Cruising the South Coast of Puerto Rico
Boqueron was a great anchorage. After all the wind and waves in the Mona passage, the calm anchorage at this small tourist town was a welcome respite. We arrived on a Monday and our first impression was that it is a failing little dirt hole but some people we talked to enlightened us to the fact that it was hangover Monday, the slowest day of the week. On the weekend, they assured us, the place would be rockin like spring break in Ft. Liquordale. We took the dinghy out and snorkled the reef guarding the anchorage and then explored a small beach nearby. A path led to a marsh at low tide bjillion little crabs. The mud squished through our toes as we found another path leading to an open field and some trees. Puerto Rico is very beautiful . It reminds me of the Florida gulf coast but surounded by mountains. The country deserves months of exploring.
We hung around here for a few days as Corey departure was impending and I was waiting for engine parts via Fedex. Corey left and my parts came, new fuel delivery pipes. A pipe had cracked in the run to the Mona passage steadily squirting fuel into the bilge with each pulse. It was a great relief to have the engine back to its normal reliable steadiness. With all systems go and my confidence in myself as a solo cruiser growing I was ready to move along the next morning. The day dawned with the usual PR loveliness, cleas skys and the sea glassy. This condition has been pretty constant with the wind picking up from the east about 10am. Several other boats were already underway as I got the boat ready to go. I got a radio call from my friend Mike, on Zero to Cruising, who claimed Boqueron was not letting go of him. His anchor was well stuck. I offered to swim into the murky water and see what the problem was. I took a breath and pulled myself down the chain about 10ft to see his anchor chain dissappear into a 20 ft. wreck that he had unknowingly anchored right on top of. This is a very unusual occurence as we can normally see the bottom and large hazzards are normally marked some how. Repeated dives did not reveal any solutions as I could not stay down enough to figure out where the rest of his chain was. To the rescue came Dave on Promise with a scuba outfit. I donned the tank and then I could see that about 15 ft. of his chain was well buried and unlikey to be pulled out with anything less than a crane. Reluctantly Mike handed me a pair of big bolt cutters that I used to cut the 15 ft. of chain off, a big bummer for Zero to Cruising.
They left the anchorage bound eastward and I got back to getting going myself. I had just gotten the anchor up when I hear this horrible knocking coming from the engine. Somewhat panicked I checked the engine where the knocking sound was unmistakable to me as a major malfunction but everything looked fine and the engine ran the same. I quickly weighed the choices of putting the anchor back down and commence a 3 week engine tear down to see what the problem was or turn up the radio and try to ignore it until a catastrophic failure occured. I chose the latter and reluctantly headed into the beautiful Caribbean Sea. Fishing and the gorgeous scenery got my mind off the noise which wasn't getting worse. Caught a Barracuda, not good, and continued to La Paguara, a weekend party town and tourist dive destination. Afer a beer and burger in town with Mike and Rebecca I settled down for a nice calm night behind a small mangrove island. Love this life.
The next morning off to Ponce, a larger city with access to parts and reprovisioning. The small yacht harbor was not to my liking, deep and surrounded by manmade improvements like a boardwalk and wooden pier so I was ready to move on the next day. My friends needed to stay as they had some repairs to do take care of. The next morning I headed for Salinas. As I came down the mangrove lined channel I said to myself, this is more like it. A natural mangrove lined harbor with about 50 or 60 boats, a nice dinghy dock, and good holding ground for the anchor. I met up with some other friends who had preceded me and we had a good happy hour session aboard Top O' the World. Cruisers are quick to party with no fanfare and they always bring their own booze and some food to share. This makes invitations to watch the sun set easy to give out. Bob and Janice from Tsamaya are very interesting retired folks who spent much of their youth in Botswana as Peace Corps voluteers. Martin and Johanna are a young Swedish couple who are very kind and tell great stories as well. We added a new friend, John, on Dancyn, a 32 ft. boat on which he had just completed a 10 year circumnavigation. This was an amazing feat to me and I soaked up his many cool stories.
One morning I was patching the dinghy and I looked up to wave at a passing dinghy with a man and a dog. The man looked familiar but I didn't have my glasses on and as I was psyferin' he turned back and approached. "Is that you Henry?" I said. Yes it was a fellow from Titusville who had given me much good advice when I started the boat project. We caught up and I told him about he engine noise. He said he wanted to hear it so I fired up the engine and was able to produce the noise. He said he thought it was an injector and explained that a bad injector can make a hell of a racket. He grabbed a wrench and within 30 seconds he diagnosed the problem as the number 2 injector. I as so relieved and happy I insisted that we have a beer right then.
I happily waited for the part in Salinas doing boat projects and getting great sleep as the wind in the anchorage was nil every night. The problem with that is that no electricity being generated by the wind generator. I watched the battery voltage slowly drop down below the the 50% level. Running the main engine with only the load of the alternator is bad for the already hurting engine and a poor use of fuel, so I kept everything but the fridge turned off for a couple of days. When the part came on time I was so pleased and immediately set out to install the new injector. With fingers crossed I fired the engine up and IT WORKED! No more hideous knocking. I went over to Henry's boat with the good news and thanked him for his expertise. I was now ready for sailing to the Spanish Virgin Islands.
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