Catamaran delivery from Puerto Rico to Charleston - Intracoastal Waterway Florida to Charleston

We sailed from Nassau in the morning, over the bank at night and crossed the Gulf stream in day time, all of it motoring...it was a real weather window. It was a relief to get to Lakeworth, after 1000+ seamiles, too much distance in too little time, really. But it was over..only 480 to Charleston. In the mean time, it was Heiner's birthday...we had a BBQ and a bottle of bubbly (in 2010, Heiner had also celebrated his birthday in Lake Worth).

There were thunderstorms while we were at anchored but nothing significant; we shopped for food and beer in order to make sure we would have enough goodies for the ICW.  Luckily, the ICW had been dredged in Florida...what a breeze compared to 2010! Matanzas inlet: 14 feet! Wow!!!

The number of huge and empty houses (occupied only certain weeks in the year) is growing in south Florida which gives the surroundings an eery stillness to places. There is still quite a bit of wildlife along the waterway (surprisingly): we saw several manatees, dolphins, and many shorebirds including roseate spoonbills!

 Upon arrival in St Augustine, we saw that there were 2 old ships docking near the Lion's bridge!
As we circled almost 20 minutes before passing the bridge, there was plenty of time for taking photos.

El GALEON is a replica of the vessels that traveled the coasts of Florida between the 16th and 18th centuries, transporting men, goods, culture and ideas, creating ties between America and Europe. Then named the San Pelayo, the 650-ton ship was one of the most powerful ships of its day. It was the most important of several ships that carried 800 colonists and supplies to St. Augustine, establishing the first permanent European settlement in the United States in 1565. The San Pelayo was an enormous vessel – it carried 77 crewmen, 18 gunners, and transported 317 soldiers and 26 families, as well as provisions and cargo (including cattle). Her armament was iron cannons and artillery. She was built in 1564 just outside the gated city of Aviles, Spain (Menenedez’s birthplace).

As for the much smaller ship, the NAO VICTORIA, it is a replica of the Spanish ship to successfully circumnavigate the world under the commands of the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. The Victoria was the sole ship of the 5 ships flotilla to finish its mission: 18 men out of 245 survived the 32,000 mile trip. Very impressive story.

 

That evening, we anchored in the ICW in a beautiful marsh, listening to the birds and dreaming about long past explorations. Of course, smoking a little Dominican cigar and drinking Bahamian rum made that evening especially enjoyable!

 

 

While the trip in the Georgia marshes and swamps would have been an interesting one, we decided to skip that part of the ICW in favor of a ca. 20 hours passage on the ocean; less stress anchoring with ICW newbies, especially in tight quarters, and a faster return home! We heard from other cruisers that the ICW has not been dredged in Georgia and that many boats must wait a few hours for the tide to rise before attempting a passage. As our catamaran drew 4 ft draft, it proved to be easier to do the outside run!

And so, we left St John's river in the morning for an early arrival in Charleston, south Carolina next day.  The was lots of traffic at sea during the night around Savannah and our AIS system (one can see the name and details of ships on a radar type screen) made the trip much less stressful.

The weather was calm upon entering Charleston harbour. Fort Sumter greeted us...

 

It felt good to be in this favorite city of ours! And, finally at destination, we were going to have time to go on land and explore!

 

Good bye Charleston!

 

And so ended this adventure after 1500 nautical miles!

 

 

 

Catamaran delivery from Puerto Rico to Charleston - Bahamas

 

Next step after Dominican Republic was Bahamas. We managed to listen to Chris Parker at 6h30 in the morning; Heiner was the navigator and was very diligent in his duties, making sure that we did not run into bad weather during our passages. This one was to bring us from Luperon, passing Turks and Caicos, Mayaguana, Rum Cay to finally stop at Conception Island.  We had good wind, and by the time we arrived at Conception, it was blowing 25 knots. This black-headed gull took shelter from the wind by flying close to our boat...

The blue waters of Bahamas came to reality with sunrise and we had no problem getting to Conception island and anchoring in the lee of the island. Stunning colours, white beach, salty air, Conception was as beautiful a we remembered it.

 

 One of the thrills at Conception is to get to the inner river crossing the island by dinghy. It is truly an amazing scenery. We entered at low tide, and Heiner pulled the dinghy into deeper water as the 20hp Yamaha was too deep in the water.









During our 2010 visit here, we saw several sharks and barracudas crisscrossing the shallow waters of the river and some turtles.  This time, the (hawk bills) turtles were in majority and we sighted only one barracuda and one shark during the whole morning!






