Howdy – Its been awhile since we wrote as life seems to go faster and we become lazy about journaling and letting you know our thoughts. We are currently in Luperon, Dominican Republic at N 019.53.81, W070.57.24 and truly enjoying the friendly locals/cruisers and beautiful country. It’s a small town where you wake up via the roosters, get fresh eggs from the chickens, plantains/eggplant/juca/etc from the trucks that come down from the hills, etc. We hope to be here about 2 weeks and take buses/trucks inland to explore and provision.
Tom enjoyed a really nice 55 yr old birthday celebration with our friends. Barb Manning (from Mpls.) flew into Georgetown to join us for a week and Scott and Donna Nichols aboard "Saltine" (also from Mpls and started cruising full time 3 yrs ago) joined us in our anchorage at Lee Stocking Island. Rose has become quite good at free diving while snorkeling and actually got 2 lobsters with the pole spear, Scott added another, plus several fish and we had a seafood feast aboard "Saltine" for my birthday dinner. It just doesn’t get any better than that! The crew of Saltine even sang the Casey Jones birthday song for me. Natives of Minneapolis will understand the meaning of that.
The Exuma Bahamas are beautiful with white powder beaches, higher hills to hike than I expected and clean/clear aqua blue water with an abundance of reef and fish life to snorkel. It was truly a wonderful area to explore. The downside is that you really need to continue to monitor the fronts that move every 3-5 days thru to make sure you find good protection and current vs wind can make nights uncomfortable – so at times you move faster than expected.
We left Georgetown, Exuma Bahamas on Friday, Feb 9th for Conception Island (another protected land/sea park) with 3 other boats we met on Wednesday night and Sea Otter whom we met in Annapolis. Scott and Donna on Saltine organized a going away beach social on Thursday. Tears were shed as cruising friends become family and we were off again to points unkown. We had been in the Exuma Island chain for abit over a month and hadn’t really planned on leaving this early. We were ready to leave Georgetown as it is abit overwhelming with all the boats, organized events and VHF chatter but hadn’t thought about it happening this soon.
We stayed at beautiful Conception Island for 3 nights where we snorkeled a lot, saw lots of turtles up a creek, repaired our new dinghy, etc. With a storm coming we knew we needed to find shelter from this tiny island so we sailed to Clarence Town, Long Island Bahamas and stayed there 2 nights. This is a lovely small town that had 2 beautiful catholic churches built by Father Jerome (who once was a Monk, Anglican and then catholic priest – I guess even spiritual people don’t know what they want to do as they grow up either). We squeezed up the ladder to the steeple for a enchanting view of harbor/town. During this visit we heard of 2 tragic events to other cruisers … owners of Escape lost their vessel to a reef near us and single handed sailor fell out of the dinghy and got his thigh cut up by the outboard prop and needed to be medically evacuated. It really is a sombering feeling to speak to someone that has lost their dream. So we feel very blessed to have both us and Sojourn safe.
We left Clarence Town on Thursday, Feb 14th for a 300nm possible run to Luperon, DR. We continued to listen to Chris Parker, monitor weather/seas/boat speed and make adjustments as to our destination. We decided after 175nm/33 hours of sailing/motor sailing to overnight at French Cay, Turks/Caicos as we would be arriving too late in Luperon if we kept going and seas were becoming stronger against us. We got up early to continue our journey to Luperon for a 125nm/24 hours sailing and then slowly motoring so we wouldn’t get their before daylight. We needed to get this arrival to Luperon right as the equatorial current vs wind and land breeze could make it a difficult passage. During this passage we had some excitement of Vagabond catching a large Mahi Mahi and passing some of the meat between boats while sailing as they really didn’t have room in their frig for so much. We had cruise boats and large container ships that we had to call and monitor. They would often respond with – Oh that’s why I see 5 blips on my radar. We saw 3 solo right whales migrating, the southern cross low on the horizon around 4am and lots of phosphoressence created by our wake. We had 3 hour shifts and attempted to sleep – Rose doing better than Tom in the sleeping department.
Arriving at Luperon with first light was awesome. First you start to smell the land, the special smell of 3rd world outsided stoves burning wood/coal and the misty mountain ranges becoming visable. You enter slowly as there are no navigational aids but then a voice in the hill calls you on VHF to assist with entrance questions and confirms you are doing fine. There are many cruisers that stay years longer than expected and we can see why!