We’re back in NH. We rolled into our driveway around 2:30am last Saturday, the 17th. Our New England boat, Dumbledore, has been launched. We’re working on getting him ready for a 4-6 week cruise along the coast of Maine starting sometime in July. Until then, we’re visiting family and friends, and getting in a bunch of appointments.
Between January and mid-June, we put on a lot of miles and visited a lot of islands. Here’s a recap.
Miles traveled (nm): ~1300
Countries visited: 9
Nights at anchor: 89
Nights on mooring: 42
Nights in marinas: 16
Nights under way: 5
Nights ashore: 7
We started in the Berry Islands, Bahamas, on January 8th. After that we went to Turks & Caicos, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Martin (both the French and Danish sides), St. Bart’s, and ended at St. Kitt’s. We stayed in 46 different anchorages, 6 different mooring fields and 6 different marinas. We took road trips with friends to Santo Domingo, DR and Old San Juan, PR. We made overnight passages from Rum Cay to Mayaguana; from Turks & Caicos to Luperón; from Luperón to Rio San Juan; from Escondido to Puerto Real, PR; and from the USVI to St. Martin.
We did a lot more “making miles” than I would have liked, but we did finally get to the actual Caribbean Sea, which was our target this year. Next season we plan to confine our travels to the area between St. Kitt’s and the Spanish Virgin islands. It will be lovely to spend multiple weeks in each country next.
Thanks for following my adventures. I will post about our coast of Maine travels this summer, but perhaps not as frequently as I typically do.
Yes, we are in Puerto Rico and have been since April 11th, but I never finished telling you about our time in Luperón, so that’s what I’m going to do this week.
We were in Luperón from March 13th to April 6th. It was longer than we’d planned, but we made good use of it. Luperón is a popular cruiser destination. Many use it as a stopover as they travel to or from the Caribbean Sea. It’s the best hurricane hole in the Caribbean hurricane belt, so many leave their boats there for hurricane season, some staying aboard, others choosing to return to their home bases on land. Other cruisers end up staying indefinitely. We joined the Dominican Republic Boaters & Cruisers FB group and the Luperón Boaters & Cruisers FB group. There we got all our questions about the area answered. The Luperón group was our go-to for things to see and do, including socializing with other cruisers. It is a very welcoming community, both the expatriate cruisers and the locals. The locals predominantly speak Spanish, so I got to practice my Spanish. I’m afraid I was lax in my journaling during those four weeks, so this post captures the highlights though not necessarily the chronology. Let’s dive in…
Dave and I rented a car two more times for our own land excursions. The first time we went to 27 Charcos (waterfalls) of Damajagua, a National Park about an hour drive east of Luperón. We did their zipline/7 waterfall + lunch package for a measley $47 USD each. Most people go for just the falls, so our “group” was just us, two other people, and our guide, Agosto. We donned our life vests (for the falls) and helmets (for zipline & falls) and started off for the five ziplines and two suspended (by ropes) bridges. It was our first zipline and it was a good starter set for us. After the final zipline, it was a short walk to the first of the 7 waterfalls we would do. Because of their years-long drought, the Río Damajagua (Damajagua River) has only 7 of the 27 waterfalls open anyway. There were some big tour groups there from the cruise ships in Puerto Plata, but the guides kept things organized and moving smoothly. We were impressed. At most of the falls you slid into the pool below on a natural rock slide. There was the option to jump into two of the seven pools. We jumped at the first one, which was only about 12 feet high. We took the slide at the other jump point which was 18 feet high, the highest fall of the set. Once in a pool, we waded and/or swam the short distance to the next waterfall. The water was cool and refreshing. We had a ball! At the end, it was about a ¾ mile hike back to the start where we had a buffet style lunch of Dominican food that was quite good.
