OK everybody is giving me a hard time because I left ya'll hanging as of the the last posting. As I said we are in Puerto Rico and leaving the D.R. was a great sail over except until 0700 hrs. That's when I went down below for bacon & eggs. Good breakfast. Just as I was finishing Karen yelled at me that the water was getting shallow, I ran up top and before I could slow the boat down we were on a hard rock reef. Now I draw 6' 6" of water and the depth sounder said I was in 3'. Guess what that ain't enough. I called May Day and the San Juan Coast Guard came on and ask what the problem was I explained and ask for a commercial towing co. to assist. After about 6 hours wait and a whole bunch of pounding they showed up and started appraising the crime scene.I say crime scene because of the reef damage, so far nothing has been said but who knows. Anyway about 2 hours later we are off the reef and on our way to the shipyard. Oh I forgot and $ 6000.00 latter. Well a day later they pulled us out of water to see what damage we had. When the boat cleared the water everybody that had anything to do with the salvage was there and the all made the sign of the cross and said gracious Dios. No one could believe that a boat could that kind of a pounding and that kind of a procedure getting it off of a reef and it still had a keel under it. Well I going to show y'all the photos and you can judge yourself. We are having a new rudder made and a new bottom job preformed and that it. I know I forgot to mention that the reason we went on the reef was because the chain broke on the steering and when that happened the Auto Pilot also bent sideways and caused all this but that's another story for later,MAYBE. So as you can see there is no damage to the bottom and we will be back in the water Monday,but I will be in Brazil. That's right no more on the blog until I get back.See y'all down the road.
Mike & Karen,
Oh yeah Puerto Rico is great.