Just waiting for my weather window, actually, I need a picture window.

Luperón: "the world's largest outdoor insane asylum”

We are here and we are tropo (read: lazy). We redo the dinghy lines, bring our jib sail in to be repaired at Flaco (which is just a open first level of a house with dirt floors and one sewing machine), and I am again on a mission to find new shoes as my last pair we snatched during New Years. It seems shoes hate me as much as I hate them. Luperon is a lot like Georgetown, except for this sailing community is actually made up of sailors. It’s a jumping off point for many as well as a place to leave your boat for a few years. There is a dinghy dock (with of course gaping holes) which leads right into Luperon, but there are also dinghy docks at the yachtclub (a restaurant) and at Puerto Blanco (a restaurant, small marina, and hardware shop).


Mangroves in front of The Yachtclub

Points of interest is the Juice Shop where you can get delicious fresh juice or shakes for 50cents USD or fresh Panini sandwiches (my current favorite is the zapote shake). Captain Steve’s is a big place owned by an ex-boater, his Dominican wife, Anne, and his two girls – Stephanie and Coral.


Nachos and Margaritas at Captain Steve's

Shaggy’s is up the other street. Shaggy used to work at Lor-e-lie’s and for some reason I already had a Shaggy’s Barstool Sailor bumper sticker in my log book (this is by far my favorite place to sit and drink beer) – not to mention the only place in Luperon where I can catch a football game. The yachtclub has wonderful pools overlooking the anchorage and lots of space, but no one ever seems to be there – a shame. The city is full of small chicken shops, fresh vegetable stands, bakeries, and is mixed with locals, ex-pats (who come for the prostitutes), and sailors. The streets are filled with kids, dogs, goats, chickens, and every once and a while a pig.

Lynn, from Shaggy’s, owns a mooring on the far side of the anchorage and the next day we are on a mooring so that when Dad is at home and I am out traveling the boat will be safely moored. We organized a trade with Rapheal, a local Dominican, who takes our TV off of our hands in exchange for watching the boat while we are gone (as well as going up the mast and taking off the notch that continually catches our main halyard). Our mooring is next to Zephyr, yes, we ran into Casey and Stephanie again! And with the boat being a bit farther out we now have a bit of the dinghy ride to the boat – which is wonderful because you can really enjoy the phosphorescent water. As you dinghy through you leave a wake of glowing neon blue water and you can watch the glowing trails of fish scurry away from your boat. We spend a few days organizing Dad’s flight home and Mom’s flight back. I spend a good chunk of money on a good set of oils ($150 USD), small solar panels, and celestial navigation books. What can I say? I really like sailing. Along with the pleasure of raw sugar pralines and morning lobster vendors, we also get to meet Bruce VanSant, the author of our nautical guidebook. In the guidebook he comes across a bit arrogant, but no matter what anyone may say about him. He is an amazing soul who I really enjoying talking to.

Since we arrive it had been continuously raining. Thanks bad weather Bob. Of course being trapped inside the boat, Dad is full of projects. We change the oil and the oil filter and then attempt to change the primary fuel filter. Of course it is not quite that easy and we quickly encounter a vapor lock – a bit dumbfounded about how to fix it we contact Casey and accidentally bleed over. Dave, a tazzie, quickly rows over and shows us that the Perkins 4108 has another fitting to crack which is hidden on the side of the engine. With our few little chores behind us, it is time for Dad to go to the airport and for me to do a bit of backpacking.


At Anchor in Luperon

Attitude – the Difference Between Ordeal and Adventure – A 50 knot Bluewater Passage.

