When we returned to Luperón from our mountain outing, it was like coming back to a completely different harbor. A good weather window had opened up the day before, and most of the people we knew had headed off toward the Bahamas, to Samaná on the east coast, or all the way to Puerto Rico. After checking the weather faxes and other reports that night and the following morning, we decided that we ought to jump on the window too, and leave the next evening, Monday the 16th of April.
It was a lazy morning, as we were still worn out from our hike and our sleep deficit, but at lunchtime we headed into town to spend our last 300 pesos (around $18). We had a nice plato del dia lunch and split a large El Presidente at Aqui Lucas, then hit the grocery store for three 350-ml bottles of rum (the recommended "gift" for commandantes in ports where you're technically not allowed to anchor), two dozen eggs, and some cookies, and finally went wild at a fruit and vegetable stand where we bought a pineapple, a melon, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, plantains, and enough bananas to supply the monkey house in the Chicago Zoo. We are definitely going to miss the cheap living here!
Checking out was easy. The commandante took our papers and wrote out our despacho for Samaná (we weren't sure whether we'd stop there, but better safe than sorry) with nary a bribe request, and smiled as he sent us on our way. After tidying up the boat for the passage, we prepared to lift the anchor. Wow, was that ever an ordeal! Three weeks of inactivity in the rich organic mangrove-surrounded harbor had encouraged an entire ecosystem to grow on our anchor chain. On the outside was a sort of slimy grass-like growth; under that was a thick layer of mud, and after we washed that off, we could see hundreds of barnacles fastened to the chain. Britt attacked the mess with water spray, wire brush, and scraper, while I wound in the chain a foot at a time. Fortunately, the growth only covered the first 15 feet or so -- the rest of the chain, down in the mud, must have scraped across the bottom enough to keep anything from staying attached. We then motored out to the mouth of the harbor where we figured the water would be a little clearer and we could get some of the junk off the bottom. As it turned out, visibility was still terrible out there, and it was all Britt could do to get some of the worst barnacles off the prop.
We lifted anchor a second time just at sunset, and motored off into the evening calm. At least, we had evening calm until we cleared the cliffs at the harbor entrance -- despite sticking close to the shore, as soon as we got out into open water we had 15 knots and unpleasantly choppy waves. "Flat calm night motoring" (as touted in Van Sant's book[*]), my ass! Then the fridge started running and stopped immediately (not good), and Britt opened up the bilge to check the through-hull, and discovered a small amount of diesel in the bottom of the bilge (also not good). In addition to these being problems in their own right, the smell of diesel in the bilge combined with the roughness of the seas to make both of us feel not particularly wonderful. Our speed was pathetic as well, from the combined effects of the headwind and our barnacle-covered bottom. All in all, not a good start.
But in four hours or so the wind and seas moderated, and after we passed Puerto Plata (where we could see the lit cross on the top of Loma Isabel de Torres) things settled down to 10 knots and under. We were even able to motorsail a little when the wind angle was right. This improved our lives no end, because not only was it way more comfortable to have a sail up, but heeling over helped force the air bubble out of the fridge water line and it started working again. With the boat riding smoothly, Britt was able to clean up the diesel and determine that we didn't have an ongoing leak. (We think that the leak came from running the diesel heater while the filter system was set up to run the diesel to our offline pump rather than in the normal way. User error!)
We kept within a mile or so of the coast in order to stay in the band of smoother water. It was still deep enough that our depth sounder showed only meaningless numbers, but we had an additional hazard -- lots of little fishing boats. None of them showed lights (except when we got close; then they'd wave a lantern), and they practically merged into the background noise on the radar. No close calls, but it was kind of spooky. After the sun came up and we could see them with our eyeballs, we were astonished to see how tiny they were, little more than skiffs. Many had no outboards, just a pair of long oars.
Rounding Cabo Frances Viejo just past dawn, the wind seemed nearly southerly. On watch, I put up the jib and cut the motor, elated to finally turn the darn thing off. Two hours later we were back to motorsailing, then had to even take down the main as the wind completely disappeared.
As
we continued eastward, the ruggedly beautiful north coast of the
Dominican Republic got more and more impressive. Just before two
o'clock we neared Escondido, a small harbor where we planned to
anchor for a while and clean the bottom. We'd heard this place
described as "the closest thing you'll get to Bora Bora on this side
of the Panama Canal," and when we saw it we decided it wasn't too
much of an exaggeration. High, steep cliffs covered with palm trees
and other greenery surround this little bay. We could see fishing
boats and a few small huts on the sand beaches inside, and since this
harbor is one of those where yachts are not officially welcome, we
opted to anchor just inside the eastern cliff, far from civilization.
The sheer sides of the land must extend underwater at about the same
angle, because we anchored only 50 feet from shore -- and it was 50
feet deep!
We put on our masks, snorkels, and fins and jumped in. The relatively clear water gave us a fine view of the failings of our bottom paint. If barnacles were pimples, Windom would have a complexion problem worse than an entire high school student body. After an hour and a half with scrapers, we'd gotten the bottom relatively smooth, but I bet that the gouges we left in the paint (not to mention the little "acne scars" left by the barnacles) reduce its effectiveness.
