Tuesday 2 Apr, SVI day 9, Vieques: Move to anchor next to Esperanza town.
After our late night of excitement in the bio-luminescent world of Mosquito Bay, we wake to bigger swell pitching us about. But despite the wind now firmly on our port beam, the little stern anchor held in all night, keeping Cloudy Bay head to the swell.
We try to fly the drone from the boat to capture our position anchored in the entrance of Mosquito Bay, but it decides it needs its IMU calibrating. With experience we now know this simply means the boat is moving too much for the drone’s IMU gyros to stabilize. So we need to get ashore to take off.
The beach nearby has waves crashing onto it so that’s a no-go. We therefore opt for a tiny beach in between the mangroves. After calibrating it on an old kitchen chopping board, so that it doesn’t get sandy, we make the flight and capture the scene nicely.
Then we lift the stern anchor using the dinghy, raise the dinghy on the davits and raise the main anchor. See how difficult going to work is on Cloudy Bay?! We motor out the anchorage into pretty big swell. The trades are firmly back this morning, blowing 15-20 kts and raising the swell.
We don’t have far to go, just around the headland into Sun Bay. And what a lovely bay it is. Just north of the town of Esperanza, it has lovely palm trees on the beach and turquoise water. We could anchor here very comfortably but it’s just too far to get to the town.
So we head out the bay deciding that we will come back here for one final beach day before heading to Puerto Rico. We motor around the west side of the little island which provides some sort of shelter and anchor next to several other yachts about 100m from the town. Swell is coming in here a bit but not excessively. Anyway, no choice if we want to go into the town.
The little town of Esperanza is really cute. Not much to speak of on the inland streets, just houses. But the coastal street has a nicely built promenade along the water’s edge and lots of good looking bars and restaurants behind. It has a really nice feel. We could be in a coastal village in Spain or Greece here. There are also several places offering tours of “Bio Bay”. So the bio-luminescence is actually hot on the tourist route after all. And we are glad we saw it alone in our dinghy.
After 4 days of spending absolutely zero, we succumb to the temptation to have lunch out today. We settle in Banana restaurant and the food is really good, and less expensive than the BVI or USI.
We have a few hours of rest back on board then ashore again to task the evening scene. The colourful bars and restaurants are all full now. Clearly a popular evening place. There are also several groups of people standing around waiting for something – then we realize, they are all waiting to be picked up for the Bio Bay kayak tour. We inquire the price they paid: $54 per head. Clearly the luminescence makes good business. But we are glad to know they do it in an environmentally friendly way, quietly in groups of kayaks.
We try out two bars for drinks, Lazy Jack and Duffy. We quickly rename the first as Ruffy, because it’s rather rough compared to Duffy. By 10pm everything seems to be closing down. This maybe a Spanish speaking island but the scene is very American. Meaning they all go to bed early! In Spain they don’t even go out to the bars before 10pm!
On this note we are in bed reasonably early too. Tomorrow we will rent a scooter to take a tour of Vieques island.