Mar 10

Today was a boat day.  I woke up not feeling 100%.  I was achy and wasn't sure if I was getting sick or worn out from the motorcycle ride.  Minutes after waking, we were hailed on the VHF by our friends Nick and Deanna on Caribbean Soul.  They are arriving from Turks & Caicos today and are just entering the harbor.  I chatted with Nick a few minutes and gave him advice on how to enter the harbor.  They made it in fine and anchored next to us.  I dinghied over and tried to give him the fifteen minute course on everything you need to know about Luperon.  Of course they had been up all night, so I'm sure I overloaded them.

Even though I don't feel too hot, I still have the foresail on deck from the other day when I dropped it to use the halyard.  The air is dead calm this morning, so we set about hoisting the sail before any wind picked up.  Barb sprayed a lubricant on the edge of the sail as she guided it into the furler track while I cranked on the winch.  While it still was a lot of work to crank it up there, it was easier than last time.  But, after I did it I really felt like I'd had my butt kicked.  It was quite humid and hot, and there wasn't a breath of breeze.  I just sat in the cockpit for a while after that.

We ended up just staying aboard all afternoon.  I wrote logs while Barb read.  By early evening, I was feeling mostly ok, so we joined the gang for happy hour at the Marina Luperon Yacht Club.  We have not been up there before.  We have heard stories about this place.  It is a typical example of a place where a lot of money has already been spent, but things just never seem to get finished, and nobody knows how to run a successful business.  But, they announced happy hour on the VHF today, so we'll give them a try.  We got there before dark and were able to see what a nice place this could be.  There is a fair amount of dockage available and less than half is used.  At the top of the bluff where the building is, we found two pools.  One empty with a nice pool bar built in one end, and the other full but green with algae.  The two story building has a nice restaurant area on the first floor, which hasn't been used in some time.  On the second floor was the bar and more restaurant seating.  We went up there and found two ladies waiting for some business.  There were ten of us, coming at least for drinks and maybe dinner.  The ladies didn't appear to be very experienced at waiting tables, because while they were quite pleasant, and as far I know got all the orders and the bills correct, they were painfully slow at it, even by Island standards.  After a couple rounds of drinks, about half the folks decided to eat dinner.  They had advertised some kind of traditional Dominican stew on the radio, and they had a regular menu too.  Since the power was off and they seemed to be running the lights and TV intermittently from batteries and/or a diesel generator, those who were going to eat all decided on the stew, since it was already cooked.  It reportedly was good, although we passed.  We all stayed until everybody was done eating and then headed back to the boats.  The afternoon trade winds never had filled in today, so it was still and hot in the anchorage.

GPS N 19-53.936 W 070-57.120  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8489.

Mar 11

It's Sunday morning and time for the semi-weekly VHF net.  Janet (Satori) started the net and got almost no response from anybody.  People must be sleeping in.  Today is the first day of daylight savings time, but we can't blame that because they are always on daylight savings time here.  (It's the Eastern time zone, but always EDT, so we didn't change anything.)  During the night there was a rain shower, and this morning it is still overcast and threatening to rain more, so it would be a good morning to sleep in.  After the net, we decided to go check out the breakfast options at the Marina Blanco restaurant instead of cooking aboard.  The Sunday flea market was setting up when we got there about 09:15.  We sat at the bar and inquired about breakfast.  As is often the case, they ask what you would like, and then tell you that all they really have is fried eggs and toast.  Ok then, fried eggs and toast it will be.  You quickly learn that if that's what they offer, your better off just taking or leaving it rather than try to alter the order like to say you like your eggs over-easy instead of fried.  If you don't like what you get, you know not to do that again.  We got our well-done fried eggs and toast fairly quickly.  While they were certainly edible, I don't think we'll consider the marina a breakfast option anymore.

We visited with several friends who also came to the swap meet, and got a piece of a delicious Italian cream cake from Marti the lady who bakes the sticky buns.  It made up for the eggs.  While we were there a pretty good rain shower came through.  I'm sure that contributed to the light turnout for the swap meet today.  When a break in the rain came, we decided to get back to the boat.  It looks like the rain showers may be passing, but there is still no wind to cool off the harbor.

Right after we got back to the boat, a call came over the VHF asking for anybody in the harbor to respond.  The caller was a boat named Blue Dawn.  He was looking for piloting help as he came in because he draws nine feet.  Any sailboat that draws nine feet is a very large sailboat.  Two of the ex-pats who live here hopped in their dinghy and met Blue Dawn at the harbor entrance and guided him in.  I found info on the internet about them and it is a seventy-five foot boat.  They got in safely and anchored way down near the entrance to the anchorage which was about the only place a boat that large would have swing room.

Later in the afternoon, I went over to Perseverance to help Richard diagnose a problem with his dinghy motor.  We took the carburetor off and took it apart and found the float needle valve stuck closed so it wasn't getting gas.  We put it back together and after a few pulls it started.  In this lifestyle, your dinghy is your car, so when it doesn't run, it's a major problem.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening aboard.  We actually had dinner aboard for a change.  We have found it cheaper to eat out than in.  There also is no good grocery in Luperon to reprovision, so we haven't eaten aboard much.

