December 1st we cautiously leave Cartegena for the second time...with the transmission rebuilt for the second time, in a month! It's a Friday and this has Sharon a bit nervous. There is an old sailor's myth that it is bad luck to leave port on a Friday, it is supposed to jinx your journey. Lots and lots of sailors still believe this and you see very few boats leaving port on Fridays! Sharon never believed in these myths but we had left port last time exactly one week earlier, on a Friday, and of course had the transmission fail just minutes after going through the old underwater walls of the city. Was it just bad luck or was it because we were leaving port on a Friday. Every superstitious sailor in town had been telling us all week we shouldn't have left on a Friday, was that why we had transmission problems. So to do it again a week later seemed to be really pushing fate. Vaughn on the other hand thought the myths were silly and that the weather window was just to good to pass up. Sharon looked at the weather faxes a bunch of times and had to agree the weather window looked just to perfect. Sharon's logical side won over her superstitious side, so off we went early Friday morning.
Well the cross of the Caribbean Sea took 6 days and it was the most perfect crossing you could hope for. Not to say that it was calm! The Caribbean is never calm in December, never. But it was a great journey. The crossing was 656 miles to windward. We had winds slightly south of east; normal Caribbean trades blow 15 to 25 directly from the east or slightly northeast at this time of year, which is exactly where we wanted to go. You don't really want to spend lots of time exposed in the middle of an ocean we figured instead of tacking to windward we would head as hard to the wind as we could pinch it and see where we ended up. We figured with normal east winds the best that we could do was to make landfall in Jamaica and if we were really lucky perhaps we could make Haiti. Not that you wanted to go ashore on Haiti. We could not have timed the weather window any more perfectly...Southeast winds held for 4 days and we were able to make land fall in Dominican Republic! This saved us over 300 miles of beating up the coast from Jamaica to Dominican Republic. Here are some of the statistics of our crossing:
Total GPS miles traveled was 656.
Total time was 125 hours
Average speed was 5.248 mph
Highest speed was 8.4 knots
Average angle to the wind was 50 degrees
Average wind direction E-SE
Highest winds was 35 knots
Lowest wind was 8 knots
Biggest seas were 12 feet (only 6 hours but for 2 days
the seas were at least 10 feet)
Smallest sea was 2 feet
Average sea was 6 foot
Average heel was about 18 degrees (hard to get a good
meal)
Motor Sailed 30 hours (first 25 miles and last 100
miles)
All in all the trip was interesting. Lots of shooting stars, flying fish on board every morning and a big 1/2 moon. It was an accomplishment and a journey. We remember very quickly that it is a lot nicer to be sailing downwind than beating to weather. We were taking huge waves over the bow for days. We found spots that "Reality" leak that we never knew existed. We had to practically walk on the walls because we were so heeled over. Sharon needed to strap in to try and cook. We became very big fans of our self-steering wind vane. We call our wind vane "Peggy" (because it's a Flemming Design); she did a wonderful job of steering the boat throughout most of the crossing, big seas and all. The trip wasn't necessarily what we would call fun but it was an adventure, we are glad it is behind us now.
Our landfall was kind of an adventure also. After 6 days at sea we were tired to say the least and both really looking forward to pulling in to a safe bay and getting some rest. We picked the little harbor of Boca Chica because it looked to be really tucked in behind a whole string of reefs. To get in behind the reef was a little tricky. You had to go in through a little narrow passage then make a couple sharp dogleg turns. With this kind of a maze entrance we had taken the sails down and we were carefully motoring. Well just as soon as we got into the narrowest part of the channel the motor died! Where the channel had narrowed there was a bunch of garbage floating in the water all around us. Some garbage must have gotten wrapped on the prop! Never a dull moment! As we drifted toward the reef we quickly put the sails back up and started short tacking up the channel. We tried restarting the engine, it started, so we tried putting it in reverse to see if that would clear the prop, it died again immediately. We continued tacking up toward a Marina only to almost run into a sunken sailboat right it front of the Marina. It was completely underwater so we couldn't see it until we were right on top of it! The sunken boat came to within 3 feet of the surface which is a big problem given Reality's keel is 7 1/2 feet deep. Now we were really frazzled!! We quickly found a spot to anchor. Then Vaughn got on his snorkel stuff and jumped in to check out the prop, sure enough it was completely wrapped up with a plastic trap. He cut the trap away and we had a working motor again. Like we said never a dull moment! Safely anchored in...we both went and got some much-needed sleep!
