It felt so good to get back out to anchor and spend time in the water again. The kids are at an awesome age for going off and exploring on their own. Especially when we are anchored close to shore in a place that we won’t see another person for days. The west end anchorage on Vieques is just a short hop from Puerto Rico’s east end marinas, but for some reason nobody comes here, preferring instead the crowds of other less pretty islands, I guess.

After a couple of nice days a system moved in to our south, bringing with it a ton of rain, as it slowly built up into yet another Central American bound hurricane. Combine the rain with constantly swimming kids and our hurricane was a massive pile of wet clothes and towels that would never dry.

I lost track of how many times the dinghies needed to be bailed out.

The kids spent 72 hours in dinghy sailing classes over the summer, and even though they were good sailors before, the difference now is really remarkable. It’s fun to see how intuitively they move about the boat and make it go in any conditions.

She knows, she knows, get the feet together.

Nothing better than swimming in the ocean during a hard rain.

After a few days of black and white we flipped back to color. Once up in the air you get a good idea of why the bugs were horrible on the beach. Fortunately, they never reached the boat.

Attempting to dry out a bit.

We spent a few days on Vieques’ west end before moving around the corner to the small town of Esperanza, out of the two essentials of dinghy gas and wheat bread.

Free DNR moorings (I think). Probably wouldn’t have trusted these if it wasn’t so calm and protected inside this bay, but we could have probably tied a can of beans to a string and been okay for a couple of nights here.