GPS N 19-53.936 W 070-57.120  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8489.

Mar 12

We were awakened by rain just after dawn.  We quickly closed all the hatches.  At least it held off until it was time to get up anyway, since it was another hot night.  We had our coffee and some lemon poppy cake that Barb bought from Marti the baking lady at the swap meet yesterday.  The rain showers continued off and on most of the morning, but about 11:30 there was a break and we decided to meet the rest of our gang up at Steve's for lunch.  Once there, it started to rain again, so we ended up spending the better part of the afternoon there drinking beer, visiting with everybody, and playing pool.

There is another interesting boat in the harbor.  It is called Sun21 and it is a solar powered catamaran.  It is in the middle of a trip from Europe to New York and is the first solar powered motorized vessel to cross the Atlantic.  At first glance you wonder why anybody would cross the ocean on such a boat regardless of how it was powered.  It's about forty-five feet long, but it just doesn't look like a good ocean going boat.

About 16:30, the rain had stopped so we all headed back to our boats.  Later in the evening we joined Sol Y Mar for some cards.  We were having so much fun playing that by the time we started getting tired and looked at the clock, it was midnight.  I don't think we stayed up that late unless we were underway in a long time.

GPS N 19-53.936 W 070-57.120  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8489.

Mar 13

We slept in a little this morning.  The morning weather SSB broadcasts have changed to the daylight savings time schedule, and I'm not used to it yet.  I need to start listening as we will probably be looking for a window to depart at the end of the week.  We don't have any plans today, so I'm going to get Handy Andy to come out to deliver fuel, clean the boat's bottom and put new zincs on the prop shaft.  It is amazing how much stuff has grown on the boat in the two weeks we've been here.  The bottom itself shouldn't be to bad since it has anti-fouling paint on it, but the waterline has a several inch fringe growing all the way around the boat.  The real amazing part of that is that I got in the water and cleaned the waterline myself the day before we arrived here.  I would do it and the zincs myself normally, but the water here is so cruddy that I don't want to be in it.  Besides, Andy only charges $1/foot.

A little before noon, Andy and Pabo his helper showed up with the fuel boat.  We took forty-two gallons, which means we were about as empty as we have ever been.  The price was $3.75/gal which is not bad delivered to the boat.  After fueling a few other boats, Andy and Pabo came back with their wet suits on.  While Pabo cleaned the prop and installed the zincs, Andy got busy on the bottom.  It only took them about twenty minutes to finish.  I was watching from above, and while I obviously couldn't see the bottom, I could see all the crap they were scraping off floating in the water.

We spent the rest of the afternoon laying around.  I did some research to make sure I don't have to file an income tax return this year.  No income - no taxes!  In the evening, we went over to Perseverance, along with Sol Y Mar and Lone Star to watch a DVD of a party from last year in Georgetown.  This party was held the day before we came back to Georgetown from Rum Cay, so we missed it.  It was a major production that is still being talked about by all of our friends who were there.

GPS N 19-53.936 W 070-57.120  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8489.

Mar 14

I was up for the weather this morning.  It looks like we will be leaving either Friday just before dark, or Saturday morning at the crack-o-dawn.  Mid-morning I went over to see Janet on Satori.  She had mentioned a problem with her computer and I told her I would look at it.  Both problems turned out to be simple option changes and she was in business.  I told her that if I were someone who did this for a living I would have to stay an hour, look very worried, and type furiously to justify the $100 bucks I would charge.

We hung around the boat the rest of the afternoon.  Tonight is movie night at La Yola again.  Tonight's movie is The Da Vinci Code.  The food was great as usual, but the movie once again was a poor quality bootleg copy.  The picture was quite dark, to the point of being hard to see often, and again the English subtitles were poorly translated.  According to the subtitles, they were in search of the Holy Grill.  I guess that's where you cook the Holy steaks.

When we got back to the boat sometime after 22:00, we went right to bed.  We had only been in bed a few minutes when there was chatter on the VHF.  The Commandante was talking to Handy Andy and Pabo in Spanish.  We managed to pick out a few words, like the name of a boat, La Rosa Negro (The Black Rose).  La Rosa Negro is a large pirate looking boat that apparently sunk in the harbor some time ago and has been raised and repaired.  It had been at the Government dock for the last few days, but had left the harbor this morning.  Soon, somebody speaking English joined the conversation saying that La Pantera, a large day charter  catamaran that has been moored here unused for years was sinking.  This is curious because it's sister ship, Wild Cat, which has also been moored here for years unused, was rafted to it yesterday, and then Wild Cat left the harbor.  So, there is wild speculation that perhaps La Pantera sinking is not entirely by accident.  At any rate, the Commandante, Andy, and Pabo were no longer on the radio.  They wouldn't respond to calls at all.  We never did find out how La Rosa Negro fits into the whole story, and several people who had numbers for the owner of La Pantera tried to contact him to no avail.  Eventually everybody went back to bed and the radio remained quiet.  And La Pantera was left taking on water.

GPS N 19-53.936 W 070-57.120  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8489.

