We left Dominica to a steady 20 knot breeze for a 240 mile journey to St. Croix (USVI) where I was hoping to make a phone call and take care of a few things back home.
The phone reception was very bad, so we stayed only about 4 hours in St. Croix and decided to make another jump (about 90 more miles) to Salinas, Puerto Rico.
We stayed in Puerto Rico a couple of days, rented a car to go to Costco and re provision some food as our storage was starting to look rather empty. We also took a trip to the top of their highest mountain. We like Puerto Rico.
The next day we sailed around Puerto Rico to go to Mayaguez to use it as a launch pad for our big journey, we went to town to try and get some souvenirs. There were older men on the beach playing cards. They started talking to us, and were full of advice, not only that, a couple of them got a car and drove us to the "Plaza" were we were able to pick up some souvenirs. On the way back, one of them showed us what he just bought for himself in the neighboring town - a nice carved dish for mashing things. Phyllis loved the dish - so he sold it to us for the same price ($20) and told us that he would go and get another one for himself. What a gesture. So we got our souvenirs and had delightful talk with the locals. Did I mention that we love Puerto Rico and its people?
Phyllis made a great guacamole in it
We left Puerto Rico that evening as the wind was supposed to be strengthening in the next 3 days around the Dominican Republic, and we wanted to be out of that area within 3 days. To get to the first island in the Bahamas (Mayaguana) is about 500 miles.
We had really nice downwind sail. Galaxy was a speed demon putting around 180 mile days. We could probably do a 200 mile days, but we decided to put 2 reefs in the main sail to slow her down a little bit - because Galaxy was doing 13, 14, and yes we saw even 15.7 knots of speed going down those waves. Those 2 reefs in the main sail were due to us being too scared seeing those high speeds.
From Mayaguana we sailed straight to Georgetown (200 miles?). From Georgetown we sailed straight across the Bahamas to West End in the Abacos where we are now. We will stay one night, check out of the country and hit the Gulf Stream in the morning.
See you in the US of A!
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