One of the things I refuse to do is paint the illusion of reality with a false brush of eternal sunshine spreading the myth that everything is always perfect all the time. I am often of accused of being a pessimist, and admittedly can sometimes be moved by a pessimistic spirit, but more often than not I prefer to believe that I am a realist. Life sometimes is good, sometimes bad, sometimes boring and sometimes exciting. The reality we all live in has ups and downs. Mine on the yacht are simply higher and lower and closer together, this is cruising life.
The criticisms laid against me for also showing the down side of the cruising life exclusively comes from the self deluded eternal optimists. To them I say… if reality offends you… do not read on.
Ever since leaving the boring time freeze known as Luperon, life on WildChild has gotten good again, mostly good again. The Adventure moves on with its ups and downs that I choose to share with you equally.
The sailing from Puerto Real to Gilligan’s Island was fun and easy and we have been having a good time enjoying the adventure.
The next stop in the journey was the second largest city in PR called Ponce, about halfway along the south coast of the Island. We had been hoping that perhaps, once in Ponce, with stores and shops galore, we might be able to solve our camera problem. So although we had been fairly cautioned that it might not be a good stop we wanted to try and get in and see the place for ourselves, and maybe provision a little bit.
Our sail to Ponce began at a leisurely 10am sailing against light winds we had to tac a few times and make many small helm correction to keep our wind angle (TWA) favourable. I do confess that there was one time during the sail, tight to the wind, I was reading a book at the helm when there was a sudden 30 degree shift in the wind to cross the nose. I was slow to react, we back winded the genny (Shamefully) and having stalled out our forward boat speed, I had to quickly turn the engine on to power the yacht to tac back to swing the wind back across the bow to the starboard side. Quick reactions got us back sailing on course within 2 minutes, but… quicker reactions would have prevented the accidental tac in the first place. Such is the cruising life, we all know sailing long distances upwind against light and shifty winds does not always go according to plan.
The sun was shinning bright and cheerful overhead all day as we enjoyed blue skies overhead and the usual intense heat dripping sweat off us in rivers of discomfort. What we have observed is interesting about sailing along the south coast of PR is that there always seems to be grey rainy storm clouds and often thunder in the mountains over the land while just a few miles out to sea all the nasty dissipates and we see only glory offshore. It is kind of cool to watch the mountain weather from a distance.
As we are sailing in perfect tropical conditions most of the time now, I am usually always wearing only my captain’s uniform (Bikini) and a life jacket. Often I am singing and dancing at the helm like a crazy girl, but hey… this is what being free feels like. We setup our Boss blue tooth speaker in the cockpit and connect it to my cell phone and I play DJ for a few hours. Elena never sings or dances… Germans are too stiff for this kinda thing.
It was around 4pm by the time WildChild passed the small Isla De Cordona 1 mile outside of the port of Ponce and began to drop sails to make our approach to the large commercial port of Ponce. The depths were good and there was no concern in the area for any unmarked reefs. As we were making our way in I was standing at the bow to have a look ahead and Elena was back at the helm when I saw 3 dolphins off the starboard bow swimming to cross ahead of us. It was a wonderful welcome that just delighted us.
I watched in awe as the trio passed just in front of our bow and one of them turned left to swim towards the back of WildChild. It was simply delightful to see these spectacular animals in their natural habitat. Much to my surprise that third dolphin that had turned back to circle us came up to swim at our bow and play in our bow wake. I hollered back to Elena to just put the yacht in autopilot and hurry to come forward and watch the show with me. For probably 2 full fabulous minutes we filmed and watched the dolphin playing until it tired and in a sudden burst shot off to rejoin his friends in the distance.
Us two sailor girls were just tickled pink and grinning ear to ear by the time we began to motor slowly into the smaller Port of Ponce.
I remained on deck at midships for a clear view of the crowded bay ahead and left Elena at the helm to follow instructions I may shout back. This is not my first time entering an unfamiliar and unknown port and when you have no idea what you will find, and you happen to be on a yacht, there is no pause button you can push to inquire around to parking assistance. The best method is simply to go slowly and get a good view and look around to figure out where you can go, where there may be room to anchor or a possible free mooring ball to grab.
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Ponce Yacht Club’s Reputation
To step back here a bit, I had been gently and politely cautioned by other sailors that Ponce might not be the best place to stop. One of the tools that we as sailors use, from our Navionics charts, is the active captain notes left by other sailors about places we are venturing forward into. What had me rather concerned about, as we slowly made our way into the crowded bay, was that the reputation of the Ponce Yacht Club had some of the worst marina reviews I had ever seen. I include some of them here below for you to read for yourself….
With this information weighing heavily in the back of my mind, Yacht Club equals bad, there were notes that said other sailors were able to anchor in the bay outside of the yacht club. Given how unfriendly the yacht club was to dinghy access to shore, and how crowded with bars and private docks the bay was… we were unsure if we would even be able to get access to shore to explore, but I wanted to try. Perhaps a nice meal in a nice restaurant would be a much deserved treat for these sailor girls, maybe live music might be nice.
It was terrible, we had an awful time of it. Slowly I hollered back instructions to Elena at the helm and slowly moved WildChild to a spot in the crowded anchorage/mooring field where I thought we might be able to drop anchor. There was only one small spot even remotely available very near the turning corner for the yacht club. We did manoeuvre into my choosen spot and drop the anchor into the mud but I had a terrible feeling about it, I just didn’t like it.
