When we saw that Tropical Depression Irene was headed our way, we decided to bug to Culebra. We were still on one engine as I was unable to get the injector tubes connected, even though Fernando: The Boat Doctor had put the "new" injector pump and left the hook-up for ich. Irene was supposedly headed below St. Croix to our SE, then NE from there to the western tip of Puerto Rico and on to the W towards Hispaniola. Culebra is ENE of Fajardo and seemed to be a good place to hide out. Well as you know, the predicted course was just an intelligent guess and the ichtbay did her own thing and turned north faster than expected. Once we saw that we headed for the mangroves where our friend Jim Alimi on Zoya catamaran guided us to a shallow, narrow arm where we nosed in to a stand of mangrove roots. One small, shallow-draft sloop, Meander, beat us in and another sloop and a "stink pot" trawler, Mombo. , followed behind. We pulled the anchor into the root system and tied on five more lines to the larger trunks. From the beams and stern cleats we tied four more lines to more mangrove trunks. After lashing the sail to the boom and adding two more lines to augment the mail sheet, I spread the jib lines out to the mid-beam cleats to prevent the jib from moving. All of this took about three mosquito-less, dry hours in cooling breezes…man, what unbelievable luck. The only hard part was pumping the heads with the sulfur laden mangrove water. On reflection and further discussions with Jim, we should have put our no less than double the amount of lines we did: minimum of 20. Thankfully it turned out OK with the highest wind gusts in the early hours of Monday, 8/22/11, at 44 kph 67 feet above us. Down where we were snuggled in I doubt it got above 25 kph: a great spot with a hill to the E of us. Heavy rain filled but didn't swamp our new dingy. Dewey on Culebra 1.5 miles W of us saw sustained 67 kph winds, lost power, telephones, and water all due to poor planning and engineering: typical Puerto Rican as I'm told. Even the Post Office closed down for two days. What happened to "Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night…"? We came out to the lake in front of our canal unscathed at 3 pm (high tide) on Monday and anchored in the higher, cooling breezes, but still sheltered from the E and S winds and waves. On Tuesday we moved one bay closer to the entrance of Bahia Ensenada and across from Dakity where we normally hook up to a mooring ball. Still a little breezy and rough from Irene's bands: she's over Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas now! Huge! Monster! Hope she doesn't pull any more pranks and turn W again and hit FL.
One of the things we got done in the mangroves was to hook up the pressure and return lines to the injectors on the port engine. Hallelujah the engine started. BUT, the injectors leak so we can only maintain about 1,500 rpms. BUT, again, we can maneuver!!! What a wonderful feeling to be back in almost complete control.
We'll hang here under cloudy , wet skies 'till Thursday to hopefully pick up our mail and packages. Then back to SunBay in Fajardo to have The Boat Doctor remedy the leaking injectors, Papo install an injector on the outboard, and have the old injector pump rebuilt for a spare. So, come one, come all starting next Monday when we'll be in San Juan for a pickup: we gots da space.
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