Couple this with the prevailing Trade Winds, and thunderstorms marching west off the coast of Puerto Rico nearly every night, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a lot of sea stories.
In the slot between Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, water boils up out of the miles deep Puerto Rican Trench, and is pinched between the islands, the 400-foot depth of Horseshoe Shoal acting like a sandbar off a beach, causing waves to stack up in a rather singular fashion. This particular piece of the ocean has a nasty reputation. At times, the surface of the ocean looked like mercury, with nary a ripple to mar its’ glassy surface. Our crossing of the dreaded Mona Passage couldn’t have been more benign.