Mar 15

This morning, the La Pantera saga continues.  The boat is now almost underwater.  Nobody seems to be concerned about it.  Some chatter between Bruce Van Sant and Derrick on Unity argues whether it is the Commandante's job to do something about it, or whether good Samaritan boaters should be trying to save it or contact the owner. 

Today we are doing a trip to the waterfalls.  The waterfalls are a place where you hike in to a series of small waterfalls.  You then climb, swim, and get pulled up the falls, until you get as high as you paid to go.  There are twenty-seven falls, and you can go to number seven, number twelve, or number twenty-seven.  Once you are as far as you are going, you then come back by sliding down the falls or jumping off the cliffs into the pools below each one.  Ten of us are taking the trip, although only five of us are going to actually do the falls.  Those who don't do the falls still hike in about a half mile from the parking area and can watch the people jump off the final cliff.  The swimmers are going to be myself, Pat (Sol Y Mar), Tom (Lone Star), and Nick & Deanna (Caribbean Soul).

We hired a van to take us there and wait for us.  You can do organized tours that include lunch and drinks, but we decided to do it on our own.  The driver picked us up at the Yacht Club about 08:00.  The waterfalls are past Imbert, so the ride should take half an hour or so.  As it turned out, our driver went very slow.  I guess compared to some of the suicidal drivers we have had, he was good, but he reacted awfully late to other traffic a few times.  It took longer than I expected to get to the falls, but we made it. At the unmarked turn off of the highway, we went down a rough dirt road for half a mile or so to the visitors center.  Here you pay an entrance fee of 250 pesos ($7.50) and meet your guides.  When everybody is ready, you get helmets and life jackets and head out.  The walk to the first falls is about half a mile.  It starts by crossing a suspension bridge over a creek.  The creek was less than twenty feet below, but the bridge itself was a trip.  The path starts out as a dirt road until you cross the river.  From there, it is more of a dirt and stone path.  In some steep places they have built steps, and in many places you walk through the creek.  Finally you reach the bottom of the first waterfall.  There is a small building here where those who are not going to continue can wait.

Once we all had our life jackets and helmets secure, we waded into the pool at the bottom of the falls.  We swam across it to the rocks near where the water cascaded down.  The guides showed us where to put our hands and feet and lent a hand as we climbed up the initial rock wall.  On the ledge at the top was a ladder which took us to the top of the first falls.  From here, we were in the water to proceed further.  The water was pretty cool, but not icy cold.  Once you were in it, it wasn't bad, except for Deanna who has zero body fat to keep her warm.  She was quite cold by the end of the trip.  We continued wading and swimming upstream to the next falls.  The falls above the first and second ones are pretty small.  By small I mean they are ten to twenty foot chutes dumping into deep pools below.  But getting up them is no easy task.  Each one is different but the game is similar.  The guides tell you exactly where to grab, or they pull you.  They scamper around on the slick rocks like they are mountain goats.  And, even though neither of them was very big, it was nothing for them to haul us big boys up.

Once we reached falls number seven, we headed back down.  You don't actually go above number seven, so there are six to slide down.  The first chute was a short one and we each splashed down into the pool.  The next three were a bit longer, and one of them made a sharp turn, making them a little more exciting.  The final two are in view of the folks below who are waiting for us.  The upper one, falls number two, was about a forty foot slide down into a pool.  You had the option on this one of sliding or jumping.  We all slid down, and then Nick and Tom went back up and jumped.  On the last one, you have to jump.  From the bottom, it looks like no big deal.  From the top it looks a lot higher.  It's probably about thirty feet.  I have probably jumped into the water from this height before, but it has been a long time and I'm theoretically smarter.  There wasn't really time to think about it though.  The guides had told us there were two ways down.  We could jump or they could push us.  They really would let you climb down the ladder too, but this is why we came.  One at a time we jumped and then swam to the waiting friends.

Unfortunately our pictures are pretty poor because the last pool where Barb was waiting with the camera is very shaded.  I was able to lighten them up a little so you can get the idea what the last falls looked like.  Nick took his camera all the way up and one of the guides took pictures.  Hopefully he got some good shots.

Once we were done, we hiked back to the visitors center where we had a beer before the ride back.  The driver took us back to the Yacht Club, where our dinghies are and we all went from there to Marina Blanco for lunch.  Just as we were docking our dinghies, a call went out on the VHF that a boat was dragging in the anchorage.  Several of us raced out to see if we could help.  The boat that was dragging turned out to be right next to us.  It had moved back a hundred feet or more but had not hit any other boats and seemed to have reset the anchor on it's own, although now it is too close to another boat.  The owners were not aboard, and apparently didn't have a handheld VHF with them, so Nick & Deanna raced to town to see if they could find them.  They did locate them at Steve's and they came back and re-anchored in a better spot.  We went back to Marina Blanco for a few beers and lunch.

While we had been out in the harbor helping the dragging boat, we noticed that La Pantera was floating noticeably higher in the water, and that a large gasoline powered pump was pumping out the water.  It looked like Pabo and Andy's boat was there.  Later there was more radio chatter between them and a guy on a boat next to us who just came into the harbor a couple days ago, but who has obviously been here before.  I'm not sure why he is involved, but they are talking about towing it somewhere where it will be secure.  Not sure where it would be secure unless they pull it aground somewhere.  I'm pretty sure there is more to this story that we will never know.

