Sailing area Puerto Rico – a report
April 22 – May 25 2024
We covered around 24 nautical miles from the US Virgin Islands – where we started in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas – to Culebra in the Spanish Virgin Islands.
If you're entering the US by boat, you need a B1 visa as a German citizen. We applied for this in Germany last year. Since we had already entered the US via the US Virgin Islands, it's generally sufficient to clear customs in another US country by phone.
Before reaching the main island of Puerto Rico, you will pass by boat the offshore islands of:
Spanish Virgin Islands
On the way from San Juan we visit the island:
Vieques and Mosquito Bay
We anchor off the main town of Esperanza and stop in the biofluorescent Mosquito Bay.
We anchor in Mosquito Bay for one more night – but the weather isn't very calm. From there, we take a dinghy trip into the bay, which is home to bio-fluorescent phytoplankton. But the next day, we'll be moving on, heading back to the main island of Puerto Rico.
Cayo Icacos
Isla Pinero
Main island of Puerto Rico
Even on the approach, San Juan greets us with rain – we manage to avoid the first shower, but for the next few days we're in the thick of it...
San Juan - the capital
El Yunque National Park
Puerto Patillas
We meet Heike and Hans from the SY Makaan and sail on with them… next anchorage:
Cayo Puerco
Salinas Point
The bay of Punta Salinas is well-visited and already quite crowded near the town. However, we easily find an anchorage further out – since the water is quite shallow everywhere, there's a wide selection of anchorages. From here, we booked a rental car together to explore the interior.
See our reports:
Impressions of a land tour in Puerto Rico
In Punta Salinas our paths separate again and we sail on to:
Ponce
It is not easy to find a quiet anchorage, we change course twice, then Bernd brings stability to the boat with a second anchor.
Ponce is the second largest city in Puerto Rico. It has an old town and, here and there, a building from colonial times – some more or less restored.
In Ponce we rent a car again to explore more sights:
The cave world of Puerto Rico: Parque National de las Cavernas del Rio Camuy
The cave world of the Taino: The Cuevas del Indio
We actually wanted to continue sailing to the west coast to Boqueron, but then we found out that we couldn't clear out there and had to go up to Mayaguez - but that was too far for us, so we cleared out in Ponce and now had 48 hours to leave the country.
We decide to spend the last two days before the
Box of Dead Island
to anchor.
The island of Caja de Muertos lies about 5 nautical miles off Ponce and has been uninhabited since an earthquake. It's a popular tourist destination. A few boats visit during the day, but we were alone at night.
We were in Puerto Rico for a good month and covered a total of 235 nautical miles in and around Puerto Rico.
Now it is time to leave the region, the hurricane season has begun and so we get our boat ready for the crossing across the Caribbean Sea to the ABC islands of the Dutch Antilles.