This gets technical and only other captains will understand the following mumbo jumbo but… given a depth of 28-32 feet of soft silty muddy bottom, to play out even a minimal scope of 4:1 I had to put out 120 feet of chain, which would give me a swing diameter of around 80 feet. The boats around us were, at best, only 30 feet away. The bay is poorly managed with mooring balls within 20 feet of each other AND many hurricane damaged (mostly wrecked) boat at anchor in between the moorings.
Even if I dropped a sentinal anchor to reduce my L1 swing radius to an L2 radius (Tight swing) to maintain minimal chain length but keep proper scope angle on the shank of my beloved Rockna for holding… I would still bump into the other nearby boats if/when the wind direction changed at sunset. It was simply no good and I had to make the tough decision to lift the anchor and find another solution.
Elena was tired and getting grumpy with my indecision. She just wanted to cook dinner and watch TV and she had little interest, concern, or appreciation for building tension. The loud music was blaring from the surrounding bars and the sun was getting close to setting as I began running out of daylight. Decision made… fuck it… we are lifting the anchor.
With the anchor up I had Elena motor WildChild slowly, in the only free space, out the channel back towards the open ocean, as I stood on deck searching for a new solution. There were some mooring balls unoccupied within the mooring field, I had no idea if they were public or private, no idea if they were even safe… but worst case scenario to take one.. and the owner comes out to yell at us or get money out of us and we leave. The sun was setting anyway so I was running out of time.
I had Elena move the boat towards a mooring ball I had selected that seemed to have enough swing room to accommodate us. I switched places with her at the helm, as motoring up to a mooring ball requires more skill than Elena is comfortable with as of now. With Elena in position on the bow with a boat hook prepared to catch the mooring when I get into position I slowly moved WildChild thru the tight maze of other boats moored/anchored close together in the field.
I did a great job of getting WildChild slowly upwind to the ball and did my best to hover the boat in place to give Elena time to grab the mooring lines or something onto one of our deck cleats… but she yelled back she lost it. I stick my head out and inquire what happened… she reported back there were no mooring lines to grab, it was simply a tight mooring ball with no way to grab it.
We keep losing… grrrr….
Okay.. need a new plan fast…
I spot another mooring ball that I had originally decided against as it looked sketchy at best. Slowly I move big ol’e WildChild between other boats and move forward into the proper downwind position to climb up on the next mooring ball. Elena does manage to grab this one, as it had a 20 foot line on it with a float. Elena pulls the icky thick with marine growth line onto a deck cleat so I can leave the helm, engine in neutral, and run up to the bow to assist her. The winds were light so now we had a tenuous hold to give us pause time to get secured.
You can see from the picture the line that we grabbed onto. It took me a while to figure out a way to attach my own line to the thick and filthy thing and get WildChild secured with 2 point onto it. My eternal motto that 2 is 1 and 1 is none… when it comes to securing a boat.
We sat there as the sun set and darkness descended upon the bay. The music from the bars only turned up louder and smaller power boats roamed around with music blaring Spanish loud. It was clear this is a loud party place.
Elena had enough of this stressful situation and the second I said okay we seem okay for now she went down below to play solitaire on her cell phone, lay on the couch, and watch TV, she was done for the day.
I still had a bad feeling though and stayed up on deck for another hour just watching the swing movement of the yacht and the other boats around us. When we first hooked up to this sketchy mooring I did put WildChild into reverse and bear down hard on the mooring to make sure it was indeed strong enough to trust, and it did hold, I still did not like the proximity to other boats.
Of specific concern to me there was another, unoccupied, mooring balls 20 feet away midships. It was clearly in our swing radius and if the wind shifts 40 degrees it is going to hit our side, and possibly tangle on our keel, or worse yet… wrap around our rudder.
As the evening winds begin their swirly dance and the boats begin jostling about we swung dangerously close to the boat behind us, like 5 feet behind our davits. Swinging the other way there was a pair of wrecked boats anchored together that came within 10 feet of us. Over the next few hours we swung twice into the mooring ball beside us, pinned against our midsection and keel, and I had to grab a boat hook and pass it up across our bow. My anxiety level was thru the roof and Elena does not like living with an anxious or tense Captain Lexi.
After dinner I still could not relax. It was clear that in this loud crowded anchorage I was not going to sleep tonight at all. It was already dark and around 9pm… what else can I do?
FUCK IT… we are leaving.
Unsafe is Unsafe… I told Elena, much to her dismay, we are not going to bed now… we are going to release from the mooring in the dark and make our way back out to sea in the dark. There was an island just a mile away, Isla De Cardona, that looked like we could anchor off… and that is exactly what we did.
Ponce was just completely awful. The bay is overcrowded, the marina unfriendly, the place loud, no dinghy access to shore anyway. DO NOT GO THERE…! Giant waste of time. There are many other wonderful, cruiser friendly places in PR to visit and Ponce is not one of them. It was a mistake for us to even try.
The delightful news is… that we got anchor down in calm seas just off the coast of Isla De Cardona by 10:30pm and anchored safely in 17 feet of water, good hold on sandy bottom, no other boats around, and had a wonderful night.
The next day we visited and explored around the island and, with the light house unlocked, got to explore inside the building. We saw some large Iguanas living on the island and I swam around the boat a few times. Life was good again.
The next stop is Coffin Island only 7 miles away.
This is life…
Sometimes good… sometimes bad…
Captain Lexi’s life is never boring it seems.
Cheers sailors…
.        Captain Lexi…
.               …. the eagerly looking forward to each day of adventure.
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