I've talked about our leaving Antigua, our sail to Nevis, passed St. Kitts, then Saba and back to the Virgins. Now I can recall our passages to the islands of the Spanish Virgins, Puerto Rico, the DR and the Caicos Islands. Culebra, our stop in the Spanish Virgins was a bit of a disappointment. Not to diminish the beauty of this popular cruising grounds but we hit just when the trade winds were at their most ferocious. We anchored in Bahia de Almodovar, one of Donald Street's most acclaimed anchorages in the Caribbean. Well in my humble opinion he is full of bull. The bottom was fouled with grass and other less desirable stuff. When the wind hit 25 knots we started dragging. Alice in a very diminutive manner said Bob I think we are moving. Yup we were. So as night approached and the winds were howling we picked up the anchor and looked for another spot. Now understand, there were some mooring buoys close in to the reef. Alice suggested we try and pick up one. It was getting dark and we needed to get Lucky Bird settled so we tried. The painter on the buoy was only two feet long and when Alice hooked it with our boat hook the wind quickly created one of those oh-shit moments. She's up at the bow calling for help attempting to hold our 14 ton sailboat with one arm and the boat hook. I immediately said let it go!! One hand for the boat, one for yourself works except when your arm could be pulled out of your body. So the boat hook went flying. Now to make a long evening a little shorter, Alice did not want to lose the boat hook so with the wind howling we circled, backed and finally were able to get close enough that she could hook it and it was safe back home on board. We re-anchored and this time it held despite Mother Nature's attempts to blow us away.
From the Spanish Virgins we had several very fast downwind sails to Puerto Rico. I mean fast, 10.9 knots in winds of 25 knots behind us. It's amazing how much ground we can cover going that fast over the bottom. It took us only three days to passage the southern coast of Puerto Rico. We stopped in a couple of harbors just to slow down and decompress. Our final destination was Boquerón, the south west corner of PR. This is a jumping off point for boats heading west and an arrival point for boats easting across the Mona Passage.
Ah, the Mona Passage. This body of water looms large in the minds of cruising sailors. It has quite a reputation and for Alice and me we were a little unsettled at the prospects of crossing. North of PR is a trench many miles deep. One of the deepest spots on the earth; so picture the Equatorial Current moving west, dropping into this very deep hole, accelerating and then bumping into the Mona Passage where the bottom quickly raises up to several hundred feet and in some places to less than 100 feet. Wow!; all that energy slamming into these shallows. Where does it all go? Into wave energy, I mean big waves very close together and for us a very small boat that means hell on earth; Rolling you can't imagine. I mean ROLLING LIKE YOU CAN'T IMAGINE. So I decided to head out to deeper water, heading north, north and more north. That helped and finally the rolling became almost tolerable. Our passage was to Samana on the north east coast of the Dominican Republic, it was about 160 + miles so we were prepared for night sailing with a daytime arrival.
We arrived in Samana by 10:00 not knowing exactly what to expect for Customs and Immigration. We also needed diesel fuel, so we slowly moved through the harbor looking for a gas dock; Oops nothing like that exists in Samana. A guy hanging on the dock told us to anchor and the Navy would be out to check us in and the he could ferry fuel to us. Yuck! So we anchored and yup out came a boat with five people. They all wanted to come aboard. No wait a minute!! How about a couple of you guys and why so many? Three came aboard checked our papers, wrote down lots of information about us and then told us we had to go ashore to Immigration and the Port Authority. This was becoming so suspicious to us that we were reluctant to put our dinghy over and told them we needed to keep moving and the dinghy was not an option. So they agreed to take us ashore and return us. What followed was what books are written about. A foreign country, officials looking for hand outs, unfortunately the Smiths didn't want to play their game. There were five people standing around waiting for us to give them tips, why for just doing their jobs, NO WAY from this American. It was comical to watch and some of them asked what we might do for them. We wound up giving $10 to one fellow who actually added value to the process. Having been through Customs and Immigration in so many countries this was the worst and most patronizing. The process cost us about $100 but only because we kept asking why? Alice and I felt like the whole process was a scam and were very disappointed with the DR process. One final note, the next morning we had made arrangements with the Navy to give us our departure papers. I had indicated we would be sailing to Puerto Plata, our next port. When two guys arrived I informed them we had decided to leave for the Turks and Caicos Islands, well that sent them into a tizzie, they had their paper work for Puerto Plata and now we were telling them we wanted something different; just not possible. Well this American thought otherwise and managed to get these officials to give us our departure papers, without fee. They stood around for a while looking for us to give them a tip and I simply asked them if we were done. The looks on their faces, oh my God, no tips from this guy.
That done, the sail to the Turk Island of Sandy Key was wonderful, Twenty six hours and we were alone in another island in paradise. Later that evening another sailboat, Walkabout anchored next to us. Go figure, out here in nowhere, two boats, two sets of people converging for a moment in time. That's what this adventure is all about, boats passing, people meeting and experiencing the magnificence of out world.