March 22. Port Salinas. A very nice protected bay of water partially surround by mountains welcomes us early in the morning. We are happy to drop anchor in flat calm and to have HT be still! We have our Q flag (yellow quarantine flag) raised. We tidied up the place and waited for the Navy officials to come check us in. They never arrived. We slept.

Here in the D.R. It is normal for armed Navy personnel to approach & board your boat if you are flying the Q flag or no flag. Once a boat & crew are cleared into customs & immigration and the courtesy flag of the D.R. replaces the Q flag then we are free to move about the country. Problem with this process is the D.R. Navy doesn't have boats! That's right. Our experiences have been they come out in a fishing boat (a large skiff) and bang against our fiberglass. We have a few scratches and missing a couple of small chunks of fiberglass on our rub rail. But they have guns!!

A few years ago we had a not so pleasant experience of checking into the D.R in Luperon. This time we had very nice and, dare I say fun, check in. We did have to go to the Navy and let them know we are here and need to check in. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Their english is as bad as our spanish. Being guest in their country we try our level best to speak their language. After my greetings of salutations. I equate my spanish to spanish baby talk. No verbs or unconjugated verbs, and lots of hand signs. I know lots of spanish words, but I'm not conversational. After greeting one young man, he said my spanish was good. I said no. Mas hablo espanol. Mas malo. More I speak Spanish. More bad. He laughed and showed us where we needed to go.

Eventually we communicated and we were told to go back to our boat and wait. They would get the immigration officer and come to us in about an hour. Great. We came back made some breakfast. I also made a platter of cheese & crackers and added to my cold drinks supply in the fridge. I planned to make this check in a good experience. Closer to two hours later the entourage approached in a large RUBBER dinghy! Yeah Rubber! Once all that was coming aboard, did so, and hands were shook. I offered beverages. The immigration officer got to work. Then I brought out the cheese & crackers. We had a little party and there was laughter while business was conducted. The boat was "searched" and verified we weren't carrying Haitians or drugs. Richard paid our entrance fee of $103 with all U.S. 20's and told the guy to keep the change. Knowing that they would not be prepared to make change anyway. The exchange rate is about 44 pesos to the dollar. $17 is not so much, but 748 pesos is a lot. Like it or not, and while it is not required, tipping the officials a little, is customary. Also the small offering of drinks & snacks didn't hurt either. After Richard made his tip. They declared it was the immigration officers' birthday. Feliz Cumpleanos, I sang. They sang. I grabbed a bag of bite sized butterfingers and tossed them out to all the guys. Maybe it really was & maybe it wasn't. I asked if a ?foto esta bien? !Si! I took a picture and then they all brought out their phones to take pictures of us!!

Yes, this time we had a very pleasant check in into the Dominican Republic.