On our way back to Luperón, we decided to keep going west a bit to La Isabela, the site of the first Spanish settlement by Christopher Columbus in 1493. We waited for the guide who spoke a little English, so between that and our little Spanish, we got the gist of the history. Columbus and the settlers were only there three years, ultimately driven out by malaria. Columbus’ son, Diego, settled in what is now Santo Domingo. Sometime in the 1940s, some visiting dignitaries were coming to visit the site. Some person of import asked the site be “cleaned up.” The person tasked with the job decided that meant all the structures should be razed. Yikes! So much for history. The site is now marked off with stones indicating structure locations. There was a small museum, but we didn’t have much time inside and it was all in Spanish. We got the gist of the history anyway. (slideshow below, click right or left arrows)
view of the bay
outlines of domiciles
600 year old tree
location of church
representative skeleton in cemetery location
site of Columbus’ home
view from the museum
Another time we rented a car and drove to the Puerto Plata area. We started by driving to the Teleférico (cable car) to ride to the top of Mount Isabel de Torres, a National Park and botanical garden at 2600 feet. It overlooks Puerto Plata at the coast, and you can see all the way to Sosua to the east. The roundtrip cable car was only $10 USD/person. We did wait 90 minutes for the ride up, but it was well worth it! (There was no wait for the ride down.) When you first reach the top, you are greeted by the large Christ the Redeemer statue. They’ve done a beautiful job laying cement and stone walkways through the natural tropical forest at the top and interspersing plantings of local flora. There is also a walkway along the outer edge overlooking Puerto Plata and the ocean. Gorgeous views, especially on a clear day like we had! After we descended, we drove the short distance to the small colonial section of Puerto Plata. We walked through an old church, walked the Malecón (walkway along the ocean), and toured the small Fortaleza de San Felipe (that’s a fort). It was a lovely day.
going up
Christ the Redeemer
Puerto Plata
North coast looking to Sosua to the east
lovely paths
little cave
hibiscus walkway (not in bloom)
view of mountains
back side of restaurant
us going down, other car coming up
church in Puerto Plata
along the Malecon
Fortaleza de San Felipe
Activities in Luperón
If you’ve been following my blog for the past two years, you know we love to explore ruins. We visited many in the Bahamas, and Luperón provided a couple as well. The first was the fairly recent ruin of the Luperon Marina Yacht Club on of the west side of the bay. I have been unable to find details of its closing, but it was still open in the early 2000s, maybe even into the early 2010s. You can see a few pictures of it here [link] from when it was still open. I’ve included here a couple of pictures that we took for comparison. Now, one of the local expats conducts morning yoga among the remaining columns twice a week.
yacht club hotel ruins
main dining area
looked like a bar area
rooms, stairs, upper deck
looked like a deluxe room
The more impressive ruins, however, were of the massive Luperon Beach Resort. It was shut down around 2011/2012, the rumor being that the owners were convicted of money laundering, possibly associated with the mafia. I haven’t been able to verify this from any legitimate source, not that I looked very hard. Click here for pictures of it in its heyday. Yes, it is still listed online. It boasted over 650 rooms between two “hotels” which was really several buildings. We saw at least 3 or 4 giant pools, an activity area with an outdoor stage and amphitheater, various bars (usually at the pools), a couple restaurants, a casino, a gift shop, what must have been the grand entrance, and more. From the road, it’s all fenced because one is not supposed to trespass, I suppose. We walked all the way down to Playa Grande (big beach), passed the current food stalls/bars, and walked right into the ruins behind them (no fence there). It was impressive, the biggest, most intact ruins we’ve seen so far in our travels. From what I have been able to find online, it seems the joint was shut down very quickly and completely abandoned. Locals stripped it of every usable, salvageable item they could and left the rest. The only life there now are the beach visitors, and the cows that freely roam the town and the ruins. It will continue to slowly deteriorate. I find it unlikely at this stage that anyone would invest in that property. At this point, everything would have to be torn down and hauled away before rebuilding could happen. What a waste. Still, it was a great way for us to spend a few hours (over two days) exploring.
view of Playa Grande from (assumed) casino
one of the many hotel buildings
double room
with a view
activities area
with pool
and pool bar
and amphitheater
with stage
Another pool
and pool bar
I’ll have a G&T, please!
cement ping pong tables
shuffle board
even a gym
restaurant set up for buffet
and the dining area
assumed Grand Entrance
remains of gift shop
We also made the trek into town a few days each week we were there. The town has a very well kept dinghy dock just for cruisers, plus another two for the local fishermen. Sometimes we went ashore for lunch, alone or with other cruiser friends. We got to sample some excellent Dominican fare! We walked to the Claro store to buy/renew data packages. We went to the Supermercado Fresco or one of the street vendors for fresh produce. Unlike the Bahamas, the DR has robust agriculture. We were spoiled with fresh, local bananas, pineapples, tomatoes and potatoes. Once we walked downtown to a street corner where a local roasts a pig each week and sells the meat until its gone. We managed to get there early enough to get some- yum!
