Culebra Puerto Rico USA

Departing St Martin

Only a small tuna but it fed us for several meals

We left St Martin in the middle of the morning on Sunday 13 January after an all important last run ashore to buy a couple of loaves of fresh French bread, most likely the last decent bread for a long time unless we do some baking ourselves.  We had a good breeze from the east, about 16knots and, with the genoa poled out to port and the main out to starboard, BV romped along nicely.

Neil and Nici – Nicky saw this and thought of you!

Just as we were discussing what to cook for dinner the fishing line squealed, running out fast.  Nicky rolled away the genoa to slow BV down and I reeled in the catch, a nice little tuna, perfect for dinner and a few more meals besides!

The overnight passage was generally uneventful but we saw a good number of cruise ships heading for the islands. We interrogated all the AIS paints wondering if one would be Serenade of the Seas, the cruise ship our friends Nici and Neil will be on in March just before they join us for a week in the Bahamas.  And, yes, on Nicky’s watchSerenade of the Seas did sail past en route for St Thomas!

Sailing into Ensenada Honda

As dawn approached the wind dropped and we slowed down but we still made entry to Ensenada Honda on the south coast of Culebra at about 0830, so we had made good time on the passage.

The Dinghy Dock bar and restaurant is back in business and busy too

We anchored near the town, Dewey, and dinghied ashore to complete formalities with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) up at the airport.  Then we took a wander around Dewey, enjoying the ambiance and noting the changes since we last visited in early May 2018.  Then, it was clear that the place was still recovering from Hurricane Irma’s ravages in September 2017.  Now, another 9 months on, all the buildings have roofs again, more have been repainted and smartened and many more businesses have reopened.  The Dinghy Dock bar and restaurant was one place that had been closed last May.  We now found it brightly repainted doing a roaring trade, notably from cruisers in the anchorage to judge from the number of dinghies moored alongside.  And that was another change.  In May we, along with Wild Iris(Mark and Lisa Pollington), had been one of very few yachts in the anchorage.  Now the anchorage off Dewey was very busy and we had also seen a good half dozen yachts, or more, anchored behind the reef at the south of the island.  Quite a change.

Isla Vieques in the distance

Top: Motoring down Ensenada Honda. Bottom:  the anchorage in Ensenada Dakity, behind the reef

Much of the area on the southwest coast of Culebra is designated a no-fishing zone and with clear, unpolluted waters the diving around the island is said to be excellent with plenty of marine life to be seen.  So, on Tuesday 15 January we moved BV to Ensenada Dakity, behind the reef at the entrance to Ensenada Honda, relatively close to a known good dive site on the most southern tip of the island.  There are a number of mooring buoys in Ensenada Dakity, many of which had yachts on them, but we decided to anchor on a nice patch of sand in about 4m.

Anchored behind the reef in Ensenada Dakity

From the anchorage we took the dinghy down the shallow part of Ensenada Dakity, out through a break in the reef and around Punta Soldata, the southern tip of Culebra.  We anchored it northwest of the point on the southern edge of a small bay with 2 mooring buoys, one of which had a yacht on it.  Perhaps it would have been quicker to have brought BV round to here.

Top left: sea rods.  Bottom left: juvenile wrasse.  Right: Common sea fan

The dive was everything we had hoped for, albeit we took it rather conservatively, turning back a short distance beyond the point having used a third of our air.  With the slight current (only noticeable in the vicinity of the point) running west and north we returned to the dinghy anchor with plenty of air to spare and the best diving area back towards the point.  But better safe than sorry.  Running out of air was not part of the plan!

A Coney or a Rock Hind

As expected, there was plenty of marine life – lots of fish and live coral – on boulders and on a steep wall at the point itself.

We followed the contours down to about 15m off the point and then returned a little higher up the wall, exploring areas we hadn’t seen on the way out.  In the deeper water there were lots of large fish, groupers and snappers and the like.

In the shallower water there were plenty of smaller fish and juveniles all darting around the corals and in and out of crevices in the rocks.

After nearly an hour in the water we headed back to BV and returned to the anchorage off Dewey.

Looking west from the ferry dock at Dewey, with Cayo de Luis Peña in the background to the left.  We had intended to dive at Sardinas Reef (shallows in the mid-ground) but ended up diving off Punta Melones (rocky headland behind Sardinas Reef) instead

From here it was an easy dinghy ride, through the canal and across the bay on the other side of the town to our intended afternoon dive site at Sardinas Reef.  But the site looked very shallow and the dinghy would have been fairly exposed so we continued to the far side of the next headland and dived there instead.

General reef scenes.  Bottom left: Lionfish

This was a shallower dive than the morning’s – we went no deeper than 7m – but again there was plenty to see.

General reef scenes.  Bottom left: Spotted trunkfish

We used up the last of our air at a recommended snorkelling site where we saw the Spotted trunkfish pictured above as well as 2 stingrays and some very large squirrelfish.  All in all we had a great day of underwater fun but it comes with a lot of work to rinse and dry the kit afterwards so it turned into quite a long day too.

We spent the next day getting the tanks refilled (at Culebra Marine close to the canal, $6 per tank for a refill) and pottering on board with various small jobs.  That evening we had a sundowners with Neville and Glenys Howarth on Albaand talked diving, Pacific crossings, Cuba and future plans with them.  It was a lovely evening and, as ever, it was a shame to break up the party but we needed to make a prompt start on Thursday.

Lunch at Zaco’s Tacos

So, (nearly) first thing on Thursday, as we had agreed with Officer Rivera, the on duty CBP Officer when we had arrived on Monday, we presented ourselves and our paperwork at the CBP office to check out of Culebra and, most importantly, to surrender our current US Cruising Licence to her.  When we had arrived in Culebra in May 2018 we had requested, and been issued, a Cruising Licence valid for one year.  We had known at the time that if we were in the US when the licence expired then we would have to leave the country for 15 days before we could return and be issued a new document.  However, we had understood that we could have an active licence cancelled at a convenient point when we departed the US and then have a new licence issued at the next port of entry into the country.  No longer so. It seems that the computer system has been changed and now the only CBP office that can cancel an active licence is the one that issued it in the first place!  Potentially difficult but not for us as it so happens.  So, Officer Rivera issued us the required clearance paperwork (no charge for it here, unlike in Morehead City) and took back our Cruising Licence telling us that we had 72hrs to leave – that’s 48hrs more than most countries permit which could be very useful.

We used some of that time having lunch at Zaco’s Tacos, a restaurant we had enjoyed greatly when we were here in May.

Good tacos….but not quite as good as the last time we visited

Unfortunately, the tacos weren’t quite as tasty as last time but the quesadilla we shared was excellent, which made up for it.  And then, more than replete, we returned to BV to move around to an anchorage off Culebrita for our final night in Puerto Rico for some time.

Culebra, Puerto Rico, USA