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November 15, 2007
Fajardo, Puerto Rico
I woke this morning to cool dampness, darkening clouds and the threat of heavy rain. I decided that today would be a good day to try taking public transportation to JFK. It worked out exceedingly well, taking the Long Island train to Jamaica, then the AirTrain to the terminal. I don’t think I spent $15. A long way short of the usual small fortune I fork out for a taxi.
It made plenty of sense since I was traveling lightly. With plans to sail in the tropics, I needed little more than a pair of shorts and a couple of t-shirts. And a hand-held GPS, and binoculars, and a compass, and…
As the flight was taxiing to the runway, I saw a sea of airplanes lining up. I counted 17 ahead of us. The dark skies had finally revealed their stock, and in true New York area fashion, the delays started to pile up. Despite the delays, I arrived in San Juan only an hour late, and Mike and Judy, owners of PorFin, were waiting patiently to pick me up. I learned later that the airport had reported the flight’s arrivals ten minutes early, and having concluded I had missed the flight, Mike and Judy were debating on heading out. I spotted Judy. We haven’t seen each other since Christmas 2005, but we recognized each other right away.
I collected by backpack from the carousel, and proceeded out the door to finally meet with my co-conspirators in a 400-mile journey across the Caribbean Sea to the island of Bonaire.
After a wonderful dinner, we pulled out the charts, and checked the weather. The weather suggested three potential problems. First, a cold front extending from Bermuda to just north of Puerto Rico, giving us no wind for the first 30ish miles of the journey. Second, a tropical wave (precursor to a tropical depression/ storm/ hurricane, although with a diminished probability this late in the season), would pass to the south of us as we progressed south. Third, another tropical wave would leave the islands of the Eastern Caribbean on Sunday. We decided that we would leave, favouring the lagging edge of the first wave over getting clipped by the leading edge of the second one. The cold front told us that we would likely motor the first part of the voyage.
With a planned speed of 5 knots, the 400-mile journey would take us roughly 80 hours or about three-and-a-half days. Preferring to arrive in daylight, a departure around midnight seemed logical, giving us some wiggle room to arrive ahead or behind schedule.
Leaving the dock in the dark didn’t seem like such a grand idea, so we decided to head to Isla Vieques to the southeast, drop anchor, have some dinner, a snooze, then slip quietly off the mooring in the middle of the night.
Posted by dave at November 15, 2007 02:01 PM