GPS N 19-53.936 W 070-57.120  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8489.

Mar 16 and 17

Today we plan to leave Luperon.  There are two ways to go east from Luperon.  One is to follow the advice in The Gentleman's Passages South, where you make a series of small hops during the night when the trade winds die down.  This route would take four or five days to make the trip from Luperon to the eastern end of the Dominican Republic, and then you still have to cross the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.  Or, you can wait for a cold front to come south through the Bahamas that is strong enough to make it to the DR.  Preceding a cold front, the winds will usually get lighter as well as switch to the south or west for a while.  If the front is strong enough and slow enough, this event can give you a few day window in which you can make the forty hour trip from Luperon to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico in one run.  This is our plan.  It is a little risky because the window is just long enough, with no room for error on the timing.  The plan is to leave Luperon just at dusk which should put us in Mayaguez before dark Sunday afternoon.

The muck that you will find on your anchor chain after being in Luperon is legendary.  They say that you should haul your anchor the day before you leave and clean it, so when you are ready to go you only have one day's growth on it.  Because of this, I decided to take a peek.  What I found was that the twenty feet of chain that has been hanging in the water had this strange growth on it.  It looked like little white worms, although it was a hard calcium kind of consistency.  I have since learned it is a barnacle type of critter, but it does in fact look like a worm.  It was thoroughly attached to the chain, to the point of making the chain hard to separate the links, and it wasn't coming off without some serious wire brushing or something.  Below that first twenty feet, where the chain had been on the bottom, I found it to be clean as a whistle.  So I just played it back out and figured I'd worry about it when we leave.

Some countries require you to check out as well as in.  The Dominican Republic is one of these, and you actually have to clear in and out of each port if you go to multiple ports in the DR.  There are ten boats planning on leaving on this weather window, so we headed up to the Immigration office in the morning hoping to avoid the rush.  We first had to see the Immigration man.  He checked our entry dates and made sure we had gotten our visa extensions which we had when we checked in.  Since everything was in order, he stamped our passports out.  Then we had to see the person who collects the port usage fees.  We had paid $11 for port entry when we checked in.  After that, it is $15/month to be anchored.  So we paid our $15 and got a form that proves we have paid all our fees.  The next step is to take that form up the hill to the Commandante's office.  Here several men work on giving you your despacho (departure paper).  Depending where you go next, you may have to prove you checked out of your last port, and that's what the despacho is.  We asked for clearance to Samana in the eastern DR, even though we plan to go to Puerto Rico.  Puerto Rico doesn't care where the DR cleared you to, and if something changes and you have to stop in Samana, it's easier if you were cleared to there.  The funny thing about the despacho was that there is a new Commandante in town.  He arrived since we have been here.  The despacho forms they have, have the old Commandante's name printed on them.  So, instead of crossing it out, they hand write the entire despacho on a blank piece of paper.  This of course takes time.  When the man writing the despacho is done, he stamps it and then hands it to a Navy man in a white uniform.  He takes it to the back room where the Commandante is.  It comes back a few minutes later signed.  You are then asked for $20 and given the form.  This $20 doesn't appear to be a real fee, and no receipt was given, but it was clear that you didn't get your despacho without paying.  Contrary to what any of the cruising guides say about not paying, you don't have a lot of choice.

From here we all congregated at Steve's for lunch.  Since this was probably as crowded as we have ever seen Steve's, it took a while for everybody to get their food, but we have nothing else to do anyway.  We only had one beer with lunch since we will be underway soon.  After we all ate, we bid goodbye to Annie & Steve and Stephanie their little daughter.  We went on into town to find a store where we could buy several bottles of rum.  The Brugal rum comes in little bottles (about a pint) as well as the regular fifths.  We got several regular bottles for ourselves, and six little bottles to potentially be used as "gifts" down the road when we are checking in and out of other countries.

We went back to the boat via the marina where we picked up a bag of ice.  I hoisted the dinghy for the first time in three weeks and was appalled at what I found growing on the bottom.  I had noticed the last few days we could not get going fast enough to get it up on a plane, so I wasn't totally surprised that there was growth, just at the quantity and nature of it.  There was a layer of the same white crusty growth that I had found on the anchor chain that was about a half inch thick.  It covered the entire hard bottom of the dinghy, the lower halves of the inflatable tubes, and the lower end of the motor.  I took a putty knife and started scraping the motor first.  I got most of it off and then attacked the dinghy bottom.  I was able to get most of it off the half that I could reach.  I'll have to lower the dinghy, turn it around and re-hoist it to get the other side.  That can wait.

