporator and filter dryer are on order from Coastal Climate Control!

I must say it again, so glad that we have the use of Mike and Martina's freezer through this!

We picked up some stuff from the beach house so we are all set for Christmas dinner aboard.

Back in the water

We splashed today at 1:30 PM and stopped by the fuel dock to replace the fuel that we had burned on the way here and also that we had pumped into the emergency reserve fuel bladder.

I ran the engine hard, up to 3200rpm and no noise or vibration, so success on the bearing replacement.  Nice to have things back together and back in the water.

We will go over to the beach house in the morning and move our frozen meat back to the boat.  Right now I'm equalizing the batteries while we get ready to head into Fajardo for dinner.

Merry Christmas

Balnearios Kioscos

My goodness - food everywhere!  A long street of food Kiosks right along Highway 3 West of Luquillo, PR.

Rice & Beans, Italian, Mexican, Peruvian … Oh My!

The 60 kiosks (actually, there are a few less) are very different and range in style, taste and price. You can get humble local fried goodies like bacalaítos, alcapurrias, pastelillos/empanadillas or even rice & beans, and a cold beer, for just a few bucks. You can also get much more unusual things like gourmet hamburgers, local/Caribbean fusion, Thai, Italian, Mexican and even Peruvian food. This mixing of the new cuisine and the classic Puerto Rican food kiosk now offers something for everyone. The places without liquor licenses even allow you to BYOB or, if you want, just stop into one place to pick up an alcoholic beverage to go with your meal at another place.

Rick, just want you to know that we may stop for dinner here on our way back from the San Juan AP when you fly in.

Thinking of a Tatoo while you have a cool draft beer!

There is a very neat breed of ponies here - Paso fino - a mix of ponies from Columbia and here.

The gait on these ponies is amazing, very quick and short - almost sounds like a salsa dance step.

Casa Bavaria

We took off late yesterday heading for Morovis, where we were going to meet Mike and Martina for a late lunch.  We had a nice drive of about 2 hours and stopped at the restaurant.  Mike and Martina are the original owners and passed the place on to their daughter and son several years ago.  We hung out and I had several good German beers - draft.  First a Paulaner hefe-weiss bier, then several from Old Harbor (local San Juan) and then for desert I had a Hoffbrau original (Munich).

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The view off the back porch looking North toward the Atlantic Ocean.

We've had lots of showers and some higher than normal winds but the weather was warm and we were dry.

There was a good crowd, a mix of locals and not so locals like us.  After a few beers we started eating and was it good.  I had a beef rouladen and Lesley had schweinebraten and we had German potato salad, mashed potatoes, and fresh purple kraut.  We were both to stuffed to have desert so we decided on a very nice pastry with walnuts and cinnamon and unknown to us, Martina snuck in a very nice apple yummy that we had for breakfast this morning.

We met the kids, we met some of the locals, including a local fellow who wears traditional Bavarian lederhosen.  

We struggled with full bellies and finally headed back to Luquillo on the Eastern end of the Island getting back just before dark.

What a great day with super people - THANK YOU MIKE AND MARTINA

New bearing is installed

We got to the yard about 8:30 this morning and started working on the bearing replacement.  The machine shop pressed out the old bearing and then machined out the inside of the stern tube so that the new bearing would be easier to install and more importantly remove next time.

We reinstalled the stern tube then on the inside of the boat reattached the stuffing box and bonding wire.  I removed the old packing and installed new teflon packing and we were finished by 11:00am!

Then we transferred 15 gallons of fuel from the main tank to one of the bladders so we have some reserve fuel as we begin making our way back thru the Bahamas.

Beach House!

Mike came to the marina this morning and we unloaded the fresh/frozen food from the boat and moved it to the beach house - what a relief that was.  We visited with Mike and Martina for awhile then headed back to the marina.  We saw an Enterprise car rental on the road so stopped to see if it was the one holding our reservation - it was - so we picked up the car.

Got back to the marina and after some delays with paperwork the boat was hauled and then moved up next to the machine shop.  Roberts guys had the prop off before the boat was even blocked and the shaft bearing was indeed badly worn.

We pulled the stuffing box loose then removed the stern tube and cleaned everything up.  The old cutlass bearing will have to be pressed out - could not budge it.  Machine shop will take care of that in the morning.

Thanks Mike and Martina - we are relaxing at the beach house having a cold "Medalla" and going back to Fajardo for Cuban food after we clean up.

Puerto Del Rey

We spent the night behind a reef on Culebra and had a great nights sleep.  There were two moorings left when we arrived but both of them were in sad shape so we backed off a bit and anchored.

We left Culebra and motor sailed on to Fajardo and are now resting in the Puerto del Rey marina.  We've contacted Mike and he is going to pick us and our frozen food up in the morning and we are going to move it over to his beach house.  Will become beach house residents for a few days while I replace the cutlass bearing.