During the football game we also used the internet there to make sure that we had a nice little northerly to the Dominican Republic. Under this information it looked like we had a nice weather window lasting from Monday to Wednesday. We decided to skip going over the banks and took the ship channel south to West Caico Island. We planned to take a nice little evening nap here, but our nice northerly had turned into a southerly and the anchorage turned out to be on the windward side and we were taking big winds from the southeast. The anchor was bucking badly and a nap was not going to happen, but we did get the opportunity to run a night anchoring drill. The light southerly, although not expected, was easy motor sailing all night. The next morning Dad takes longer shifts as I am exhausted from working all day yesterday in the rain. Around three pm Dad takes his shift and I hand him his fowl weather gear. Our sails are reefed and I go below to take a nap. Mistake #1: underestimating a brooding sky. The black sky reared its ugly head and soon the boat was healing like crazy. Everything below was flying around. Water was pouring in from all of the closed hatches. I start putting down towels and trying to keep things together in the salon, when all of a sudden the fridge flies open and everything inside goes zooming out. I realize there is nothing else I can do below, so I throw open the companionway door.

It was the most horrifying sight I had ever seen. The sky was black, but everything was lit in a faint white glow. The sky and sea merged and you could only differentiate then by seeing the white caps which were being blown off by the wind so you were getting hit with brackish water – a heavy mixture of sea water and rain water. Dad is white knuckled at the helm while our boat is heeled over with its port toe rail completely submerged in the water. The water is so thick in the air it is almost if we are already in the water. Dad is yelling at me, telling me something. Something in your body just takes over, you don’t have time to be terrified, you don’t have time to think, you only have time to do. Sailing gloves on – tighten the main sheet traveler, winch in the jib… as the wind meter records the highest wind I have ever experienced – 50 knots. Three turns on the winch and tail, crank, crank, crank. I am throwing my whole body into pulling the jib in as the wind is pulling it away from me and tearing it up. From there I clean the drains as the water coming in over the side is starting to accumulate and not flow out. Luckily, I had resewed the clew so that it didn’t completely rip off in the wind. The front of the squall had passed and I lowered our reefed jib, but huge seas continue with 20-25 knot winds gusting to 30. We had found our forecasted northerly – and it kicked our ass.

But that was only the beginning. The northerly had pushed us too fast and we were coming in hot to Luperon, Dominican Republic. We get close around 11 pm; unfortunately we have to wait for the 6:30 am sunrise before we can attempt to enter the anchorage. This is how many boats go down; you get desperate, tired, and reckless. I was dead. I don’t know how Dad did it, but he managed the helm for almost 7 hours. After failed attempts to heave to, Dad just went back and forth beating into the northerly and then letting it push us into the harbor. It was painful. Cold, pouring rain, pushing through 10 foot seas – no stars, no moon, but blackness and pain. By the end of it I had sworn off another blue water passage. How Dad managed I will never know. Around 6 am he can’t take it anymore and we begin to go into Luperon.

We don’t have charts for this anchorage (while we actually do, but haven’t found them yet). So we are relying heavily on Bruce VanSant’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South and the chartplotter. As we get close the sun begins to rise and it is just magic. One of the most gorgeous sights I have ever seen in my life. You can smell the thick perfume of wet dirt. The water is light brown with green caps while the rolling hills are dark grey-green and covered with a mist descended from the glowing grey sky. We dodge fishing buoys and small fishing boats and as we turn the last corner there are mast, at first only a few but soon there are at least thirty! While we are in awe of this, we quickly run aground. As Bruce had said turn off your chartplotter. Our chartplotter had said we were just fine, but instead of giving the yellow stick berth we should have hugged it to the port (as it was a mid-channel marker). We can’t see much in the murky water but as I jump on the bow we dislodge in a plume of black mud. The anchorage is full of shallow shoals throughout – it seems like every area that a boat is not anchored at is actually a shoal. We lay down our Bruce in the very muddy bottom and are anchored next to the giant thatched roof of the yachtclub. The admiral comes to the boat to collect money, then we go pay four different people at customs – it comes to a total of around $150 USD. I doubt the majority of that will get to any real government organization. After another wonderful bluewater passage we are sitting in a nice hurricane hole, which we don’t plan on leaving for a while. Luperon will be our home for the next month or so and it is welcomed to be free of blue water for a bit.