There’s a small boutique hotel with restaurant and bar called New Amsterdam that is owned by a Danish expat and his Dominican wife. Most Fridays they open their pool & restaurant to local expats and cruisers and sell delicious wood fired pizza (he built the oven himself). Most Sundays they open to the same group, this time offering a single meal option that they prepare a lot of. We attended each of these once with some new cruiser friends, many of whom are now our friends and buddy boats. Another expat/transient cruiser event that happened weekly was the Thursday “Captains Table” gathering at Las Velas restaurant, the restaurant at the Puerto Blanco Marina on the west side of the bay (below the ruins of the old yacht club). They offer a special dish and several drinks at a discount, or you can order off the full menu. We went there twice. One Friday, Dave & I volunteered to help a local expat group prepare for their free, monthly flea & tick treatments and de-worming clinic for locals (and expats) with dogs and cats. About a dozen of us spent about two hours filling around 1000 oral syringes with three different medications.
When we weren’t in town, we walked some trails on the west and east banks of the entrance to the harbor. On the east side there was another planned but abandoned resort, this one barely started, and there were trails along the water and to a blowhole. On the west side there was a little beach with some trails through the countryside. A couple of times we got permission from the Armada to leave the harbor for a few hours to pump out our holding tanks and make water where it was more clear than in the harbor. We also spent a couple of days aboard just laying low and/or doing boat chores.
We very much enjoyed our time in Luperón. The locals were friendly and willing to help me work on my Spanish. I’m getting better at speaking it, but hearing it is still challenging because, like me, locals talk a mile a minute. I understand why some cruisers stop here and never leave. It’s friendly, inexpensive, there’s local agriculture, incredible beauty, and more. Still, we had a different end point on our agenda, and we needed to make some miles, so we were pleased when we could finally depart on Easter weekend, despite the rigamarole of the Armada rules. (If you missed that post, you’ll find it here).
That completes our time in Luperón. I’ve been too busy enjoying Puerto Rico with our buddy boats to spend much time sorting through photos. So enjoy the handful I’ve included here. When I have more time, I may make slide shows out of more of them. Next week I’ll start writing about our time here in Puerto Rico. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
We interrupt the chronology of our trip to notify you that we made it to Puerto Rico. Sound the horns! Ring the bells! Huzzah!
Here’s the story…
In case you missed it, we arrived in Luperón on March 13th. We were there for 25 days waiting for a weather window to continue east. The first potential weather window presented itself for March 27th, but we didn’t take it for various reasons I may describe at another time; it turned out to be a good decision. We had our eyes on a potential second window for the following week, but it didn’t pan out. Our chance finally arrived Easter weekend and it was going to be a good one. We would get our despacho (departure papers) on Saturday and head out either that night or the wee hours of Sunday morning to start our direct shot to Puerto Rico. Silly us!
Easter is a BIG deal in the DR. We didn’t understand how big until we learned Thursday morning that Customs & Ports was closing at noon that day and wouldn’t reopen until Monday morning. In the DR, one checks out with Customs & Ports first, then goes to the Armada for the official despacho. With Customs & Ports closing Thursday, there would be no despachos until Monday morning. The other thing you need to know about DR despachos is that the day you get it is the day you leave port. Yikes! The conditions would not be good to depart until late Saturday night, and there was no guarantee that the weather window would hold long enough if we waited until Monday. What to do?
Several boats were in the same situation, so we created a WhatsApp group to discuss strategy. Four of us (Indigo Lady, Wild Horses, Caretta, and Bitty Rose) decided to get our despachos Thursday, leave the harbor anchorage and stage in the little Pinzon anchorage just outside the official harbor and hope the Armada ignored us for the holiday weekend.
The Armarda did not ignore us.
At 2pm on Friday, I got a call from a representative of the Armada. They wanted to know why the four of us were still there, and threatened to take our despachos if we didn’t leave right away. I begged a little time to confer with our buddy boats and said I’d call back to let them know of our decisions. After some texting amongst the group members, and a call to Chris Parker (the human weather router we use), we all decided to leave, but really wanted to wait until midnight once the seas and winds had settled. I called the Armada representative and explained that midnight was the safest time to leave and if we were forced to leave earlier, the Armada may have to come rescue a boat or two (perhaps a slight exaggeration). Irritated, he finally told me that if anyone was there in the morning he was taking our despachos, and he hung up.