Mike and his wife Martina also own a German Restaurant here on the Island so looking forward to getting together with them and enjoying the restaurant as well.

Lesley is baking some brownies now and I am getting ready to service the engine.  Then I plan to have a few nice cold Old Harbor Taina's (Hefeweizen) if I can find them here in the store.

USVI

We moved over to Maho Bay on the North Side of St John on Saturday.  We used our new Small Vessel Reporting System information and called in to clear in.  All appeared fine and then Lesley had an email from the USCBP telling her that she had to come in to Cruz Bay.  We dropped the mooring and moved on down to find out what was wrong!  Yep, you guessed it - even though we personally appeared at the USCBP office at Fort Myers, Fl this past summer for our interview and updates the office there "FORGOT" to enter her passport into the system.  Will have to try and sort this out once we get back to Florida.

We moved back to Maho Bay and hung out till this morning and then we moved back to Cruz Bay and I picked up a masthead wind indicator connector and a few groceries.  We then moved over to Red Hook so that we could have the EPIRB Battery changed and pick up a liferaft.

Also need to haul out to replace a worn cutlass bearing so spent part of the day trying to arrange that here - no way.  After several phone calls to Puerto Rico we were able to confirm a haulout on Thursday afternoon  and have arranged to have a mechanical services company pull the prop and will help if I need to have the old bearing pressed out.

Plan now is to leave here at 9:00 am tomorrow and anchor for the night off Culebra then move on to PR on Wednesday early.  Have reserved a rental car in PR and Mike, of IP-350 Lorelei, has offered to let us use his beach house - so we will be able to move the frozen food off the boat to his freezer while we are on the hard.

We were really sweating the haulout as we approach the holiday season!

Sint Maarten to Virgin Gorda

We moved out of Simpson Bay Lagoon at 4:00pm yesterday and anchored in Simpson Bay.  It was very rolly but we had dinner, read our Kindles and then crashed early.  No sleep for the rollies!  We got up and left this morning at 1:30am.  Weather (wind/waves) was a bit much but we did fine and arrived here in Gorda Sound at about 2:00pm.

On the way over we ran up on an abandoned fishing boat (200HP Yamaha, fuel tanks, etc) with no one on board.  Then had a nice encounter with a bunch of spotted dolphins.  Will post some photos and a video once we have a chance to decompress some (like in a few days).

Tomorrow were on our way to St John, USVI and hope to take a mooring in Maho Bay, clear in to the US using the SVRS and then go ashore for dinner on the hill.

Would you believe - lightning!

We've spent 8 winters in the Caribbean and on Thursday morning we saw lightning on the Northern horizon.  Then yesterday even we had some here is the St Maarten area and then later in the evening down South toward St Kitts.  Really unusual...  Thunder and lightning in the Islands.

Had cocktails with John and Nancy on IP-420 Adventuress last night.  Had not seen them for several years so was nice to catch up. 

We plan to head in to Budget Marine and Island Water World later this morning.

WiFi is pretty poor here so will post some older pictures once we have better connectivity.

Change of plans!

It looked like the weather was going to change for the worse making a planned trip from St Kitts up to St Martin a bit hairy so we left Jolly Harbor at 4:00am yesterday heading for St Barts instead.  Nice trip up and we were on a mooring at Anse de Columbier by about 4:40pm.  Had a nice dinner of 4 cheese ravioli and steamed broccoli and a bottle of Chianti.

Moved on to St Maarten this morning and came inside Simpson Bay Lagoon to hang out waiting for the weather to improve so that we can move on over the the VI.

Jolly Harbor Antigua

We arrived here about 2:20 this afternoon, washed the boat down and cleared in.  This is our normal turn around spot each season but this year we are continuing on North and then West back to Florida.  It looks like we have a few more days left in this current weather window so the plan now is to move to St Kitts on Thursday, yellow flag it and then move on to St Maarten on Friday.   Then it looks like we will hunker down for an extended blow!

I'm headed in to the store to snag a bag of ice (we now have some room in the freezer so it will not be long now before the Gin and Tonics appear.

More later.....

Moving On

We moved to Martinique on Thursday then went in and cleared in and out Friday morning (out on Sunday).  We moved out to St Anne for the evening and then had a nice sail up to St Pierre.  We anchored in our usual spot north of the town dock up by the fishing port and had some very slow (but free) wifi.  Had Chicken Etouffee, steamed rice and a baguette - yum.

As is usually the case the anchorage was very rolly so about 5:45 this morning we got up and headed for Portsouth, Dominica.  The trip up was very blustery but were here and taking it easy now.  We did mamaged to make 42 gallons of water on the trip up.

We are "Yellow Flagging" it here so will move on to Deshaies, Guadeloupe in the morning and go in to clear in/out there heading for Antigua the following morning.

We have good WiFi here today - Thanks to HotHotHotSpot (Arnold).

Oh, and I almost forgot - we did get a good green flash last night at sunset!