On the Road Again . . .

Tomorrow we plan to ship out of Salinas. It has been a fun stay and as we know, 1 week is about my limit and that’s been 3 days ago! I show a chart of the Spanish Virgin Islands. This group of two major Islands, Vieques to the south and Culebra to the north is just off the east coast of Puerto Rico. I’ve circled our planned stops. Right now we are about 40 miles west of Vieques (off the chart) and we’ll take a couple of days, weather permitting, to get snuggled in to that anchorage off the western tip of Vieques. There are several NO ANCHOR regions around Vieques as the US Navy had used this area for target practice for years but no longer. That means there might be some unexploded ordinance on the bottom that you wouldn’t want to find with your anchor! Then we plan to sail north to the little island of Palominos hoping to get the wind a little more abeam. There are a number of anchorages and marinas along the east coast of Puerto Rico if we don’t want to go all the way to Palominos at once but, hey, it’s only about 20 miles! From there we can short tack just south of the shoals that stretch from just north of Palominos nearly all the way to Culebra. A close up of Culebra (not shown) indicates many interesting looking bays for anchoring. This is probably where we are for Christmas. Everything is line of sight sailing and naked eye-ball navigation now. In fact from Culebra it is only 20 miles to St. Thomas. What great sailing/cruising grounds these are!

Mismo is a GREAT addition to the boat. Hours of fun just watching her discover the boat which has to seem really huge to her. She’s only been in the main salon and in the cockpit so far. She has yet to learn how to jump but she’s probably only days away from that. She likes to sleep with us for awhile and then she likes to get down. And then back up. Repeat. Since she can’t jump up or down we’ve had to raise and lower her by hand. Last night we built her a temporary ramp instead. Worked great and she took right to it.

Finally, I'm reading a really good book. Mostly we get books from the book exchanges in various marinas etc and that means you exchange one mystery for another. That's ok but sometimes you want something different. I found this book, Between Silk and Cyanide by accident and it is wonderful. I wanted to read it just to find out what the hell the title was about. You find out about 200 pages in! It is by Leo Marks who was a master cryptographer at the age of 22 for the Brits in World War II. You'll like this book if you like hisory, cryptography, humor, or for anyone who has to work in a huge beaurocracy that is reluctant to change. Leo is also the son of the 'famous' Marks & Co used and rare booksellers in England (Oxford?) and he offers a few stories about his father and working in that shop.

We’ll update the chart and our progress when we can. We never know exactly when that will be so thanks for checking in once in a while and, as usual, all comments are greatly appreciated.