Early on Tuesday morning we left Barahona and got as far as Punta Salinas by noon. We motor sailed all of the way and it pretty much looked like the picture above the whole time. If you look carefully you can see the mountains on the right hand side of the picture. The DR is very mountainous. It is beautiful. We anchored off a beach in a little bay off of the point. There was apparently a fishing camp there because there were lots of fishermen on shore fishing with nets. We are fairly sure they weren't used to seeing a cruising sailboat in there. We just wanted to rest since we were leaving again around 7:00pm that night. We fully expected to have the military come by and question us but they did not. We had the beer ready! Especially since technically we were not allowed to be there, our paperwork, the “despacho” said Boca Chica.

We pulled the anchor up again at 7:00pm and motor sailed throughout the night getting to the marina at Boca Chica at 8:00am this morning. They say that it’s best to travel at night because that is when the winds are calmer so we figured we would try that out. We thought the marina would not be open yet but we tried to call them anyhow. No one answered but we decided to just take a mooring ball and check it out after the fact by dinghy. We found out we had some cruising friends already here so we stopped to see them to get some information before heading into the office. When we got to the office we learned that the despacho to go to the next port was going to cost more than twice what we had been led to believe. It had also cost more when we got the first one in Baharona. They don’t let you go from one port to another without a despacho and they charge outrageous fees. We were not happy about that.

We were checking out what we wanted to do while we were here, we even considered leaving the boat for a night and checking into a hotel in Santo Domingo which is a large town about a half hour away from here. Then we read the weather report and realized we would be stuck here for another week if we didn't leave tomorrow. That changed all our plans. We decided we were not that enamored of the Dominican Republic and we would much prefer to be in Puerto Rico, our next port. We got the ball rolling and tomorrow morning at 8:00am the Coast Guard will be on the dock to inspect our boat since we are leaving the country. We hear there will be a drug sniffing dog as part of the inspection. I wonder if the dog likes beer. Can you even give someone a beer at 8:00am??

At least we got our fuel tank full and got all our laundry done here. We also took showers using the marina showers but both Bill and I gave that experience a very negative report. We are both looking forward to being in a United States territory again! We should get to Puerto Rico by Sunday.