San Juan

Its been a while since the last blog and during that time have been based in Fajardo in a huge marina called Puerto del Rey.  There are over 1000 slips here and we as usual are on an outer berth.  Luckily we can get a lift into the marina centre along the docks on a golf buggy.

There were a number of reasons for the stopoff here.  We had to get Beth off at a place with decent flight connections to New York, we also needed a place to re-provision and get a couple of things done on the boat.  In addition we all wanted to take a look at old San Juan.

Work first.  Called in people to look at the freezer and genset.  On the freezer we knew we had lost the gas from one evaporator through a hole on the evaporator tube.  A couple of techs came in and repaired the leak and re-gassed the system.  In the other evaporator there is still a leak but we could not find it and it is very small.  In the end the system is now working and we have pulled down the temperature to -20deg C but will probably look at replacing the evaporators in Grenada.

We also had the genset looked at.  It had been running at a low oil pressure and we thought there may have been a leak but everything checked out.   

We managed to get the new waterpump sent down from Lars and installed.  We flushed the watermaker membranes with cleaner but the quality of the water we are producing is still a bit off.  Probably need to get new membranes.  So the water situation is that we will use bottled water for drinking and produced water for everything else.  The good news is that with the new pump we will have as much water as needed for the showers, toilets, cooking etc.

There were a host of smaller routine jobs which we completed while we had access to good stores in Fajardo.  Its been since West Palm Beach almost 4 months ago that we really had good marine stores to access.

We had to say goodbye to Beth here.  She caught a flight to New York where she was planning to visit with Scotts brother for a week before flying home to Australia.  Having Beth on board was great especially for the additional hands and the interaction with the kids who really appreciated having her onboard.  She also provided a string of memorable events for us to remember - of special note must be when we were at Big Sand Quay and going into the beach in the dingy.  As we were approaching the shore Sam told Beth to jump over the side to hold the dingy.  Unfortunately he had misread the depth and Beth disappeared under water.  Luckily we were near shore and she was holding on.  Anyway Beth got off OK and we will miss her.

Prior to Beth leaving we managed a trip to old San Juan.  This is a beautiful old city with an incredible fortress complex called El Morro.  Puerto Rico was discovered by Columbus during his second voyage and it became strategically very important to the Spanish.  You can see why by its position on the sailing route from Europe and it being an entry point to the Caribbean and beyond.  The Spanish built the original fortifications and they were used continuously through to the second world war.  There were a few attempts to take the citadel over the years but few were succesful.

We drove up to San Juan in the morning.  We had been told that San Juan can be a bit dodgy but the  old city is safe and as it is on a peninsula it is somewhat seperated from the rest of the town.  The peninsula is surrounded by the old city walls interspersed with small watch towers all of which are still in remarkably good shape being up to 500 years old.  At two locations are fortresses the most impressive of which is El Morro.  El Morrow sits at the entrance to the harbour and towers over the approaches.  Another fort on an island on the otherside of the harbour mouth makes it very secure.  The fortress itself is a significant structure with about 5 or six different levels.  From the fortress a huge clear green leads down to the town which is composed of beautiful buildings lining narrow streets which are cobbled in some places.  We had a good look around the fortress and then wandered the streets and got some lunch in a local place.  The old town has a couple of busy streets but the rest are quite quiet and its pleasant to just wander around taking in the sights and occasionally sitting in the shaded squares to rest.  Am sure at night the place would become very lively but we headed home in the evening.

El Moro and city walls

El Moro

As with the DR rum and cigars seem to be the big items here.  There are lots of old guys wearing Panama hats and speaking loudly in Spanish and brandishing these huge stogies. As none of us partake of either we had to contend ourselves on buying some coffee instead.

Lunch in San Juan

San Juan Street

The next few days were spent shopping to re-provision the boat, schooling and then on our last day we took a drive up to the El Yunque national park in the highlands behind Fajardo where we hiked through the rainforest to some waterfalls to go swimming.  It was a great day out and enjoyed by everyone.  Unfortunately on the way back Scott clipped a parked car and so we had to spend a couple of hours negotiating our way out of a traffic violation with the local police.  We managed to settle with the owner and everyone went away satisfied.

Sam and Calley under the waterfall

Waterfall in El Yunque

We left Fajardo on Monday morning.  We fueled up as this is one of the cheapest places for diesel in the Caribbean and then headed across to the island of Culebra about 20 miles due east of PR and dropped anchor in a protected bay called Esenada Honda.  This is another small island owned by PR.  We will spend a few days here and then head off to St Thomas.