We spent a week in Boca Chica. It was a beautiful area, white sand beaches protected by coral reefs off shore. All the taxi's in town were motor cycles so if you needed a ride somewhere you had to jump on the back of a motorcycle, different way to travel! We spent a day touring Santo Domingo; it is the oldest town in the New World. The old part of town is surrounded by walls and protected by Forts. The oldest Church in the New World is in the center of town. It was not quite as charming as Cartegena but a lot of fun to see. One of the highlights was to tour Christopher Columbus' family house. His son had lived in the house and his children. The house had been beautifully restored and was full of history.
It was interesting that the Dominican Republic is the first place in our travels that the government officials openly ask for a gift (bribe) for clearing us in and out of the country. It cost us a few extra bucks to get the paperwork we needed to leave the country but what the heck; it was a nice country. Checked out of Boca Chica we headed toward some of the islands just off the coast of Dominican Republic.
Boca Chica is also the first place that we have been approached by workers on the docks that wanted us to take them to Puerto Rico. They wanted out of their country and wanted to stow away and have us sneak them into Puerto Rico. No thanks! The economy in Dominican Republic is not be best.
We had a great sail to the Island of Catalina. The island was looked completely deserted when we arrived. It had beautiful white sand beaches and crystal clear water we enjoyed watching the sunset in this little piece of paradise. But the next morning to our surprises we were sharing paradise with a huge cruise ship "Love Boat"! He was anchored several hundred yards away and beginning to shuttle people in little boats into the beach. At 10:00am the beach was cram pack full of people! We decided to go in and see if we could find a spot on the beach for some lunch. With all those people there must be lots of restaurants. Well we were wrong, there wasn't a single restaurant but there were huge spreads of food catered by the cruise boats. So we joined in and stood in line and became cruise boaters for the day. We can now see why people say cruise boats have great food. They do and lots of it!
We left Catalina the next morning not interested in sharing it with yet another cruise boat and had a wonderful sail to Isla Saona. We short tacked between reefs in a brisk 20 knots of wind and perfectly flat seas. We were screaming along at 8 knot most of the day....great fun! Saona was another beautiful island and we only needed to share it with a couple groups of daytime snorkel party boats. These boats bring people out to the island for a couple hours and return to the mainland in the afternoon. After all the tourist left we enjoyed a few beers with the local boys who live on the island. We had a good time carrying on a conversation with our broken Spanish and their broken English. Maybe it was the beer but we think we actually understood each other!
We left Dominican Republic for a 100 mike sail to Puerto Rico. The Mono passage..... It was the longest and roughest 100 miles we have done in a long time! It took us 2 days and seems much worse than our 6-day crossing! Of course the 100 miles was directly into the wind. We weren't sure if we were every going to make it to Puerto Rico with the wind right on your noise and big waves coming from every direction. It was so rough and sloppy we broke "Peggy" the windvane and we lost our man over board pole, buoy and emergency light. A wave must have hit the back of the boat and sucked them right off the rail. We even thought we had lost our pet gecko "George".
Have we told you about "George"? He adopted us back in September in Panama. He hangs out in different places around the boat and eats bugs. He is the perfect pet!. We thought a big wave sucked him right off the boat because we did not see him for weeks and weeks after the Mono passage bash. But happily he did survive the ordeal he finally came back out from hiding after a month.
