8 years ago when we first sailed to the Bahamas, I had this vision of what a Caribbean beach would look like – sandy shore edged by palm trees!! Well that’s not exactly what I found! The Bahamas have beautiful white sandy beaches but the palm trees, if there are any, are about 3 feet tall and scrawny! Today (March 20) we walked on a long beach with so many palm trees – it was crazy!! Nice way to spend our last day at Puerto Patillas.
We arrived at Puerto Patillas on Sunday, March 16 after an easy 16 nm motor. The anchorage was pretty full with about 10 boats anchored close to the town. This area is very picturesque and the bay is fairly well protected from most wind (although we haven’t had much wind in the last couple of weeks). We did some exploring of the area – dinghied over to the reef on Monday and saw a manatee’s nose pop out of the water. We walked the main road of the town on Tuesday. It’s a small town with lots of restaurants but not much else. We did manage to find a little variety store and bought some milk! We went back to town on Wednesday and had lunch out! I’ve discovered this dish called mofongo – basically mashed plantain that’s shaped into a bowl and stuffed with veggies and meat (I like chicken). I first saw it in the DR and tried my first mofongo in Puerto Real. Mark and I both had mofongo for lunch yesterday and it was very good!!
Today was our beach explore day. We watched these 2 men bring in a fishing net onto the beach. They’d managed to catch a few small fish in the net. We also saw lots of crabs on the beach!! Scared quite a few of them back into their holes and into the water. It was great to walk along the beach and it’s the first good beach we’ve found in Peurto Rico. It was a nice way to end our visit to this area!! Tomorrow (March 21) we’ll be sailing (hopefully – good east wind is predicted) back to Salinas. We will be going into the Marina de Salinas on Saturday where we’ll get some work done before Evelyn arrives on April 6. We’re hoping to get some of our storage jobs done during the next 2 weeks.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 