We are in Puerto Rico.

 

We made it in 31 hours, it should have taken us 25. Four boats left Samana Dominican Republic at 10am for Puerto Rico after having many meetings about when we were leaving and weather conditions. Everything looked great on the Saturday morning of our crossing. This water is called the Mona Passage and it is known for being a nasty passage.  To check the weather we have many ways to cross reference with all our information. I use Windfinder another boat uses Passage Weather and another uses Chris Parker. He is a weather man you can listen to on the single side band radio and you can also prescribe be email and get personnel weather reports. All the weather reports were the same, winds from the east 10 knots gusting to 12 and waves from the north east 3 feet 8 seconds apart. This would make a good crossing, not the best but good. Well all of them were wrong! After leaving at 10 am winds were around 10 knots and waves were very small in the Samana Bay. Around 12 the winds picked up and kept building until they got to 18 and 20. So know the waves start to build. Finally the waves were 3 to 4 feet and 3 seconds apart all the way. We all decided to go along the shore and use the east winds as long as we could then turn into them hoping they would die down by midnight. This didn't happen and we had to turn east into the wind. This is a tricky crossing because there is a shoal half way across called the hour class shoal. This shoal is about 100 feet deep and it doesn't seem like it could be a problem but there is a current that runs into this shoal from 1000 feet deep. The water will rush upwards and cause a washing mashing effect. If you go through this shoal you can find waves coming at you from all directions. It's wise to stay clear of this area. Beating into the waves is very hard. It slows you down by 3 or 4 knots so instead of 6 or 7 knots your doing 3 to 5 knots which means you arrive a lot later that you want to. You want to arrive before 4 pm because the thunder storms start building on the north side of Puerto Rico and then move across the Mona Passage. We all thought that we should be going a little fast than we thought. We were doing 1 and 2 knots. That makes for a long passage. We found there was a lot of currents going through this area and we were told that but we hoped they would have been in our favor. We are all very tired and glad we made it safely. Tomorrow we will check in with customs and move on down the coast.

Getting Ready To Leave The Dominican Republic

 

On Tuesday we sailed over to the National Park again with out other sailing friends. As we sailed we talked about our next weather window and we decided to leave early Saturday morning for Mayaquas Puerto Rico. It's going to be a 24 to 30 hour sail, we hope! The Mona Passage is a hard crossing because of wind, storms, currents, and shoals. As of Thursday night we have 4 boats going together so there is safety in numbers. So the people we are here with now have not been to the National Park yet so our buddy boat "Let It Be" offered to take us on there boat for an over night. This was much the same trip as last time but we saw so much more at the echo resort.

Here's Laurie relaxing on the front of the catamaran "Let It Be"

 Here's Frank who owns Let It Be

 The girls from left to right Laura, Laurie, Mary Grace and Laurie's holding Captain the wonder dog.

 Chris from the sail boat Temerity

 Outside seating area

 Inside Nav station

 Our room for the night with our own bathroom.

 

We took our dinghy's up the mangrove river to walk up to the restaurant.

look at these bird nest's

 

It was a 20 minute walk to the restaurant.

 

 After lunch we had a tour of the new echo resort. It's supposed to be finished by the end of June.

 Built in the side of a mountain.

 

 Top floor view

After returning to the boat we had a very relaxing evening on the big catamaran.

Next day it was back to Puerto Bahia Marina in Samana

 

Friday we prepare to make our long passage to Mayaques Puerto Rico. We will leave Saturday around 4am and hope to get there by daylight on Sunday morning.

 We are very sad that we will be leaving our long time buddy boat "Let It Be". They have to fly back to Florida for some business and then Frank has an opportunity to sail on a 52 foot catamaran from Bermuda to Spain with a fellow he met that has sailed in the around the world Volvo race. It's a great opportunity that can't be passed up. Frank and Mary Grace are thinking of a circumnavigation so this would be great experience for Frank. Good luck to Frank and we hope to see Let It Be as we pass each other next fall. We have become great friends and we will miss them very much.

Stay safe Let It Be.

 

Not much going on, just relaxing

We have been at the pool and played some pool.

Here's a video of a quick walk around the resort

A look around the marina from our dock

We are planning our next move. Watching for a weather window we are not sure to do it in one sail or two. The weather might dictate that. We hope to get going soon.

We had a great day of exploring

One of the boats we came to Samana from Luperon with was a catamaran named "Malolo" which means flying fish. They invited us and the people from the other boat "Windmachine" to go to the National Park Los Haitises. We were told that this park looks like Bora Bora in the French Polynesian Islands. Of course we could not leave the dock just for the day with out a "Dispatcho" from the Comondantcia. We don't understand why you need a Dispatcho to go some where just for the day when you can rent a car and drive around the country. We got underway about 8am for a 10 mile trip across the bay to the Park.

As we got closer we could see how beautiful it was, palm trees and rock mountains real lush jungle like.

The couple from Windmachine Ben and Abby have a drone so they did a video of us standing on the beach.



This is a very beautiful park BUT we are finding the Dominican people don't care about keeping there country clean. From what we saw on the beach it looks like all the garbage from Samana blows over to there park. Out of sight out of mind!

Garbage all over the beach.

 

We were told there was a restaurant near the park so off we went by dinghy to find this place. We were told that we have to go to the mangrove river and keep right. It was like traveling down a jungle river. I thought why would some one build a restaurant out here!



 

  

We traveled about 20 minutes up this river and in the middle of nowhere we came to a dock with about five big boats and an old pole barn. We didn't see a restaurant so we asked one of the guys working on a boat and he pointed to go up a driveway. We saw nothing but farm land so of we went up the driveway. There were some guys out in the field with horses bringing something in from the fields. We got closer and asked one of them what it was and he said rice. They would put 2 heavy bags on the horses to bring the rice out of the field to the road for the truck to pick up. It looked very hard on the horse because they had to walk through mud up to there knees with the heavy bags.

 

Notice what they use for a saddle. It's an old tire and the blanket looks like it's made of palm leaves.

  

We still can't see a restaurant but we were told by the farmers it's just up the driveway. Another 10 minutes and there it was in the middle of nowhere. This place was unbelievable. It was an echo resort called Paraiso Cano Honda.  here's a few pictures.

 

 

 

We all had a great day and got back to our marina around 7pm. This is a beautiful country and Laurie and I like it here. Today we have to say good buy to Malolo because they have to move on to get to Puerto Rico by the beginning of June. There is a weather window for the next few days so now's the time for them to go. This is what we like about this trip, meeting new friends and sharing our experience's with them. We hope to see them again soon.