Whales, America and back to Paradise

After clearing US immigration at Charlotte Amalia, St Thomas on the US Virgin Islands, we set course to Puerto Rico at sunrise on the 25th of February. The temperature had dropped to chilly 24 degrees, and when the wind picked up, Ida had to give up her long unbroken suite of only wearing short-sleeved clothes and bring out her knitted sweater. Several squalls made the 75 NM leg a soaking wet experience. By the time we approached San Juan, the weather had cleared, and we anchored outside the city marina well in time to see a beautiful sunset in the west. We didn’t know much about Puerto Rico, but we were excited to experience this US territory. Ida had figured that there must be good sushi here and was crystal clear about our dinner plans. Old Town San Juan was a beautiful part of the city with colorful stone houses in Spanish colonial style. We walked a long town tour, went swimming, and filled up the food storage for another month. While we much enjoyed Puerto Rico and its American ambience, it was also in stark contrast to the “real” Caribbean further east.

The last few weeks we have sped up a bit, which sadly means that we have left all our Norwegian friends behind. We are aiming for having a few weeks in the US before heading back for Europe. This means that we will be solo until we come to Bermuda in May when we aim to cross the Atlantic eastbound together with friends on other boats. Two families will ship their boats across the Atlantic, and them we will likely not see more this year. It hurts to say goodbye, but it feels good to follow a plan that is right for us. Consequently, we were happy to meet Charlie and Sarah onboard the Oceanis 48 Tartuga that we had company with during ARC+. Sarah and Charlie sold the idea of watching humpback whales in Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, and we were excited to buddy up with them.

We hoisted anchor at 7 am and motored out of San Juan harbor in a beautiful sunrise. On the way out we passed Jeff Bezos’s spectacular 417-feet classical style sailing yacht Koru. This is the 3^rd time we see the boat since Guadeloupe – Jeff is obviously following us. The 195 NM downwind leg offered great wing-on-wing- and gennaker sailing, peaceful night watches and no other drama than two gigantic humpbacks showing their full repertoire of jumps and waving with their pectoral fins at a distance. We were stoked but wanted to get closer and signed up for an organized whale safari the following day to come near these powerful, 30-ton animals. This would be the 2nd day of 5 days in a row where we saw humpbacks. The North Atlantic humpbacks come to the area around the Dominican Republic and Turks & Caicos every year around February to April to mate, give birth (the subsequent year obviously) and to show the year-old calves the way to this area from the feeding grounds along the coasts of Canada, Iceland and Northern Norway.

After a few days in Samana, where we mostly hung out by the marina pool and did boat school, we left in company of Tartuga for the tiny sand island Big Sand Cay in Turks & Caicos some 180 NM away. It was easy sailing just next to Tartuga the whole way. On arrival we discovered that we were almost alone on this paradise-like island with nothing but white sand, a few iguanas, turquoise water and a rich animal life in the surrounding waters with occasional dolphins, sharks and whales. We spent some hours underwater to clean the hull that was filled with thousands of tiny barnacles. When hovering under the surface to scrape the bottom, we could hear whale song. One morning we took the dinghy out to have a closer look at two humpbacks that were resting just a few hundred meters from the boat. Martin, Ida, and Felix carefully snorkeled next to them. We could see the 5-meter long pectoral fins scraping the bottom while the whales very slowly made way in the shallow water using their whole body. A breathtaking experience!

After a few days in the paradise of Turks and Caicos, it was time to move on and set course to another highlight of our adventure – the Bahamas. We have been lucky with the weather the last weeks and the 140 NM leg to Mayaguana, one of the easternmost islands of the Bahamas, was uneventful in calm seas and light winds. We had to motor a good part of the trip but were rewarded with another very cool anchorage – a 5 NM wide, shallow basin inside a reef that protected us from some of the swell. A nurse shark came to say hello as we were dropping anchor. Bahamas looks very promising – more about that next time.