So…at 12am Saturday morning we all hauled anchor and had a very decent passage to Río San Juan, 52 nm east of Luperon. We dropped anchor for the day, when the winds & seas pick up, and rested until 12am Sunday morning when we all hauled anchor again and headed for Escondido another 55 nm east. It was a good passage and we brought up the rear, anchoring around 10am or so. We passed a quiet Easter Sunday in the shadow of some mighty fine mountains, with a little village barely visible just beyond a beach. Our next stop would be Puerto Rico. Bitty Rose left just after 5pm Easter night while the rest of us waited until 4am Monday morning. It was a quiet, calm cruise of about 15-20 nm around Cabo (Cape) Cabron and Cabo Samaná. As we were passing the mouth of Bahía Samaná (Samana Bay), Dave & I took a different route than the others, so at this point our stories diverge for about 24 hours.
Escondido beachEscondido beach & villageOur buddy boats at EscondidoWild Horses & Caretta at sunrise
Our friends on Wild Horses and Caretta went north of what’s called the Hourglass Shoals. Dave and I opted to continue down along the DR east coast to near Punta Cana (Cana Point) before turning into the Mona Passage south of Hourglass Shoals. The first 7 hours from Escondido around the capes and across the mouth of Samaná Bay were wonderfully calm. Then, around 11am, the wind and seas started picking up a bit. Then they started picking up a lot. It was a very bumpy, wet ride for the next 3-4 hours as we hobby-horsed and took water over both bows. Good thing Dave installed and deployed the wind/rain shield or he would have been soaked! We slowed to 3 kts and started talking about bailing out at Punta Macao to wait until the seas subsided. The wind and seas started calming a bit, but we were still only making 3 kts. Hmmm… We’ve been in worse seas making better time, so Dave suspected that something wrapped one or both of our propellers. Now we had two reasons to stop at Punta Macao. We’d lost radio contact with our buddy boats not long after we learned they were experiencing the same bumpy conditions (too far away), but we picked up another sailboat that hailed us. We both decided to stop at Punta Macao and did, in fact, meet there.
I started to get a little nervous because our despacho was for Samaná; it was not an international despacho to clear out of the country. We had read that most folks who stop in Punta Macao get a visit from the Armada, who would want to see our despacho and would ask why we had not stopped in Samaná. Why didn’t we get an international despacho? From what we had read, most boats that set out from Luperón end up stopping in Samaná anyway because the weather window doesn’t hold. If we had officially cleared out of the country with an international despacho, and then had to stop in Samaná, we would have had to pay to check back into DR. We wanted to avoid that, so we took a gamble. Turns out I worried needlessly.
We set anchor at Punta Macao around 5:30pm and immediately started pulling out snorkel gear and tools for Dave to check our props. We had something wrapped around the shaft of our port prop, but starboard was clear. Dave had to launch the hookah so he didn’t have to keep coming up for air while he worked. I sat in the sugar scoop and handed him tools and took what he handed me. He removed the prop and was then able to remove the wrapped stuff quickly and reassemble the prop. Turns out it was not a fish net, as we had anticipated, but was one of those synthetic burlap type bags. While he cleaned gear, I warmed our dinner. We ate quickly and then hauled anchor, along with our new buddy boat. Maybe the Armada saw that we were making a repair and decided to hold off visiting until they knew whether or not we would leave. Maybe they were recovering from the busy holiday weekend and had no intention of visiting us at all. Regardless, they did not visit us and we did not need to defend our travel plans. Phew!
This is what wrapped our prop
The seas had calmed and our passage continued smoothly but for a couple of hours during one of Dave’s wee hour watches when it got a bit bumpy again, but not as bad as the afternoon. It was nice having a buddy boat in sight and in radio communication, especially during the night watches. I saw sunrise over the Mona Passage in calm seas. We learned to stop the boat and clear our propellers of accumulated sargassum seaweed occasionally, by pulsing them in reverse, to keep up our speed. Seas were glassy for a bit, then a bit bumpy about 10 nm out from Puerto Real until we were close enough to be in the lee of the island. We arrived in port around 1:30pm. Wild Horses and Caretta had arrived about 8am, and Bitty rose the day before. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!
Sunrise over the Mona Passage
Now we are at our second Caribbean island and one step closer to the Caribbean Sea. By the time you read this, we’ll actually be there, because as I type, we are en route to our first anchorage on the south coast of Puerto Rico, the northern border of the Caribbean sea.