We now just tried to relax for a few hours before leaving.  We think we have everything ready to go, but napping is not going to happen.  I am concerned about our plans.  Two of the ten boats planning to leave have decided to wait until Saturday morning to leave.  This should give them better conditions when they leave, but the risk is that if the weather near Puerto Rico deteriorates earlier than expected, you can get caught out in the Mona Passage in bad weather.  We decided we will accept a little rougher conditions on the front end in exchange for the security of a little buffer on the far end.  Two other boats are going tonight and have already weighed anchor and moved out to the harbor entrance.  Once there, they decide to wait until midnight to actually leave, again to give the seas and wind time to calm down more.  We don't really want to do this since we want to be well clear of the harbor before dark.  The reason for this is that the fishermen place nets on floats all over that area with no regard for any entrance channel.  Their floats are nothing more than an old soda bottle or plastic oil can, so they are hard to see in the daylight and impossible at night.  So about 18:30, the other six boats who are leaving now start to weigh anchor.  For the past two weeks there has been a Canadian boat that came in after us anchored too close to us.  They are one of the boats who have decided to wait until tomorrow, so now I have to weigh anchor with them in the way.  At lunch I had mentioned to the captain that we may need him to fend us off as I thought our anchor would be underneath his boat given the wind direction.  He said no problem.  Well, about an hour before we were ready to leave, he and his wife took off to shore in their dinghy.  I started to slowly pull in the anchor chain as our bow approached the stern of the Canadian boat.  When we got up to within a few feet of them, I stopped.  I was hoping that the wind would make them swing enough that we could come alongside and Barb could fend them off while I continued to haul anchor.  Unfortunately this wasn't going to work out.  Tom from Lone Star saw my dilemma and came to my aid.  He used his dinghy to push Lady M aside while I got our anchor up.  The good news was that I didn't find a bit of mud on our chain or anchor.

We slowly headed out of the harbor giving the other boats a chance to all get together.  Sea-eze took the lead leaving me second.  As we were approaching the shallowest point of the harbor entrance Sea-eze suddenly turned around and said on the radio that he didn't have his inbound course nor the waypoints on his chartplotter, so he shouldn't lead.  I'm not sure why he waited to this point to make this decision, nor why he's even out here without plotting a course.  So, now I was in the lead, proceeding slowly and dodging the fish net floats.  While I did have my inbound track on the chartplotter to follow, my new route that I had plotted for the whole trip had mysteriously disappeared.  So once out of the harbor, I let somebody else take the lead.

We fond the conditions outside the harbor to be rougher than we expected.  We knew we were cutting the window close and that it would still be rough, but the winds and seas were more than expected.  There was some discussion of turning back, but we all pressed on.  Plowing into the rough seas and with twenty knots of wind right on the nose, we were only making about three knots of speed.  Our forty hour trip estimate is based on averaging five and a half knots, so our daylight arrival into Mayaguez may be in jeopardy.  Mayaguez is not supposed to be particularly challenging to enter at night, but you'd always rather arrive in daylight.  The rough conditions continued until after midnight.  By midnight we were passing Puerto Plata, the city we had visited a couple weeks ago.  It was impressive how large it is from the water.  The winds and seas abated a little after midnight and we kept going, hugging the coast about two miles offshore to take advantage of the night lee effect of the island.  Unfortunately, the night lee wasn't as strong as usual this night.

By morning we were discussing the option of stopping at Rio San Juan for the day to rest, then continuing on to Samana overnight arriving there Sunday morning, and letting Puerto Rico wait for the next window.  One boat, Seagulls is going to do this, but this was their original plan.  The rest of us decide to continue on.  The conditions all day were not great, but better than at the start.  We are making better time and it looks like we can make Mayaguez by late afternoon Sunday.  As we were nearing Cabo Carbon, Sol Y Mar gave us a call to say they had an engine problem.  They had their sails up, so after shutting down the engine they adjusted their course to sail better while they diagnosed the problem.  The problem appears to be the exhaust mixing elbow or the new water muffler that Pat just installed in Luperon, so they will not be able to run the motor until that is fixed.  Now, we are sailboats after all, but the wind is on the nose, and the forecast that we are counting on to cross the Mona Passage comfortably is for the wind to die entirely.  After the wind dies for a day, it is supposed to come back strong form the east.  So sailing on across the Mona is not an option.  After much discussion amongst all the boats, we decide to divert into Samana with Sol Y Mar, while the others, except one continue to Puerto Rico.  Sea-eze decides to stop in Samana also as they apparently don't have enough fuel to motor all the way to Puerto Rico. 

Now the problem becomes Sol Y Mar sailing into Samana.  They have to first round Cabo Carbon, then Cabo Samana, then enter Bahia Samana.  The wind is doing what it normally does around capes.  It curves around them, giving us the wind on the nose all the way around even as we change course ninety degrees.  This means Sol Y Mar is going to have to do some serious tacking way offshore and coming back in to Bahia Samana from the east instead of following the coast south as we can.  Once the decision was made, we changed course to motor into Bahia Samana and anchor.  We would not get there before dark, so we picked an anchorage just inside the bay but short of the actual harbor of Samana.  We got to Punta Cacao which we had identified on the charts and found Sea-eze already anchored here.  The anchorage is very small and the water remains quite deep to within a few hundred feet of shore.  Then it suddenly comes up to twenty feet where you can drop the hook and be resting a couple hundred feet from shore.  The swell form the open ocean makes it way in here and the small waves crash on the beach behind us with enough noise to be very disconcerting.  If our anchor were to let go, we would be on the beach in minutes.  Because the anchorage is so small, we have less chain out than we safely should so that we don't hit Sea-eze.  Once anchored we are just barely able to contact Sol Y Mar on the VHF since we now have a mountain between us.  We tell them what we found for the anchorage, and they elect to stay well offshore and just drift around all night.  The wind has pretty much died off, so they are wisely reluctant to try and sail into the bay and then risk drifting into shallow water.

