Merry Christmas & God Jul!

December 24, 2007: Christmas Eve

We’re spending a warm, tropical Christmas and New Year’s in Culebra, one of the Spanish Virgin Islands, just east of the main island of Puerto Rico. We’re here with friends that we met in Luperon: three boats from Montreal, Phoenix III, La Bete and Taima.

We left Salinas last Wednesday around sunset and had a rolly & bumpy motorsail along the south coast of Puerto Rico and across to the west coast of Vieques, the island south of Culebra. We arrived at Vieques around 3:30AM, both of us feeling rather seasick from the trip. We compensated for the bad trip with a gorgeous sail the next day to Esperanza, the town on the south coast of Vieques. The beach, Sun Bay (Sombe), is a half-moon shaped beach lined with palm trees, shade, grass and surf to swim in. Best: we could swim to the beach from our anchorage!



Hans sailing south of Vieques.



A beach in Vieques... not too bad eh?



Sunset in Vieques.

However, on Friday morning we weighed anchor after a very rolly night of little sleep and headed to Culebra. There were quite a few rainstorms on the horizon as we left, but they all seemed to gravitate to the island and we just got a few showers. The sail to Culebra was fun: it’s great to be sailing again instead of constantly trying to motorsail to get east. Most of our easting is over now and we can see the next islands on the horizon: St. Thomas to the east and St. Croix to the southeast!


We had lots of rain and rainbows on our way from Vieques to Culebra.


We plan on spending tonight and tomorrow feasting on Christmas food; on Friday Suzanne and Liberty arrive to celebrate New Year’s in style on Whisper.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!







Above, 4 pictures from El Yunque National Park, the only tropical rain forest in the United States where we spent a few hours on Sunday.