Next stop in the Bahamas was in the Exhumas, entering at Conch Cut Cay.  Oh, the Bahamas they are changing...a large luxury resort on one of the (private) isdland had very noisy generators that polluted our serenity...private planes and helicopters delivering the "rich and beautiful" to their yacht and houses.  And as we continued our way up the Exumas chain, an increasing number of mega yachts appeared in the anchorages.  Staniel Cay has docks for these yachts now...luckily, the little cruisers bar is still there.  We had a Kalik beer, for memories sake...a fish cleaning station attracted the wild life of the area...nurse sharks and rays.

 And of course, the pigs were there...in 2010, there was one, large one, swimming to the dinghys; it was quite an attraction. Now, there are 3 adults and 5 piglets..all well fed by tourists! Mega yachts demand mega pigs, I guess!!! We did not take pictures but other cruisers did...check out this fun link!!!http://www.thefeaturedcreature.com/2011/02/incredible-swimming-pigs-photos.html

And, that was it for the Exumas...good that we had visited these islands extensively in our previous cruises because this time, there was no time to really do it...

Next step was Nassau; sailing over the yellow bank was easy, as there was a very light breeze which pushed the catamaran gently over the crystalline waters. Anchoring in Nassau was easy: very few boats in the anchorage, zero wind, perfect conditions for Bahamas beginners (our friends).  In Nassau, we all went ashore to Dunkin Donuts for Internet purposes and buying rum. Heiner and I went for a short dinghy ride to the Atlantis complex remembering our 2010 visit...

 

Next morning we left for another 30+ hours passage to Florida....

 
 
 
 

 

Catamaran delivery from Puerto Rico to Charleston - Dominican republic

Leaving Boquerón in the morning, we began our first 2 days+ passage from Puerto Rico to Luperon, Dominican Republic.  When we did this very same trip in 2010 with our own sailboat. the crossing of the Mona passage had been very smooth. Well, this time, the seas were bumpy and we got acquainted with catamaran sailing in bumpy seas..wow! as if cannon balls were hitting the hulls and the bridge at each and every wave...it took sometime to get used to it, a bit.
 (love mono hulls!  So much smoother!)


The passage went well, with good winds (20knots +) to push us at a very good speed towards our destination.  We did not want to enter the bay of Luperon in darkness so we drastically diminish the sails in order to diminish our speed.

Once more, we were stunned - and so were our friends -  by the beauty of the Luperon anchorage.

 

Luperon had changed since our last visit in 2010. For one, the streets were all paved (the process started in 2010, in the course of an election!!) and now, horse riders took on the street, a rare occurrence, we were told!

 

 

Another celebration took place during our short stay, namely the fiesta of the Quinceanera, a typical tradition in latino countries.  Quinceanera "is the celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday in parts of Latin America and elsewhere in communities of people from Latin America. This birthday is celebrated differently from any other as it marks the transition from childhood to youngwomanhood.^[1] The celebration, however, varies significantly across countries, with celebrations in some countries taking on, for example, more religious overtones than in others."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincea%C3%B1eraThe celebration here was for the daughter of the owners of the restaurant De France, main street Luperon. The people of Luperon were as generous and warm as we had them in our memories.

 

 

 

Catamaran delivery from Puerto Rico to Charleston - Puerto Rico

It all started with a phone call from Sally on a cold and gray April day...would we like to deliver a boat from Puerto Rico to the US??????????? A large catamaran similar to the one they owned back in 2008...It sounded great fun and so the adventure begun.

We departed from Syracuse, NY (thank you so much Lindsay and Karen for having brought us there) and landed on May 4th in San Juan Puerto Rico. Oh the wonderful feeling of arriving in the Caribbean, the warmth, the gentle breeze and the drink on the deck. N o t h i n g beats that feeling. Nothing.

We spent a couple of days in the Puerto del Rey marina of Fajardo to provision and make a couple of repairs and adjustment before undertaking the first passage to the island of Vieques.  Sally and Arnie wanted an easy going short passage to reacquaint themselves with the boat (it had been 4 years since they sailed) and we hoped to see the bioluminescent bay of Vieques...in 2010, we had not seen anything! Well, although all the conditions seemed right this time, no bioluminescence. Nada. Oh well...

We sailed the south shore of Puerto Rico, stopping in Las Salinas (nice produce market) and in Boquerón, which was very very quiet on that Monday night..but we managed to get a taste of their wonderful mangrove oysters and have a nice chat with friendly Puerto Ricans.

Roma...final days of our voyage.

We were looking forward to be back in Roma..we had enjoyed our first visit so much. Once again, our hotel was in the Prati area, very close to the Vatican. We were at Casa Linnea on via Plinio where we enjoyed a large and sunny room, with nice amenities AND shared a kitchen with another younger couple (from Greece).

