Culebra, Spanish Virgin Islands

       We checked out of St.Martin ( French side) the morning of Thursday, April 9th. Seeing as this is a French country, check out was an easy one stop affair. Back to the boat to prep for our afternoon departure to Culebra, Spanish Virgin Islands. This was an overnight passage for us, we took three hour shifts between 7pm and 7am which worked quite well. As seems to be the case recently, we ended up motor sailing as the winds were light for most of the night. A steady stream of brightly lit cruise ships passed us during the night, mostly all heading to different ports in Florida, ( we have a system on board  called AIS which allows us look up the speed, direction, bearing, destination etc of identified boats). The wind did pick up early morning and so sails went up and engines were turned off, blessed relief ! Nothing beats floating along in peace and quiet, it really is quite lovely.

 We sailed right on by the BVI's , what a shame as we love that area, but we are feeling a bit time pressured ( hurricane season approaches), hopefully we will cruise the BVI's next season.  So, on to Ensenada Honda, Culebra. Ensenada Honda is a large deep bay with many different anchorages. We dropped anchor deep in the bay by the small town of Dewey. We had a ten minute, hot walk into the small airport to check in with customs. Culebra falls under the jurisdiction of Puerto Rico which in turn falls under the jurisdiction of the USA. Needless to say, the check in process took much longer, involving phone calls and multiple forms, than for example Martinique where  a simple form was filled out online in the local street cafe, printed and signed by the barista, passports not required!

Approaching Ensenada Honda

Looks can be deceiving! Inside is an amazingly well stocked grocery store.

Dingy dock and bridge, Dewey

Flamenco Beach, really beautiful

Left overs from US Navy bombing practise

Zoni Beach

Our means of transportation

       We had a great day touring the 7 mile long by 3 mile wide Island, visiting many of it's beautiful beaches. Some of the hills were quite steep but the golf cart managed them just fine.
        Next port of call...... Turks and Caicos.