Departure At Anchor (short one ripped jib)
For your appreciation – a haggard captain takes joy in finally getting a cheap beer! Yes that is right, we are finally out of the Bahamas and can afford to drink heavily! The first thing we do is drink cheap beer and have a fresh seafood lunch at Liddy’s (a house of ill-repute).

No Mercy? Damn Straight.

The Sabbath morning was a sailing lesson with how to whip lines, read tells, reef the main, and lower the lazy jacks. The boat sails very nicely this morning and it was fun to really have her sail, but Lee again discovers lots of issues. First and foremost is the jib sail.

The block and tackles which should be positioned so that the jib lines will bisect the sail are not at all near where they should be and are very hard to move, so we have to add new ones. The jib sail itself is too long on the hypotenuse and thus will not tighten up when lifted and cups the wind too much. Finally our jib sail is 150% which is too big for our boat. We need to recut the sail and insert some luffing foam so that the jib will not billow out so much.
We get back just in time to grab a car to Danny Buoy’s to watch the Sabbath game. I have to make up for last week when I was stuck at sea. I hear, even though it was a loss, that it was a good game with some overtime against the Bears. They put my game on all of the TVs and even the large projection screen. It is a wonderful game to watch on a big screen with the commentators booming over the loud speakers. I count this game as an apology to fans, saying “sorry we have been so bad, so here is a kick butt final home game, we won’t pull our starters – you deserve this!” Williams throws up an amazing block and Jared Allen gets a nice sack and force fumble. There is more noise in the metrodome for our defense than the offence, who is also doing some great work with good plays by Rice and Shianacoe. As the Cowboys fan next to me said, “This doesn’t seem like a team that is in the playoffs, but more like on who is fighting for it.” Bravo guys.

To top off this amazing day are the glow worms of Sapodilla Bay. The glow worms of the Caicos banks mate only three to six days after a full moon and then only for 15 minutes about an hour after dusk. There is a spiral of neon blue eggs that the male zigzags through. What it looks like from your boat is millions of neon blue star bursts with ensuing even brighter glowing lines. It was amazing. Sapodilla Bay, with its glowing marine worms at night and frolicking dolphins in the morning, was the highlight of Turks and Caicos.

As this wraps up the Vikings football season, I am ready to get back to work on our poor boat and get her ready for our next crossing. After hitchhiking for a ride to the Do-It Center, the only place to get any hardware in Provo, we spend the day in the rain working – whipping and (mildly) burning lines, tightening the lifelines, and resewing the clew in the jib sail. I really enjoy whipping lines and tightening the lifelines was easy, but resewing the jib sail was impossible. The material is so thick and stiff that it is almost impossible to sew even with the industrial needle I have. After two hours I had finished sewing the clew, only about 12 inches of sewing. Since we have a weather window we decide to quickly ready the boat and head out about 4 pm (just before dusk). Yes, it is time for another crossing. Soon I will be back in the Dominican Republic.

If Not Now, Then When?

(Backdated to New Year’s)

The waters of Sapodilla Bay are excruciatingly beautiful and overnight they had quickly filled up with new sailing vessels. In addition to Restless, a beautiful schooner which was captained by a very friendly South African mechanic, Lee, and his German fiancé, Gesine, Three Amigos had also shown up again. Other than getting an anchor stuck in a coral head and having to dive on it in the morning they had a pretty uneventful crossing. Psh. The customs, $15 for entry and $15 for exiting, was very simple – except they have no VHF radio or change, so go in there prepared. After customs Lee quickly rowed over and soon our beautiful blue Perkins 4108 was in pieces. They checked the intake valve to see if it was obstructed at all. They opened up the salt water pump. They checked the exhaust manifold. They pulled off the heat exchanger and cleaned that. They checked the impeller. They really spent the whole day pulling apart the engine, while I pulled down our beautiful nautical looking vertical cleats which turned out to be a real bugger as the jib lines continuously got caught there on the crossing over. Finally, Lee asks if I had cleaned the prop and of course I said yes (because I had in Andros), but I really hadn’t done a good enough job as there was a thick chalky layer that encrusted our prop and was causing the engine to overheat.