Next week I’ll probably wrap up our stay in Luperón and then after that, pick up with our Puerto Rico adventures. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Our friends on S/V Guajira had arrived in Luperón almost a week ahead of us. The gorgeous weather window that brought us to Luperón from TCI the following week was supposed to have brought then to Samaná on the east end of the Dominican Republic. A day prior to that, conditions had not been great and the Armada had to rescue a boat off the coast. They kept the port shut to outgoing traffic for two days, which stranded everyone who had been banking on using that beautiful weather window. At some point I really am going to have to write about weather windows and clearing in and out of island nations. The bottom line is that Guajira was still in Luperón when we arrived.
The morning after we arrived, Guajira invited us to join them on a Wednesday-Thursday road trip to Santo Domingo, the Capitol of DR, located on the south coast. Of course we would! So we booked a room at the same hotel. Juan picked us up in their dinghy the next morning, Wednesday, around 8:30am and we met Alison and their friend, Glyn, at the Las Velas marina where they had brought the rental car. Off we went!
The first part of the 3-4 hour drive was through the beautiful countryside and mountains. We made good time to Santo Domingo, but it took us about 20 minutes to find parking, all on street. Turned out to be just around the corner from the hotel, so score on that one. We stayed at the lovely Mosquito Boutique Hotel in the historic Colonial Zone of the city. It was too early to check in, so we left our bags in the hotel’s laundry room and set out in search of lunch. We ended up at Buche Perico about a block and a half away and had an amazing lunch. After lunch, we went for a walk about town looking to learn a little of the history and tour some museums and ruins (often the same thing). We were thwarted at a couple of places, including the Fort, because they were closed in preparation for some big upcoming event. Alas! We did, however, get to tour the palatial home of Christopher Columbus’s eldest son. We stumbled upon a free Taino artisans’ exhibition. The Taino were the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola when the Spanish arrived and enslaved them, almost wiping out their entire population. I wish I knew more Spanish so I could have picked up more of their history. There was a man making pots, another sculpting figurines of their various gods from clay, and another grinding chocolate (which we could taste). There were women displaying and selling their knit and woven goods. There was food to sample. It was a great find!
Late afternoon we returned to the hotel to finally check in, shower and rest for a bit before meeting down in the hotel bar for drinks before dinner. Dinner was at Jalao, right next door to where we’d had lunch along a little park. I had a traditional Dominican dish called mofongo, which I’d been wanting to try. It is a mashed plantain base with spices served with spiced pork and beef, in my case. Delicious! Now I want to learn to make it. It was a beautiful evening sitting outside eating. It reminded me of eating late on Piazza Navona in Rome. We all slept well that night.
We met for breakfast in the hotel atrium the next morning. The atrium was gorgeous! It was open to the sky and surrounded by the walls of the rooms (door sides opening toward atrium), laundry room, bar, entryway and reception, and the building next door. It was filled with potted plants, a fountain, a tree, and vines dangling down from the railings of the walkways along the rooms of the second and third floors. Breakfast was included in the room price and consisted of eggs cooked to order, fresh fruit juice of choice, toast, and fresh fruit and coffee or tea. Since checkout wasn’t until noon, we had time after breakfast to tour the nearby Cathedral of Santa María la Menor. It is the first and oldest Catholic church in the Americas, constructed between 1504 and 1550. It is a lovely and still functioning Gothic-style cathedral belonging to the Archdiocese of Santo Domingo. From the cathedral, we returned to the hotel to check out, put our bags in the car, and trotted across the street to a ruin we had seen upon our arrival. It was the remains of the first hospital in the Americas, dating from 1503. The current ruins are unlikely to have much of that original hospital left as the structures there were rebuilt and repurposed several times. We gave it a quick view, then hopped back in the car.
We headed to the outskirts of the city in search of the national park called Los Tres Ojos (the Three Eyes). What a gem in the city! It’s a cave mostly open to the sky with three lakes below ground level. It is believed to have formed over 10,000 years ago, at the end of the ice age, when the ceiling collapsed. They’ve done a great job constructing paths and landscaping to guide visitors to the lakes. One lake is reached by a small, rectangular wooden ferry that seats about 10 people and is pulled across by a “driver” on a pulley & rope system. It was a lovely bit of nature in the city.
