2024-02-18 A nice week in an beautiful anchorage

We decided to leave Ensenada Honda in Culebra on Monday - we wanted to make water, and Dean wanted to clean the bottom of the boat, so we motored the 4.5 miles over to Bahia de Almodover.

There were a couple of other sailboats there, but the water was clean, and it has a beautiful view, as it is protected from the Caribbean sea by a reef, so you are anchored and looking out at the sea, with land behind you.

The view from the boat

I worked on finishing the salon cushions and thank goodness, got the backrests done before running out of thread.  

Cushions - done for now.

Learned a lot on this project, and still want to redo one cushion and sew a bolster backrest for the long one, but the cushions are comfortable, and will stay cleaner than the old ones - so a success.

Dean got in the water and scrubbed the bottom.  He had some friends help him out.

These little fish hiding in the small gap between the hull and top of the rudder - about a 1.5" gap

We have got a lot of growth on the hull, we cleaned it a month ago, but this 83 degree water and lots of sun makes the stuff grow fast.

Dean's fishy friends were not scared and swam right up to him.

With the bottom clean and the cushions done for now, we decided to do some fun stuff, and headed over to the island of Culebrita to do some snorkeling.  We had heard that the NW corner had some good reefs, so took the dink the 2 miles over to check it out.   Unfortunately, there was a lot of reef damage from the hurricanes.

Large reef, but lots of white and dead

Some good signs of growth and recovery

Lots of this undamaged fire coral, which is more resilient to hurricanes and bleaching than other corals

The island of Culebrita is quite pretty, but we did not choose to hike to the top this time.

Pretty beach on Culebrita, looking towards Culebra

Kris went for a nice kayak trip around the anchorage and into the mangroves near land.   There were hundreds of upside down jellyfish in the mangroves

They may look like weird plants, but these are upside down jellyfish

They were so thick in some spots they completely covered the bottom

We had the anchorage mostly to ourselves for the week, with two days of being completely alone - but it could not last.  On Friday, 7 powerboats came in and anchored.  They were not loud, but were a bit close to us.  On Saturday morning, more started coming, and we realized we were in the prime spot for the locals weekend getaway, and it was a three day holiday weekend.

Three boats rafted up in front of us.

We decided it was time to move again so Saturday we headed back to the large anchorage of Culebra - Ensenada Honda.    Shortly after lunch we got a text message from our friends Ed and Cathy on What If- who are currently in the Bahamas.  They said to look towards land - their son and family had rented a house for the weekend to get away and were nearby.   Turns out we were quite close, so we launched the dink, and went to say hello.

Ed and Cathy's son with his wife and children - and us.

We had a good but short visit with them - as they are on holiday weekend, and had lots of activities planned, we did not want to slow them up.

We will stay here a couple of days - and then look for the next place to go.