2024-01-13 Gilligan's Island and Caja de Muertos (Coffin Island)

We had a relatively calm motor trip to the unnamed bay formed by Isla Ballena and Gilligan's Island.  No, not the real Gilligan's Island of TV fame, no professor, skipper, the movie star or anyone else.  It was nicknamed Gilligan's island in the 1970's by some folks from Philadelphia that just moved to Puerto Rico.   

Still the bay provided a calm anchorage, and we hung out there for four and a half days.   The bay is just east of Punta Ballena (Whale point), and is surrounded by mangroves, with a few upscale homes on the hillsides.  There is no town, but there is a resort a little further west.   

Took a trip up a small mangrove inlet and walked on the Punta Ballena beach.

Dink parked at end of mangrove inlet

Punta Ballena beach

Trail running next to beach

Some of the beach had lots of driftwood on it.

Went over and checked out Gilligan's Island.   When here in 2013 there were regular tourist boats that picked up people on the mainland and took them to the island, where services were set up for swimming an relaxing on the beach.  Due to the earthquake of 2020 and hurricanes, the beach is pretty much gone, the dock destroyed, and no more regular tourists. 

Some of the leftovers on Gilligan's Island

This is the biggest beach left on the island

Mangrove lined inlet at Gilligan's Island

We had been the only boat in the anchorage for the last 3 days, but on Wednesday a French boat arrived, and on Thursday two more boats.    

On Thursday we went into the the near the resort, where there was a restaurant called San Jacinto that used to do more business when the tourist ferry to Gilligan's was operating, but now is much reduced.  Out of the menu of 50 or more items, they only had about 10 items to choose from.  So Empanadillas were the lunch of choice.    Kris got lobster and Dean picked shark.  They were not that great - so glad we got potato wedges to eat with.

San Jacinto restaurant

Empanadas - called Empanadillas in Puerto Rico

Early Friday morning we headed out at 5:30 a.m. to motor east before the winds picked up.  We did not make it, and winds came earlier than normal, but it was fine - went 21 miles in 5 hours on one engine, doing around 4.5 knots.  Choppy head on waves, but going slow was fine, as we took very few waves onboard.   

Kris had meant to look at the port engine while at the anchorage as she had seen a small amount of coolant in the engine bilge, but forgot.  So after anchors up, she checked on it, and happened to touch the pipe we had put in place for early coolant draining.  The pipe moved - which it should not have, and gave Kris a nice spray of warm coolant to the face.  Luckily the engine had not been on long at all, so coolant only warm, and leak of coolant minimal.     This is when having two engines is great.  We shut off port and started the starboard engine and finished the trip.

Kris did spend about 15 minutes in the semi-warm engine compartment draining all the engine coolant so it would not leak into the bilge while we bounced around in head on seas, which was not fun, but that is part of boating.

We made it to our next stop at Isla Caja de Muertos (Coffin Island) before noon, and relaxed and had lunch, then started working on the engine.   A brass pipe nipple had cracked where it went into a reducer fitting where the engine coolant drain was.  At the end of the nipple was a bronze valve to use to drain the coolant.  In retrospect, a bad design of ours (hate to admit that), and the heavy bronze valve at the end of the nipple put too much stress on the joint when the engine was vibrating.   

The broken nipple, you can see it broke right where it entered the reducer bushing.

We tried to get the broken nipple out of the reducer, but no luck, so decided that we will just use one engine for the next trip when we head to Salinas, and will rent a car there to go pick up needed parts for repair.

Isla Caja de Muertos is about 8 miles off the south shore of Ponce - Puerto Rico's largest city on the south coast.  It is a nature preserve, and was maintained by the department of natural and environmental resources until the earthquakes of 2020 did too much damage and made the buildings unsafe.  There used to be a ferry to bring people out, but no longer, although still a popular spot of weekends for locals to come and hang out at the beach.   There is a 1 mile one way trail you can take to the top of the hill where there is an old lighthouse.  We took the trail, and wandered around the deserted and partially destroyed buildings.  The trail is no longer maintained, and was a bit rough.

Small but nice beach on NW corner, where we anchored

Charm, all alone at the anchorage

Some of the old structures, and solar panel array

Quite the buildings for tourism at one time

Inside the buildings, lots of leftover rubble

Nice paved and covered walkways and small cabanas with tables - no longer useable

This sign posted everywhere  " Do not pass - Danger zone - Area affected by earthquakes"

Inside main building

Dock, now unsafe to use

Part of trail to lighthouse

Many of these large cacti along the trail, and partially in the trail

Cacti must be at least 15' tall

Could not figure out this signs meaning.  Used to be more trails, so think it was where two trails joined and made a loop.  Could not find other trail, area too overgrown.

Old lighthouse

View from base of lighthouse.   Charm looks like a small dot 

We left for our walk at 9:00 am on Saturday morning.  By the time we got back, 4 more boats and couple of jet skis had arrived.   Boats came and went all day.  If you want solitude, then don't come here on a weekend.

After the walk, we got in the 83 degree F water, and scrubbed the hull.  Dean did not wear a wetsuit, but Kris did.   Saw two very large fish swim by under the boat while we were scrubbing, probably attracted to the little shrimp we were dislodging, and our thrashing in the water.  We think they were Tarpon.

Hard to see in the cloudy water, but they are about 20' away and are about 3' long.

After scrubbing the hull we relaxed and read while watching the activities on the other boats.

We did our good deed for the week, and did rescue three young adults in a dinghy who had run out of gas while out playing in the water.  They were trying to row against the wind back to shore.  They tried to get the attention of the parents, but they were on the stern of their large motorboat with music and drinks and had not noticed the kids situation.  The kids were never in danger, and the parents would have noticed soon, but Dean saw them and thought we should be kind and go help, which we did.

Early tomorrow we will head to Salinas, where we will most likely be for a while.