Coffins & Ghosts

I'm writing from the El San Juan Hotel in San Juan Puerto Rico.  This will be the first night I slept ashore since December 29th.  The bed feels very comfy.

Caja de Muertos (Coffin Island)

The second half of the south coast of Puerto Rico included both Salinas and Caja de Muertos.  We left Ponce and towed Tibby and Kristen's tender behind Top Shelf for the 8 nautical mile run to Caja de Muertos, which translates in English to Coffin Island.  Some say the profile of the island looks like a coffin, but there is a story about a pirate named Jose Almeda. 

LED Light Replaced the Kerosene Lamp

Jose fell in love with a woman who died shortly after they were married.  The legend goes that he buried her in a glass covered coffin that was hidden in a cave on Caja de Muertos.  Periodically,

Julianne on Coffin Island

he would bring his pirate ship to the island and go ashore by himself to view his deceased wife in the glass coffin.  When Jose died, his crew sailed his ship directly to the island to recover what they thought was hidden treasure.  The crew fought to the death, and the lone survivor entered the cave to find the only treasure to be the corpse in a glass coffin.  Either way, the island is known as "Coffin Island"

Looking Down at Top Shelf

We arrived and anchored about mid island just below the lighthouse.  We used the tender in tow to go ashore and we climbed a sketchy trail to the lighthouse.  I did a little off trail hiking and found a small cart, similar to a mining cart.  They must have used the mining cart on rails

Tibby & Kristen

to get the Kerosene up the 244 foot hill.  I couldn’t find any evidence of the rails.  Views from the lighthouse were fantastic.

The next morning we said goodbye to Tibby and Kristen as they took their tender back to Ponce to continue his construction project aboard their catamaran Phoenix.  We hoisted anchor and set sail for Salinas.

Wind Mills Along the South Coast

During our 2 hour cruise we saw the Puerto Rican wind power investment that has been made since Hurricane Maria in 2017, as there were hundreds of windmills located on the southern shore between Ponce and Salinas.  In addition we were buzzed by a C-130 Air Force transport plane that was training off of the

C-130 Climbing Out After Buzzing Us

coast of Puerto Rico.

Salinas is known as a hurricane hole.  In the Caribbean, folks that sail during hurricane season know that hurricane holes are your go-to anchorage if a hurricane is approaching.  These anchorages are very well protected and typically surrounded by mangrove trees which are used along with anchors to secure the vessel.

One of the Ghost Ships

When we first arrived at Salinas, we thought the anchorage was very busy.  What we found as we entered the harbor was that these anchored vessels had been there since Hurricane Maria 18

Salinas Marina

month ago.  Folks had simply abandoned these vessels.  It felt like we were anchoring among ghost ships.  We inspected many of the nylon anchor lines on these vessels and decided it was best to anchor to the east or upwind of these vessels since many of them had broken off of their anchors and lay in the mangroves on the west side of the anchorage.  We didn’t need one of these ghost ships to break off its anchor and ram us during the upcoming 54 hour blow that was forecast.

Julianne at the Full Moon in Salinas

We rode out the next 3 days among these ghost ships.  The town had a few OK restaurants, but after 3 days when the wind finally settled below 20 knots, it was time to leave Salinas.

Julianne and I decided to skip the next two anchorages and sail directly to the east coast of Puerto Rico to the marina at Puerto Del Ray. This was a very swanky place with real estate around the marina selling for more than 2 million dollars.  We would use this marina as a base to explore the El Yunque National Rain Forest and await the arrival of the Fords from Buffalo, NY.