To Puerto Rico

April 25th: It's been full speed ahead since April 14th. We stopped for a day in Les Saintes for a day of relaxing before heading up the coast in preparation for another 36 hour sail. We met up with our old friends on Aurora last night. It's been over a month since we've seen them and as usual, a pleasure. They had had a rough night the night before, so they went easy on the pina coladas, but that didn't stop Brad and I from celebrating. We shared stories and pictures over a delicious chicken fajita dinner- a few steps up from our usual uncooked pasta and peanut butter. Unfortunately we had to keep our schedule and said goodbye to leave at 5AM this morning for St. Croix.

We're trying to make it to Puerto Rico a couple days before May 3rd. I think today is around the 25th of April, but really, I have no way of knowing out here on the sea (that date was correct at the time it was written). On May 3rd Josh and Forest will arrive and help us bring the boat back to the States by around June 10th. It'll be a strenuous trip, but with 4 crew members it should be manageable with time to rest in remote Bahamian islands. The plan from there is to set the boat up with a broker and head back to Boston with a U-haul. We'd like to sell in Ft. Lauderdale, but will likely end up going to Clearwater. Which could work out well as our friends on Aries live along the way, as do relatives of Brad's.

April 30th: Brad and I have spent the last few days in Vieques, most famous for it's testing of nuclear weapons, but more importantly, it's abundant fishing grounds. The East coast has and continues to be a training ground for all sorts of United States military excercises, except on weekends. I believe they do not test radioactive weaponry anymore due to protests about rising cancer levels among residents. We pulled into the entirely vacant anchorage late on Saturday. In my opinon, it was the best anchorage of the entire trip. There was absolutely no one here. Kaleidoscope had its own bay to itself, well protected with reefs and beaches in all directions.

We decided to wet our spears after about a 2 month break. The fishing had the added excitement of requiring us to shoot around the unexploded bombs, torpedos and other military paraphernalia that littered the seafloor. In all, we caught 4 fish and a lobster- enough for lunch and dinner.

Monday morning we awoke at 6:30AM to the sounds of trucks beeping at us. The US Navy wanted to play with their guns and we had to leave.