 After the grunginess of Naples, Roma felt like a breath of fresh air! Blooming trees everywhere, and this light so typical for the Eternal City...we had no special agenda except than to revisit our favorite places that we liked and to discover new ones! There were tons of tourists, more than at the time of our visit in July 2011!

As can be seen here, we had to change our strategy to re-visit the Saint Peter Basilica...early mornings the line-ups were too long but at the end of the afternoon, we were able to get in easily!!!

 

We love walking over the Ponte Cavour or Ponte Umberto over the river and admire the views...

 

 

 

 

 

 

We returned to piazza Navona, and to the Pantheon...we spent much more time in this area than during our 2011 visit.  We discovered a wonderful café La Tazza d'Oro with SUBLIME coffee and an espresso granite with panna (cream) that was out of this world. What a wonderful place...no need to say that we went back every day!

Just around the corner of the Pantheon, on Piazza della Minerva, is the wonderful gothic church (the only gothic style church in Rome built in the VIII century) Santa Maria sopra Minerva with paintings of Michelangelo, Bernini and Filippino Lippi.





But there was more to this church than its blue nave...during the Inquisition, its cloister was the site where Galileo Galilei was trialed for having discovered that the earth was indeed turning...and it is in this church that the tombs of the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII can be found. After having read so much about the Medici, I felt compelled to see this site.

 

 

On the Piazza in front of the church is the "petite" Egyptian obelisk that Bernini perched on an elephant! There were two obelisks, erected in front of the temple of Neis at Sais (today Sael-Hagar, Egypt). The other obelisk is also in Italy, in Urbino on the Piazza of the Renaissance. Science and strength are combined in this sculpture of Bernini, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII in 1667.

Later in the afternoon, we meandered around a small island in the Tiber and to the oldest bridge of Rome. Ponte Fabricio is still used everyday by thousands of tourists and locals. It connects the Jewish ghetto with the Isola Tiberina island; this island was once the location of an ancient temple consecrated to the god of medicine Aesculapius; since then, it has been the site of hospitals.
Guarded by two marble pillars with two-faced Janus heads, the bridge is a symbol of transitions and beginnings, a place from where you can see the future and the past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiber_Island

 

 

 

 

 
 

The first Jews who arrived in Rome in 63BC were slaves brought back by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompei) after taking Jerusalem. There was no persecution of the Jewish community until 1556 when Pope Paul IV forced it to restrict the living quarters of its members to the current ghetto area, which was then surrounded by walls and with a gate to control its inhabitants.

 

 

The wall started from Ponte Fabriccio reaching the Portico d'Ottavia; from there it run along today's Via del Portico d'Ottavia (not including the ancient fish market; at Piazza Giudea (which was cut in two) it bent again running along Vicolo Cenci (today Via del Progresso) until it reached the Tiber again. The total area amounted to three hectares, where at the time of Sixtus V roughly 3,500 inhabitants were living in inhuman conditions (Jews were very limited with regard to the occupations and jobs they could hold).

 

 

  In 1943, the Nazi forces rounded up more than 1,000 Jews from Rome's ghetto and nearby neighborhoods, leaving these quarters empty...Today, it is an area full of life, with a large synagogue and it is a major touristic attraction, especially for Jews around the world. When in this area, one cannot miss the small but excellent bakery where we bought great tasting pastries...mind you, at 3 euro each, they had better be good!!!

 The Fountains of the Turtles was commissioned by a private person, Muzio Mattei.  While Mattei and his family were Roman Catholic, they lived in the part of Rome which became the Roman Ghetto.  When the pope decided to build a wall around the Ghetto in 1555 and imprison the Jewish population, Mattei was given a key to the gate!

Sunday in Rome...what is one to do????

Lots...we remembered fondly a sunday in New York City when we had spent almost half a day in Central Park...so, why not doing the same, here in Rome? First, we went to Piazza del Popolo where a group of Romans played traditional tunes on accordion...(see youtube video at the end of this blog's section).

We then went to the piazza di Spagna that we had missed in 2011...oh la la...the crowd! Undeterred, we also had lunch near the beautiful fountain of Trevi, to finally end at the Villa Borghese and its magnificent gardens.

 We joined the crowd!!!!!!!!!!

We did so much in 4 days...it was fun to return to Antique roman sites but we were happy to have made the visits in 2011 as the crowds were immense.... we spent more time in Travestere and in our area around the Vatican, even venturing to Piazza Massini to meet the cousin of our Chinese friend who has been living in Rome for 7 years now and kindly agreed to meet us at the Bar Antonini for coffee and mignons (delicious miniature pastries, the specialty of the place...). http://www.antoniniroma.it/


 

Voilà, the end of our Roman odyssey and of our 40th anniversary Italian celebration. Unforgettable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-xlUaW3OAY