DAY 102 - March 1st 2013 - Mona Passage - between Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
As we said our goodbyes to Samana Bay, I reminisced on our great visit here to the Dominican Republic no horror stories to tell, only good ones. I have been here three times before as a tourist at an all-inclusive resort, this trip was very different and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. I was apprehensive and exhilarated at the same time about this crossing, the Mona Passage is supposed to be a treacherous route where the Atlantic collides with the Caribbean Sea and creates turmoil and we have to cross it to get to Puerto Rico. We motored out of the bay at 10.30am in calm sea and looked for whales; we did see one far off in the distance but no others. We carried on down the shore of DR, enjoying the big swells, relatively calm sea and sunshine galore praying that this weather was going to hold. We headed out into the passage and it stayed pretty much the same all night. Just before dusk Doug saw a whale jump right out of the water, an amazing sight, he or she must have jumped 6 or 7 times straight up, unfortunately it was about a mile away so could not take a picture. Seeing it from this far I thought it must have been huge. The night came upon us quickly, a bit cloudy but lots of stars and no more than 10 or 12 knots of wind with 12 sec swells. I went down for the first sleep and from then on we were able to take three hour watches through the night.
DAY 103 - March 2nd 2013 - Puerto Real - Boqueron - Puerto Rico.
18 01.436N:067 10.689W
I was lucky enough to have the dawn watch, a beautiful sunrise as we passed Isla Desecheo and then I saw the first lights of Puerto Rico. We had made it across the worse stretch although we still had nine hours to go to Boqueron. I was hoping to leave Doug sleep longer but about four hours out of Boqueron our engine powered down again and we thought we had it figured out with a clean filter every trip but no this was exactly the same. Out pops the gib, by now the sea is quite calm and the sun is well and truly up, so Doug went below and changed the filter again and bled the fuel pipes and off we go putting down the anchor at 12.30pm (26 hours) by the side of Kathrian and Maggie who had sailed for 2 days from Ocean World. We are fortunate to have Nexus Cards and Doug had already found out that Puerto Rico is happy to welcome Canadians with Nexus Cards, so our check in was a breeze, did not even have to go ashore. I called Kellie who was thrilled that we got here so quickly and is planning on coming over tomorrow all the way from Fajardo. WE MADE IT.