Hey p,
I don't know how you're getting to Vieques, but if you're flying,
chances are you'll have to write off the windsurfing part of your
holiday. The small planes that fly into Vieques won't carry gear and
there is no place that I'm aware of that will rent gear on the small
island.
If you're renting a car in the big island and taking the ferry over,
then that's another story. You can rent at Velauno and take your gear
over on the ferry.
As far as places to windsurf, I've never been to the ex-Navy beaches
so I cannot comment on these. I have been to Green Beach (also known
as Punta Arenas) and Sun Bay, the local public beach, next to
Esperanza (the second largest town in Vieques).
Green beach sits on the northwest corner of the island so on the
northerly facing section of the beach you can get some sideshore winds
from the east or east-northeast trades that regularly blow through the
area. There are no reefs here; it is pretty much open ocean, so while
you might get some nice swells and chop for b&j sailing, there will be
no real wave sailing.
Sun Bay sits on the southern side of the island, pretty much sheltered
from the prevailing tradewinds, so forget about windsurfing there.
Looking at the map, there is a nice ex-Navy beach on the north east of
Vieques that looks promising locationwise, but I've never been there
so it is up to you to experiment with it.
Vieques is beautiful and fairly unspoiled, so I'm sure you'll enjoy
it, but if it is windsurfing you are after try stopping in San Juan
for a day or two. Besides the history, great food and partying, you
will enjoy Punta las Marias (Ocean Park) for windsurfing. Frank
Weston wrote a great message detailing his stay here (which I'm sure
you can find using a Google search) so I won't get into details other
than saying that if you're coming this far, it is worth it to come
over to the big island while you're at it.
There are also many other places on the main island of Puerto Rico to
enjoy windsurfing. Check out http://www.windsurfingpr.com/main.htm
for more info on places to surf (left side menus don't work on Safari,
for some reason. IE and Netscape seem to work fine, tho').
Finally, one small comment regarding Frank's observation about the
time of the year to come over. He's right that early winter is
typically the time most people associate with windsurfing in PR. This
is due to the fact that November through January is typically windy
and big swells come in off and on from storms far off in the north
atlantic.
The summer, however, is not too shabby either. This particular
summer (late May-early September) was pretty much perfect: 20 MPH with
small chop inside the reef and 3-5 ft on the reef pretty much the
whole time.
Around easter there is usually no wind and late september/october we
get weird weather from all the tropical storms that float by. It's
been over a week since I've been able to windsurf (the longest all
year), and last time was on an 8m/HS combo, so it was pretty light.
When Isabelle went by about 200 miles away it sucked all the wind away
and left huge, messy swells: the worst of both worlds. Now it's
super calm and windless, very unusual stuff. Hopefully once TS
Nicholas passes the tradewinds will reestablish themselves.
I hope this is helpful.
Saludos,
Carlos
Post by pDoes anyone have information on windsurfing in vieques, puerto rico?
I'll be on the north side, in Bravos de Boston. I'll probably be going
down in november, but may also spend significant time there next summer
which I understand is the best time for wind in the caribbean in
general. All the photos I've seen of the place show glassy water so I'm
a bit pessimistic... The kayaking and snorkeling look fantastic
though, so I'm sure there will be plenty to do.
I know that there are better spots in the caribbean and in puerto rico's
main island itself, but it looks like I'll be "stuck" on vieques.