We decided to pull up stakes early and wander over to Point Tamarindo Grande [on Culebra] to see about some great snorkeling (National Geographic quality) the ladies had read about in the guide book. Once securely on a ball off the point (they are everywhere!) we read the instruction that said something like "Swim out to the marker in the channel and dive in 20-60 feet of water." Peering at the chart and back-and-forth to our situation at hand we couldn't make heads or tails of it. NO WAY were we going to swim way out into the channel where boats were irregularly blasting through. After a brief caucus, some back-of-the-envelop fuel calculations and a peek at the weather (crappy-ish today, but promising to be better) we decided to head to Marina Del Ray on Puerto Rico's east coast. Rational was that we knew we'd have enough water and fuel if we topped off today, and might not make it all the way through 9 days if we didn't. It's a direct shot down-wind so we slipped our mooring, fired up the mains, popped the sails and motorsailed down to Del Ray, about 17 nautical miles.

The first thing that strikes you about Del Ray is that the place is absolutely huge! With iffy VHF (loose connector in the hand-set that we seated better later) we called them on the cell-phone and they gave us instructions to find the fuel dock. It's on the far side (south) of the Marina and marked by a big red Texaco sign. Easy to find and to tie up. We took on 20 gallons of Diesel and an unknown amount of water (remembering to set the water-tank cross-over back to both!) They even had ice and a cute little case of 8.5 Oz Heineken's that jumped on board before we could stop it.

After some thrashing to and fro we decided to take a slip. So we settled into slip 1403, if memory serves, which is located about a half-mile out the prodigious dock from the Marina Office. You could easily drink two 8.5 ounce Heinekens on the walk from pier 14 to shore. We later learned that they will send a golf cart out to get you if you give them a call... free of charge.

Upon arrival at the Marina Office we found that they really like CYOA, since CYOA puts all of their boats on the hard here during hurricane season. So they gave us a special rate (about 1.80/foot if I remember right), even though we take up a lot of room with that 21-foot beam. Walking around the beautiful buildings at Del Ray were dozens of cats of all ages. Barb and I loved it because we were missing our four kitties back home and most of them were very friendly. There's a nice marine supply store where I bought a split-ring to repair a safety line, and a small market that sold solidly frozen ice-cream that we all devoured greedily. Simple pleasures!

We knocked around the shore side of the marina for an hour or so. It was very quiet - clearly low season. The more energetic crew decided to go for a walk on the highway, while the Admiral and I decided to sit in the bar overlooking the marina and watch the news on the wide-screen while supping some cold-ones.

After an hour we spied our crew returning and I knocked on the (unknown to me) one-way glass to get their attention. They heard us but could not see us, and there were puzzled faces all around.

We were soon reunited and got to hear the harrowing story about a road-killed 5-foot iguana "His head flew right off!!!" There was much 'eawwwww-ing' and 'gross-ing' by the girls in the retelling of the event. Woody was sad that he'd just stopped video-taping seconds before the impact. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />

So back to the boat we went, to wonderful shore power and AC to quaff Heineken's and painkillers with our new-found ice.

Here's a picture of our youngest crew member, a friendly kitty, and our catamaran SarahSue behind.

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Here's a shot of the beautiful fountain in the circle at the head of the dock.

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Much of the crew of SarahSue, dock and opulent looking bath house mid-pier at Del Ray.

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