It was then time to head back to Luperón. The trip back took a little longer because we missed a U-turn on their completely divided highway that would have taken us in the direction we needed to go. There are only certain points along the highway around the Santo Domingo area that allow one to reverse direction. We ended up having to go back through the city rather than around it, and there was quite a bit of traffic. Eventually we were on the open road. When we got hungry, we stopped at one of the dozens of roadside comedores. These are small roadside, family-run cafes, open to the road, with small kitchens, limited menus, and all local food. It was good and inexpensive, but they had the music up way too loud. We made another quick stop at a combination liquor/grocery store for some rum and were back in Luperón by 6pm. We spent Friday onboard recovering from our whirlwind exploration.
Here’s a slide show of some pictures from our Santo Domingo trip. I took way too many and had to spend hours weeding them out. When will I learn? Enjoy the pictures. Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!
This was our first overnight passage with just Dave & I onboard, which meant standing 3-hour watches with little sleep in between. I needed it to be an easy passage, so we used Chris Parker of the Marine Weather Center to help us find the right weather window and route. It was a straightforward trip, so he suggested we depart late morning on March 12th so we would arrive by noon on the 13th in Luperón, and he gave us a waypoint to head for that would keep us out of the worst of the westward flowing current as long as possible before heading more southerly for Luperón. It was a beautiful, calm passage!
We hauled anchor at 11:00 AM on the 12th and cruised on solar and battery alone until 4:00 PM. Then we turned on the port generator and cross-ship cable and ran both motors off the one generator the rest of the way. Most of the time our motors were set at 2.8 KW each and we made 4.5-5 knots. We started 3-hour watch rotations at noon, with the off person trying to catch a nap. The moon just started to rise during the last 15 minutes of my 9pm-12am watch. When Dave came up to relieve me, we both went forward to sit in the tramp at the bow for a few minutes to admire the stars. We could even see the Milky Way! During Dave’s 12-3 AM watch we hit the westward flowing Antilles current which slowed our eastward progress a little, so Dave bumped up the power to 4 KW each to maintain our speed at 4.5 kts. On my 3-6 AM watch I had to slow us down again so we would be approaching Luperón Bay after sunrise allowing us to see the fish net floats we’d heard about. During that shift, the half moon and stars were casting enough light that I could see the horizon in all directions. It was during this watch that I also started seeing boats again, both on the AIS and radar, and visually by their lights. Sometime around 5am, two cruise ships crossed our stern about 1.5 miles off heading to Puerta Plata a little to the east of Luperón. We entered Luperón Bay around 8:00am on the 13th.
Friends who had arrived a week ahead of us had given us some information about the check-in process and mooring balls. I had also been asking questions in a Dominican Republic FB group run by the Seven Seas Cruising Association station host, who happens to be based in Luperón Bay. She and her husband told us to hail them when we arrived, which we did, and they got the ball rolling or the Armada to come out to our boat to start the paperwork, and for the local mooring ball owner, Papo, to escort us to a good spot to anchor until he had an open mooring. It was nice to have all that facilitated for us. The Armada showed up within the hour, with an English-speaking interpreter, and gave us the paper allowing us to be here. We gave them fresh-baked (on the way in) chocolate banana bread and soda. We later went ashore to complete the check-in process by visiting Immigration ($75 for 30 days), Customs & Ports ($30 port fee) and Agriculture ($10 and a promise we had no forbidden produce onboard). We returned to Indigo Lady, took down the Q-flag and ran up the DR flag (which we had to buy from Papo because did not have one- ack!). Papo wouldn’t have a mooring for us until the next day, so we moved to a better anchoring location out of the channel. Our friends on Guajira invited us over for drinks and snacks around 6pm. So we rested for the afternoon and joined them for a couple of hours of low-key conversation and camaraderie. Dave and I returned to Lady for a late, light dinner and bed. We slept like rocks until 8am the next morning!
After three years, we finally made it to our first Caribbean country! Technically, we’re still in North Atlantic waters, because the north border of the Caribbean Sea is the south coasts of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. (For those geographically challenged, Hispaniola is the island containing Haiti and The Dominican Republic.) We arrived March 13th and we’re still here as I type this today, April 1st (no fooling) waiting for a good weather window to continue east to Puerto Rico. That wait will continue at least until late next week. Our fingers are crossed that that potential weather window actually materializes. This is the longest we’ve been stuck waiting for the right conditions to continue our journey, and perhaps I will write about that another time. As I’ve said before, there are worse places to be stuck, and we are enjoying ourselves with exploring and meeting new people while we wait.
This is enough for one entry. I’m going to continue to write while I’m in the mood, but I’ll parse that out over a couple of posts. Until then, stay safe, and take care of each other!
Life on Lady 