More moorings…yes, please!

After our awesome week-long stay in Culebra, it was a nice little change of pace to disconnect from everything and spend a few days off the grid, enjoying only what nature has to offer.

We did just that by making a stop over in pretty little Culebrita!

Following our fab stay in Culebra, we weighed anchor late one Thursday afternoon and made the seriously quick 3-mile motor sail over to Isla Culebrita. Still technically part of Puerto Rico and the so-called Spanish Virgin Islands, Culebrita is just the uninhabited kid sister island directly next door to Culebra.

And oh so pretty!

^^hello Culebrita!^^

We initially attempted to sail around to the north coast of Culebrita and tuck ourselves into the northern Culebrita beach anchorage, but after hilariously surfing some pretty intimidating waves coming through the reef on our way in, we opted for the smarter and, I’m sure, much safer option at the time, which was to turn our little butts around and head back to the much calmer spot on the southwest coast.

We might’ve wasted a good hour or so attempting that northern destination, but were much much happier when we ended up tucked along the calmer coast.

After skirting back around to the southern end of the island, we picked up the one open mooring ball (there are only two on that side) next to our friend Texas Larry’s Endeavour 32. Not having to mess with our anchor and grabbing a mooring instead is oftentimes a pretty nice option. Not always, but there are plenty of times and reasons why we would choose a mooring over dropping anchor. Not that we have any issues against anchoring, but seriously what’s easier…dropping 100+ feet of heavy chain, getting out the bridle and hooking it all on/setting it up, setting the anchor with the boat, diving the anchor to make sure it’s properly in, and then having to deal with weighing anchor and pulling all that crap back up and off when you’re ready to leave…OR…looping a little line through a hole, cleating it off, and simply un-cleating that line when you’re ready to leave. Hmmm…I think the obvious answer here is the latter, wouldn’t you agree?

^^the only two sailboats around for miles and they’re both Endeavours!^^

Although, let’s be honest, the one remaining ball we grabbed in Culebrita was in a rather desperate looking state of affairs. We did in fact consider anchoring instead. The mooring was seriously on it’s way out and probably one of the worst ones we’ve seen to date. With this particular crummy mooring ball in play, we decided to try looping our two lines through separate spots on the mooring so as to hedge our bets if one area were to fail on us overnight. We also made sure to dive and check the status of the underlying mooring, which happened to look just fine.

^^see what I mean about crappy condition? Those painters are all frayed and on their way out^^

Luckily, our mooring held without any problems for two solid nights in Culebrita where we spent our days scoping out all the small reefs in our anchorage and snorkeling with tons of colorful fish.

^^a few GoPro shots of our snorkel party.^^

We also spent one morning hiking up to the old Culebrita lighthouse for a birds’ eye view of the surrounding islands. After making miles along both the Dominican and Puerto Rican coastlines, it’s so freaking awesome now to be able to see your next destination right from where you stand. You can easily see the USVI from both Culebra and Culebrita! And that’ll basically be the case as we head down island from here.

^^the crumbling yet super gorgeous lighthouse in Culebrita!^^

^^with insane vistas of the surrounding islands!^^

^^we thought this little guy might be a baby iguana by the looks of his tail, but who knows he could just be a plain old everyday lizard that we see a million of on the regular back in Florida.^^

^^who knew cacti were so prevalent in the Caribbean? Seriously, hermit crabs + cacti. Everywhere!^^

And that was pretty little Culebrita. We came, we saw, we conquered another free mooring ball. ;))

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