With the engine back in working order we are free to roam about Provo. Although all of the south side marinas and anchorages are very far away from towns and your only option to get to downtown or to the north coast where all the big hotels and restaurants are is to take a cab (read: expensive), take a jitney (read: kind of sketchy), hitchhike (read: don’t forget your towel). After a nice dinner at Las Brisas we get a phone number for a reliable jitney and we explore downtown Provo, which is limited really to a few local bars, a supermarket, and marine store.

. As a New Year’s present we decide to move the boat to Caicos Marina and Shipyard in hopes we would find it easier to access the north side, which is where all of the people are (unfortunately it kind of just put us farther away). Caicos Marina has the best showers I have seen probably ever – polished, white, and hot. The power was free and I could get internet on the boat – a New Year’s miracle. $1 per foot which was also acceptable, but don’t try to do laundry here as you will spend a fortune ($10 or so per load). Here we run into Spring Song – all of the boats from Rum Cay had made it to Turks, but they had the worst time of it. Their story made my engineless passage look like a cake walk. At Plana Cays they anchored to stop and make lunch and when they were ready to leave the starter went out on their engine and then the wind came out so they had to deploy a second anchor. After much work the coast guard came and helped them retrieve one of the anchors but the 45 pound Bruce and 100 feet of chain is still sitting on the floor of the ocean west of Plana Cays. Still engineless when they came to Turks and Caicos they had to be towed in through the coral heads - this took 5 hours. Like I said – my passage was a cake walk.

Lee and Gesine, continuing to prove themselves as the nicest people ever, rented the last car in Provo and we went to provision in an ACTUAL supermarket.

It was wonderful, although, something I would probably never do as I don’t think I would drive well with left lane driving and traffic circles. We also stopped for a very nice lunch at Tiki Hut just outside of Turtle Cove, a big buck marina on the north side. It seems like all of the restaurants here are incorporated with yacht clubs or hotels, but as all the beaches are public these hotels aren’t really limited only to their patrons. For New Year’s night we have supper at Jimmy’s Dive Bar and afterwards I am off to a GIANT bonfire on the beach in front of Club Med.

Although I was worried that I would never find Eddie and Mark from Three Amigos, I soon made friends with Jasmine, a super awesome girl who really saved my New Years. We had a blast running around the bonfire, dancing, and watching the most amazing fireworks I had ever seen. Every hotel put off fireworks in succession. I eventually do find Mark and Eddie just after midnight and around 4 am hitchhike with them back to the boat – the people in Provo are so nice and we were easily home!

Day one of the new year was spent on the beaches along Grace Bay and cooking a gourmet dinner on the boat – yes I finally got to use the boats outdoor propane grill, which is splendid, by the way.

But soon we are back to work on the boat as Lee seems to find many problems with my beautiful boat. We redid the dinghy lines so that when we hoist it the stress is spread throughout the dinghy. After removing all of the cotter keys Lee showed us how to tune the rigging (tighten up the shroud lines which hold the masts from wiggling too much). Lee also helps us switch the halyards, previously we had a metal halyard for raising the main sail, which supposedly went out in the 70’s. The metal halyard was consistently snagging on itself so we switched it with the blue line halyard for the main sail. We planned to test all of our new systems with a nice little sail around the south side of Provo with Lee and Gesine.

For your appreciation – you know it’s a real supermarket when they have Boone’s Farm and Sanka. If you are ever in Provo, the Graceway Market is, by far, the best supermarket. Please note that the price of the Boone’s Farm is $10!