A few days ago we were anchored off Coffin Island and the place was so spectacular I just have to tell you about it. We made friends with the local park rangers and Rafael sent some of the pictures of the island he had. So many of the pictures are not our personally but sourced from him.
After the terrible ordeal in Ponce we spent on day anchored off the lovely island of Isla De Carbona in beautifully calm seas and hardly any roll. It was lovely to be anchored in such a cool spot but it really was not very protected IF the ocean decided to pick up some waves, we were quite vulnerable where we were.
Therefore I wanted to get WildChild moved to an anchorage that would be more protected if mother decided to get a bit moody. Coffin Island was on Dario’s recommended places to “must visit” along the PR south coast so jumping the 8 miles over there was the logical thing to do.
The sail over was easy and uneventful and short. Easy sailing is my favorite kind. The winds were very light and Elena dared to suggest that since it was so close why don’t we just motor over. … ! I did not make her walk the plank for her sin, as we all know how I feel about the iron genny. I figure hey… as long as we are moving 2 knots in the right direction, Auto can still steer, so whats the rush.
The 8 mile sail did take about 4 hours to complete but it was a lovely 4 hours we spent reading books in the cockpit. Life is so good and easy sometimes on a sailboat. The sail was so smooth and calm the boat seemed as though it was at anchor. I found it just perfect.
By around 3pm we made our way, in Bahamas clear waters, slowly tucking into the protection of the bay. There are free mooring balls here but they are too close to the shoreline for my comfort so we were happy to anchor about 200 meters off the beach in a comfortable and safe 16 feet of water.
Really what struck me the most was how amazingly clear the waters were. Just incredible. We could see our anchor and entire length of anchor chain on the bottom. There were little fish swimming around and occasionally we saw larger things breaking the surface.
The first day there we still had plenty of daylight so we jumped in the dinghy to go explore shore a little bit. It looked like there was a resort on shore and there was a ferry dock nearby we had heard we could land our dinghy at. I was curious.
I was wearing only my captain’s uniform as we tied up to the damaged and no longer in service ferry dock. We walked to shore to explore a little bit. The place was spectacular, lush green vegetation with little white butterflies in clouds around. A lovely breeze blowing thru the tropical trees.
We wandered around and eventually made our way up to the resort. It was clear that the place was no longer in service, as it was damaged from hurricane Maria 2 years ago.
We found 2 men, parks service employees sitting outside the only standing in one piece building. They were extremely kind and the one older guy named Orlando spoke really good English. He was more than happy to share his knowledge about the island and provide us with local info.
It seems the island is a nature reserve and is under the control of the Puerto Rican parks services department. There are 2 rangers assigned here and the … hmm… tourism guy maybe. (Never was sure what his job title was). What did really floor us was his response to our inquiry about what happened to the resort. He told us that during Hurricane Maria they had 15 feet of storm surge carrying 20 foot waves that washed completely over the island from one side to the other. That shocked us as we were standing quite a distance above sea level while talking to him.
When I asked why the East side beaches were fenced off and marked danger no trespassing his answer also surprised us. It seems this is a very special, and therefore protected turtle hatching area. Huge sea turtles come twice a year for most of their lifetimes to lay 100 – 150 eggs each time. These giant sea turtle will live for between 100 and 150 years, and lay eggs for 80-100 years of their life, twice a year. WOW…! That is a lot of eggs.
The rangers later told us that usually only like 5% of the baby turtle survive the first week of life. We started to understand the importance of the work of the rangers, people used to hunt and eat these turtles. Humans take up and take over all spaces every where and for these large turtles they are most vulnerable on the beaches where they lay their young. Given the enormous reproductive capacity of turtles killing and eating even one female turtle destroys thousands and thousands of future possible baby turtles.
While we were there we ourselves did not see any turtles but we did occasionally see some large disturbances in the water at a distance that could have been turtles.
Interesting side story… a 100 million dollar 383 foot luxury yacht anchored behind us the next day.. and when speaking briefly with some of the crew they told us that when they dropped anchor that afternoon.. from the high vantage point of their enormous yacht… they saw 3 turtles near their boat.
Another super cool side story… later the next day… while Elena were sitting in our cockpit and eating fresh lobster… I looked towards the beach and a ray jump way up high out of the water three times in a row. Almost like skipping a rock but each jump was as high as a person is tall. It was only maybe 150 meters away from us and it happened very quickly but I was looking in that direction at the time and saw it very clearly. I think that might have been one of the most incredible things I have ever seen in my life, I will never forget that.
So one the second day, having gotten our bearings from the very kind parks services people, we knew there was a marked trail to climb up the mountain to go see the lighthouse at the top. Often life on a yacht you need to stretch your legs when you can. The only caution the parks guys advised was to go in the morning before it gets too hot out.
So bright and early at the crack of 9:30 am landed our dinghy at the ferry dock again to begin our day trek. It was only an hour each way we were told. The hike was fantastic. Like absolutely beautiful thru amazing natural mangrove and tropical forest. When the YouTube videos come out I might deditacte an entire episode just to this wonderful day.
The views from up top at the lighthouse were just completely breath taking. The highlight of our hike was when I almost stepped on a 3 foot long snake on the path mistaking it for a tree branch until reared up and hissed at me. Both us girls screamed and jumped back. Rangers later looked at our videos and told us it was a constrictor, so not poisonous, but neither one of us knew that at the time. The big snake stood his ground rather than slither away and we had to toss rocks his way to convince him to yield the trail to the humans.
After a spectacular morning hiking we returned to WildChild to relax, cool off, and have some lunch. The 100 million dollar yacht was still anchored behind us and the crew were all around playing on their expensive jetskiis and weird flying surf boards. They were not rude about it and kept a respectable distance away from us, the only other boat anchored there, so as not to rock us in their wake. No problems.
We went snorkeling that afternoon and it was very nice. I would not say amazing or anything as we did not go all the way around the island in our dinghy to the reefs. Without confessing to anything we can say we did find some really huge lobsters hiding in the rocks and we got some great video footage of them.
The whole was so fabulous spectacular that it makes the hard days worth it. The misery of the Ponce fiasco was more than made up for by how wonderful Coffin Island was to us. Definitely a MUST SEE stop on the south shore of Peurto Rico.
After 2 days we moved on and sailed our way to Salinas. Weirdly we had running winds from the north west (which almost never happens in the trade wind dominated south coast) but hey, we were not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. A day of easy sailing was much enjoyed as we slowly made our way ever eastward.
We were trailing a lure on the fishing rod just for shits n giggles because we heard that there are tuna galore out here that will strike at anything shinny. When sailing slowly between 2-4 knots is just perfect for fishing, and besides… Lexi gets so bored at the helm. Imagine our surprise when the line started reeling out. We might be the worst fisher girls in the ocean, we really suck at it and put very little effort into our fishing. Just drag a lure behind us.
20 exciting minutes later, filled with dreams of eating tuna for dinner, we reeled a 3 foot barracuda on board. We feel bad having killed him for no good reason. You can’t risk eating the Barracuda for fear of it being contaminated with the neurotoxin Sequateria (sorry I have no idea how to spell that)
We arrived in a storm an hour later under engine power to the bay of Salinas.
The place is great and the friendliest cruiser stop in the whole of Puerto Rico… but that is another story for later..
Cheers sailors..
Captain Lexi… living a great life