We spent a pretty much sleepless night in the cockpit watching that we didn't move.  In addition to being close to the shore and Sea-eze, there was a large cement platform of some type on our other side.  Fortunately, the wind abated, and the large squall that we had seen over the mountain didn't come our way.  We took turns dozing and watching.  At one point Sea-eze drifted too close to us since they used a short rope rode on their anchor instead of chain.  This means they drift differently than us when there is no substantial wind.  As Barb fended them off, I took up about twenty feet of our chain, making our scope even more dangerously short.  The swell and wind has diminished some, so hopefully this won't be a problem.  Several times during the night we made contact with Sol Y Mar on the radio, so we knew they were ok, although tired and uncomfortable.

GPS N 19-11.339 W 069-17.402  Nautical miles traveled today 130.  Total miles 8619.

Mar 18

At first light we weighed anchor and moved into Samana harbor.  We wanted to get our boat securely anchored before any daytime winds kick up, and also we want to get out in our dinghy to help Sol Y Mar in as fast as possible.  It's about five miles from where we anchored to the harbor.  The scenery along the coast here is spectacular.  It looks like a South Pacific island with high mountains covered in palm trees.  There are nice homes and small resorts scattered in the hills.  As we approach the harbor we find less than a dozen cruising boats anchored and many small boats used for whale watching and other tourist attractions on moorings.  We find the water to be about thirty feet through much of the harbor.  We circled another sailboat, Sea Bound, yelling to the occupant asking about the depths around the harbor.  He directed to an area where we might find closer to twenty feet which is what I want.  Since I haul our anchor by hand, the deeper it is, the heavier the load when I have to haul it in.  We dropped the hook in about twenty feet and pulled back to set it.  It set right away, but when we back down hard on it, we can pull it through the mud.  Not ideal, but it will do for now.

I immediately launched the dinghy an headed back out into the bay to tow Sol Y Mar in.  From the harbor to the entrance to the bay is about seven miles, and I could see Sol Y Mar at least a mile out past the light that marks the bay entrance.  Fortunately the wind has been gone all night, so even out in the open ocean the water is calm.  There is still a three or four foot swell coming form the east, but even in the dinghy I go up and over the swells with no problem.  Pat already had his dinghy in the water and tied to Sol Y Mar's port side and was making about two knots under tow.  I came around and tied my dinghy off to the starboard side and we doubled the speed.  It will still take a couple of hours to get into the harbor, at this speed.  There is little other boat traffic, so we don't have any problem towing like this.  The dinghies provide the power and Dori drove the big boat as if it were under it's own power.

This is a big whale watching area this time of year.  Humpback whales come here in the winter to breed.  There was one wale watching boat out near us and suddenly we smelled whale breath and saw commotion on the whale watching boat.  Within minutes, several other whale watching boats converged on the area.  We saw the whale from a distance as it surfaced for breaths.  We also passed through a large area of scum floating on the surface that was from the whale doing it's business.  It was a cool distraction from the stress to the past night.  We entered the harbor with no problem and dropped the hook.  We powered the dinghy backwards to set the anchor.  Everybody can relax now.

While I had been out on the towing mission, the Commandante had come to MoonSail to check us in.  He was brought to MoonSail by Rolf, a German cruiser also in the harbor.  Barb explained that the Captain (me) had gone out in the dinghy to tow in a friend and that I would be back in a couple hours.  They said they would come back at noon, and they did.  Precisely at noon, a local fishing boat dropped the Commandante, another Navy guy, and Frank, a local boat boy, off on MoonSail.  (I should explain "boat boys" for the non-cruisers.  First, they are not "boys".  They are men whose job is to hook up with a cruiser and get you whatever you need.  They will be able to speak enough English to translate for you, and they should know how everything works.  Of course, they expect a tip for their services.)  When they were aboard, it was dead calm and the sun was out, so everybody was very hot.  The Commandante asked if we had any water, so I quickly got three cups of ice water for them.  The Navy guy filled out the required form, while the Commandante took our Luperon despacho.  They all seemed a little confused by the fact that the despacho was hand written, but it was stamped after all, so it must be legitimate.  As the Navy guy was taking information from my passport, he started to sing something in Spanish.  I just smiled and didn't get it until the Commandante started singing Happy Birthday in English.  Tomorrow is my birthday and they noticed that from the passport.  We had a big laugh and I thanked them for noticing.  I expected to pay a $15 port entrance fee, but there was no official fee.  A small gesture was suggested by Frank since it was Sunday after all.  I gave them each $5 and then gave them a ride over to Sol Y Mar.  We had heard that giving them a ride was part of the deal.

