Puerto Rico was a special stop.

It did help that our first anchorage was an incredible little island called “Culebrita”. We explored the island and it’s different beaches, hiked to the light house and had lots of snorkel sessions!

From there, we planned one of our highlight experiences in the Caribbean - paddling through the “Bio Bay” in Vieques Island. We got lucky with the moon as you don’t want the full moons light, but it was also cloudy, which helped a lot! This meant we would have a high chance of experiencing the bay due to the darkness. We’d read about how hard it was to capture the bio lum on camera and we managed to slightly change the camera settings to get a glimpse of it, but it’s one of those things that you will have to go experience for yourself to truly understand!

We had to keep moving so the next day we hopped over to Salinas, as it was a great “in between” stop to rest and food provision, before our big sail over to the Dominican Republic. On the way to the west coast of PR, we decided to explore a little island called “Isla Caja de Muertos” for a quick swim and refresh then headed to Playa Caña Gorda for the night. Caña Gorda was a great anchorage, nice and calm, and had a lovely hotel with an ocean trampoline - we were very happy with to takeaway some pizzas and pina coladas to catch the sunset on the boat!

Our last stop in PR was Boqueron - It was quite a busy anchorage when we arrived as it’s either a common stop for sailors leaving to or arriving from the Dominican Republic. The town was quite cute and although it was raining, we managed to squeeze in a beach day and a walk around the town before getting some good shut eye for our passage to the DR!

Mona Island, located between PR and the DR, is a busy shipping route and known notoriously for being a challenging passage given the choppy seas, strong currents, and erratic weather conditions! The conditions are rarely great for a stop over at Mona but it does happen- and we were lucky enough to catch it! We managed to anchor for a quick swim in the most incredible crystal clear waters and were refreshed to continue our overnight passage to the DR!