Puerto Rico is a very beautiful island with a high mountain ridge running down the center of the island. The backdrop as you sail along the coast is wonderful. Our greeting in Puerto Rico was kind of strange; we anchored near the little town of Paquera. On the point near where we anchored was a huge white bullet shaped rocket ship like thing with tail fins? It was kind of like a cross between a blimp and a rocket, very strange. After we had navigated our way in through the coral reefs and were just about ready to drop our anchor a local guy came zooming out to us in his little motor boat. He was yelling how lucky we were that we didn't run aground on the coral reef we had just navigated threw. He said the big opening with buoy markers was at the other end of the bay and that we were so LUCKY to not have hit the coral in the little unmarked channel we had chosen to come in. We had to laugh. He obviously had never been to the San Blas Island. This channel had been a piece of cake compared to some of the places we have been to. Sharon of course had climbed up the mast to the first spreader as we always do when navigating through coral reefs. She could clearly see where to go and where not to...it wasn't luck. What does he think we are...stupid! We don't count on luck...if we can't clearly see threw the coral we pick another anchorage! Then that night it really got strange! The rocket ship lifted off or kind of floated straight up and started flashing all kinds of weird light patterns. It stayed directly above the point all night flashing it's weird lights in patterns. We think it was Desmondeds rocket ship (all Buffet's fans will understand) and that she was trying to talk to her seven sisters in the stars! We will never know for sure but we do have proof, we have pictures!
We left the next day and had a wonderful sail to Ponce, Puerto Rico for Christmas The wind was blowing 15 to 20 and the seas were sloppy so we short tacked our way up the coast tucking behind coral reef. It was like being in San Francisco Bay short tacking up raccoon straight. After two years of ocean sailing where our average tack is at least 5 miles we kind of enjoyed the work out of tacking every few minutes! Ponce is the second largest city in Puerto Rico. We spent Christmas Eve wondering through the shopping district. It helped make it feel a little more like Christmas to see everyone scurrying around do their last minute Christmas shopping. We took buses on a city tours. They were all free. Ponce is a nice town. It has a wonderful old fire station museum and a whole community of homes that the city donated to the fireman and their families. As the story goes...in the late 1800's the city was almost destroyed by a huge fire. The brave volunteer firemen valiantly fought the fire and saved most of the city! So the city gave them each a house to show their appreciation. The homes are painted bright black with bright red trim each year by the city. Now the 3rd and 4th generation families of the fireman still live in them. They never have paid any house or water bills and never will.... We also toured the castle of the Castillo Serralles family; they owned the largest sugar plantations and rum distilleries in Puerto Rico. It was a beautiful Spanish style home up on the hill-overlooking town. For Christmas we went out to a nice dinner and listened to a local band. It was a nice day. But we really, really missed being home with our families. Christmas just isn't Christmas without family.
We headed to very large protected bay called Salinas in Puerto Rico for New Years. On the way to Salinas we were motoring behind some reefs and suddenly heard a laud bang and the motor died! Not again!!! We went through the routine and sure enough it looked like we had picked up something on the prop again. So while we drifted along Vaughn jumped in the water with his snorkel on and found we had wrapped a long, long nylon line from a local fisherman's net or trap on our prop! It took Vaughn a 30 minutes to cut away all the line. The fisherman in Puerto Rico don't make motoring around easy, they do not put flags on their nets like every where else we have been. They just put a little tiny 5-inch float that you can't see if there are any waves. After Vaughn had cut all the line away we were able to continue on....but we noticed we now had a bad vibration when motoring! Oh boy more boat projects to look forward to. Once we arrived in Salinas we dove the prop inspected everything it all seemed to check out OK.
New Years Eve we joined several other cruisers. It was a pretty quite evening. Half the group was from Quebec, Canada and spoke French. So conversation was a little tough. It sure made us miss the big blow out party we had had last year with our family to usher in year 2000. Well a guess only once a century can you expect a blow out party like that. Year 2001 was a nice quite way to start the next millennium!