Even though we are pretty much exhausted we decided to go ashore for lunch.  We found the dinghy tie up at the government dock and walk to the main street.  There is a restaurant with a thatched roof called the Bamboo Bar right across the street from the dock.  We ordered grande Presidentes and checked out the menu.  The prices were a little higher than expected and they didn't have simple things like burgers, but we weren't going to venture far in search of another option.  Barb had some baked chicken and veges and I had spaghetti in a white cream sauce with conch.  Barb's was mediocre, but mine was excellent.  The tab was about $31, more than we've paid for lunch and a few beers anywhere else in the DR, and they screwed us on the exchange rate since I only had US dollars, but we were full.  We were fading fast with full bellies, so we went right back to the boat without exploring the town any further.

Our first impression of Samana is not at all what we expected.  The Gentleman's Passages South only gives Samana a page of text and is not very flattering.  I was prepared for a small town even more rustic than Luperon.  I was concerned that we wouldn't have access to things like an ATM.  The book also says that security here is a big problem.  Well, the book couldn't be more wrong.  This is quite a large town.  It doesn't have all the noisy smoky motorcycles and beat up old cars, but rather many newer cars, busses, and motorcycles.  It appears much more "civilized" than Luperon.  There is a large waterfront development being built for cruise ships to call here.  So, while we didn't plan to stop here, and the stop was under duress, we are looking forward to seeing what the town has to offer.

When we returned to the boat, it was still quite hot and there wasn't much wind, so then it was hot inside.  We dozed in the cockpit for a couple of hours before some storms approached.  Since I'm not entirely confident in how well the anchor is set in the soft mud, I sat in the cockpit through the wind and rain and lightening to make sure we didn't move.  We didn't, and by 22:00 the storms seem to be done.  We went to the real bed for the first time in three days.  It felt very good.

GPS N 19-12.007 W 069-20.063  Nautical miles traveled today 5.  Total miles 8624.

Mar 19

Happy Birthday to me!  The day started as usual with coffee and listening to the weather on the SSB.  When I first poked my head outside, I was shocked to see a cruise ship out in the bay.  This was a real live big cruise ship.  I didn't realize they were already stopping here, so I was quite surprised to see it.  It turns out that the majority of people who get off the ships here now go to Cayo Leventado, which is an island with a couple of resorts and a large beach just a mile or so outside the harbor entrance.

Pat went over to Sea Bound, the boat we asked about anchoring yesterday to meet them.  They have an engine problem also, and he wanted their input on mechanics.  About 09:00, Pat picked me up in his dinghy and we went to the dock to meet the mechanic that has been recommended by the boat boys and Sea Bound.  On the docks we met Frank the boat boy and he said the mechanic would meet us there.  We waited and waited, and the guy didn't show up.  It was raining off and on, and we were all wet, but that's part of living outside.  After a while, Frank said we would go to the mechanics shop to see him.  So we got into Franks car along with Martin, another boat boy, and drove up into the town to a shop.  The mechanic wasn't there either.  They said he went to the docks.  So, back to the dock we went.  Finally we hooked up.  There were several local boat owners wanting the mechanics time also, so we had to wait, but finally he told Pat to take him out to the boat.  Since the dinghy was full, I waited on the dock.  Sea Bound is having their engine pulled and rebuilt by these same mechanics.  While we had been up the hill at the shop, they had towed Sea Bund into the dock so they could get the engine out.  So while I waited for Pat to return I chatted with Harvey and Peter from Sea Bound.  The plan is that as soon as the mechanic returns from looking at Sol Y Mar, they are going to pull the engine.  No prep work has been done on removing the engine yet, so it's hard to imagine this will all happen today.

I went to the ATM to get some more pesos since we will be here several days at least.  I had been very proud of myself that we left Luperon with no leftover pesos.  Now we will have to go through that exercise again.  After quite a while, Pat came back with the mechanic and his old water muffler.  Pat replaced this water muffler with a new one in Luperon, and it appears the new one has cracked already.  The mechanic thinks he can weld up the old one to better-than-new condition and have it done tomorrow.  He and three other men immediately went to work on Sea Bound then.

Pat and I went back to the boats and decided to go ashore for lunch.  We got the ladies and met back at the dock.  Sea Bound has been here a month already so Peter gave us some input on the restaurant choices.  We walked a fair ways into the main part of town to a place where we could sit just off the sidewalk in an open air place.  The menu was written in Spanish on a board, and the waitress didn't speak English, but with some bad Spanish, some pointing, and some animal noises, we were able to order lunch.  The food was ok, but not great, but the beer was cold and the waitress was friendly, so we ended up sitting there for several hours.

About 16:00, we headed back to the dock.  To our amazement, Sea Bound's engine was about to come out.  We offered to go get Peter a beer to celebrate, so we walked back across the street to an ice cream shop where we got huge dishes of good ice cream, and then several beers to go, one being for Peter.  You have to like an ice cream shop that sells beer too.  We were only gone perhaps thirty minutes, but when we got back, the engine was sitting on the dock.  As we walked up, four guys lifted it into the back of a pickup truck.  The bad news was that as they had lifted it out of the boat, they had spilled engine oil all over the cabin sole and the deck of the boat.  Of course what was on deck then ran into the water.  This briefly seemed to be a crisis to some official on the dock, but he seemed to quickly get over it.  There is no EPA here.

Now that the engine is out, Sea Bound needs to be towed back out to anchor before dark.  Pat and I volunteered to be tow boats, along with Harvey in their dinghy.  Peter steered the big boat.  While Pat pulled from the bow, I pushed the stern around to point her in the right direction.  Harvey then pushed while Pat pulled, and I stayed alongside in case more steerage was needed.  Once out to the place they wanted to anchor, I pushed the stern around to point them into the wind.  Harvey got aboard and dropped the anchor.  Pat and I both tied to the stern and pulled her backwards to set the anchor.

We had left Dori & Barb on the dock while we did this.  When we got back, since it was almost happy hour, instead of going to the boats, we walked down to what is called Tent City to have more beer.  Tent City is  collection of small trailers and tents where food and drink vendors are every evening.  It is not a temporary thing.  Each vendor has their spot, and most are open every night.  The cruisers congregate here most every nights apparently.  We found some of the other cruisers and joined them.  Peter & Harvey were along as soon as they got cleaned up.  We were getting hungry again, so we ordered a pizza from a guy working out of a kitchen built on the back of a pickup truck.  It was ok, but the only meat he had to put on it bore a strong resemblance to Spam.

We finally decided we had enough beer for one day and we better head back to the boats.  We walked back to the dock and got our dinghies.  Since when we last parked the dinghies, the tide was low and the dinghies could get stuck under the dock as it rises, we had put out a stern anchor to hold us off the dock a little.  Some places this is common practice, but we aren't used to doing it all the time.  We hopped in the dinghy, started the motor and went back to the boat under full power as usual.  It wasn't until the next morning I realized I never pulled in the stern anchor.  We just dragged it away from the dock, and once we were in deeper water it just hung there off the stern.  Pat & Dori got a big kick out of learning this the next day, and told me that our friends on Diva will enjoy reading about it too.

GPS N 19-12.007 W 069-20.063  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8624.

Mar 20

This morning, there is not one, but two cruise ships in the harbor.  The town seems ready for them.  There are a dozen busses lined up on the street to take them places, the park across from the dock has been filled with vendors selling jewelry, and such, and every whale watching boat and ferry is ready to go out.  In reality, the town sees only a small percentage of the people on the cruise ships.  They must either go to Cay Leventado, or stay aboard the big ships.  It rained pretty heavily of and on all morning, so that may have kept people away.

We decided to go ashore for lunch again, although we didn't go until about 13:30.  On the dock, we found the mechanic waiting to see Pat and show him the re-welded water muffler.  He had taken the whole thing apart, re-welded every seam, then welded caps on the ends and pressurized the whole thing through the drain fitting.  He brought it to the dock with a pressure gauge on it to show Pat is was not leaking anywhere.  We were not only impressed that he went to this trouble to prove his work was adequate, but that he did it overnight.

We went to a French restaurant for lunch.  We had crepes with various fillings that were very good.  From here we found the Internet Cafe where Pat can plug in to send an e-mail off to Benneteau regarding his problem.  We found the Internet place and verified you can use your own computer there, then went back to the restaurant where we could all have a drink while Pat actually composed his e-mail.  We ran into Peter on the street and he joined us for a drink.  In the course of the conversation, we learned that Sea Bound is Harvey's boat, and Peter is just helping him get it to the Caribbean from New England.  Peter's real job is captaining large mega yachts.  He works for a few months a year, makes a boatload of money, and then enjoys himself doing things like this for the winter.  He gave us a lot of insight into the world of mega yachts and how the whole crew deal on them works.

Once we got Pat's e-mail sent, we went back to the waterfront.  Instead of happy hour at Tent City tonight, we are meeting at Coyote Grill & Bar.  Coyote Grill and Bar is an old van sized shuttle bus like you would see used at an airport for rental car companies.  The whole bus has been turned into a kitchen.  Every afternoon, he pulls up to the curb by the waterfront, gets out a huge Honda generator, a dozen or so plastics tables, a bunch of plastic chairs and sets up shop.  He is a very personable guy who speaks good English and really wants to take care of his customers.  Since he is just getting this started, and there ended up being about fifteen of us who all ordered at once, there was some confusion over orders, and it took quite a while to get food, and some people didn't like it, but I thought it was great nonetheless.  Not that the food was so great, but the experience was.  I am constantly amazed at how many cruisers get out here with the expectation that they are still in New York ordering from a fine restaurant.  Any time you travel, especially to another country, you shouldn't have expectations.  You just go with the flow, order what you think you want, and enjoy what you get, whether it's what you thought you were getting or not.  If it isn't to your liking, you don't order that again or don't go to that restaurant again.  But you don't bitch about it.

Just about the time most of us were finished eating, it started to rain again.  Since it was dark, we hadn't seen this one coming, so everybody scurried over under a gazebo.  We were about done for the night anyway, so I paid our bill and when the rain stopped for a minute we made a dash for the boat.  This time I hoisted the stern anchor before leaving the dock.  As we were making our way back to MoonSail though, we came across a dinghy floating loose in the harbor.  Since I was almost out of gas, rather than tow it around looking for it's owner, we just towed it back to MoonSail.  A few minutes later the owner, a German cruiser anchored across the harbor from us, came by in a local boat to get it.  He had seen us get it, but we had not seen his light until he got over to us. 

GPS N 19-12.007 W 069-20.063  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 8624.