At
this point we had to decide whether to make for Samaná or try
to go all the way to Puerto Rico. The weather forecast was equivocal,
but the deciding factor was that we were dead tired, and if we only
wanted to go the 30 miles to Samaná we could sleep until
nearly dawn. For dinner we had mackerel, caught while trolling on the
way in to Escondido. It was our first catch in a month, and boy, was
it tasty. In the morning we motored out around the sheer
headland in total calm, watching the sun rise behind towering
clouds.
We were glad to have chosen to do this stretch of coastline in daylight, because the scenery was spectacular. The rock cliffs soared directly upward from the water, all pink and gold from the low sun, and the green carpet spread out on top showed no signs of habitation. Huge dark caves speckled the coastline, some tall enough to park our sailboat in, and rhythmic bursts of spray at the water's edge indicated that there were caves below the surface as well. The little bay at the very northeast corner of the island tempted us with all sorts of grottoes to explore, including one dramatic natural arch. But the sparse chart of this area made it a proposition too risky to follow up on, so we obediently rounded the corner of Cabo Cabrón and continued south.
The sea was still calm here despite the east wind, and we gleefully rolled out the sails and cut the motor. The morning weather forecasts still indicated we had a few more days of "window", and Britt talked on the radio with someone who had just come east across the Mona Passage and reported "under 10 knots". He wanted to change plans again and head for Boquerón; I was a little skeptical, thinking it was just the night calm and suggested we just go to where we could anchor for the day and then head out at night, as per Van Sant's book. Britt wasn't too keen on wasting another day, and anyway the wind was coming around to the south, and we could possibly strike out toward the east still under sail, so that's what we did.
Strike out, that is. We got in about two hours of sailing more or less east, edging ever more northerly as the wind built and swung back to the east, finally taking down the jib and motorsailing directly into the big sloppy chop of 15-20 kt easterlies. We slammed and bashed for about two minutes before conceding the victory to Bruce Van Sant, turning around, and having a pleasant downwind sail to Cayo Levantado just outside Samaná harbor. Mmm, downwind! Let's go this way all the time!
The obvious place to anchor was in front of a sand beach, but the beach was crawling with people that looked like they'd come off a big day charter catamaran, so we dropped the hook (after a few tries) just north of the islet, protected by an even tinier islet to the east. Kind of rolly, but we'd only be there for the afternoon. We heard several boats in Samaná talking on the VHF about leaving that night, some of whom we knew (or at least knew their names) from Luperón or the SSB radio. We hailed them to say we'd be part of the fleet, then tucked in to our rocking bunk for a few hours' nap.
As night fell, we could see boats streaming out of Samaná harbor, but the wind was still up and the seas choppy, so we opted to hang back for a little while. When we finally did lift anchor, things hadn't improved much. Everyone was sailing, tacking out to the northeast, so we did too, but we were getting bounced around and headed for the Canadaiqua Shoals -- not a navigation hazard, but likely to cause even more turbulent seas -- so we flipped the motor back on and headed directly for our waypoint near the north shore of the big cape south of us. Things smoothed out when we got closer to land, and soon the other boats were also motoring southeast. Again, we had lots of little unlit fishing boats to contend with.
In the night lee of the land we had less than 5 knots of wind and smooth seas, and we easily made our Cape Engaño waypoint by 6:00 a.m., well before Van Sant's "deadline" of 8:00 a.m. (the time the cape effect winds overwhelm the night lee and make it rough to leave the coast). We rolled out the sails and soon had to reef as the wind rapidly increased as we got out into open ocean. We set a tack north to clear the "hourglass shoal" and to set ourselves up for a southbound tack when the wind did its daily eastward shift. We also thought the wind might shift to northeast as a front which had rocketed through the Bahamas was supposed to stall right over the Mona passage.
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Instead of increasing and shifting, the wind diminished, and by 10:00 we were motoring east in 3 lousy knots of wind. We didn't have to go very fast to make Boquerón early the next morning, but with less than 5 knots Windom practically sails backward. After some earnest chart work, we decided that if we had to motor, we might as well motor at full speed and enter the harbor at night; since Puerto Rico is associated with the US, it has real buoys and working lights, and Boquerón didn't look like too tough an entry. We also heard three of the other boats make the same decision. We had led them down the cape, but they had motored on a more direct route rather than attempting to sail, and were now an hour or so ahead of us.
Despite having made the decision to motor, we did a little more sailing that afternoon when we ran out of fuel in one of our tanks. The filter on the more full tank had been clogging, and in the middle of the previous night we'd switched to the other tank. Even though we'd been keeping track in our "systems notebook" of our guesstimated fuel usage from each tank, we totally forgot to look at our numbers, with the predictable result. I hoisted the jib and kept us going at a stately two knots while Britt cleaned out the filters and re-primed the fuel system. Shortly after we got the motor running again, we got two hits on our two fishing lines! We both started reeling them in, but mine got off, so I could only watch in envy as Britt pulled in our very first tuna -- a small but stout blackfin.
Toward sunset the wind started to pick up again, this time from the northeast. I really wanted to sail, so I unrolled the jib and turned off the motor. We were only making 5 knots, but since we'd already decided to come in at night, who cared whether we came in at 11 p.m. or at midnight? Suddenly, our portside fishing rod went ziiiiiiing so hard I thought we'd snagged a whale. Fishing under sail is pretty difficult, and with a real whomper of a fish on the line, it became impossible. I turned on the motor and started doing donuts to keep the fish on the port side of the boat, while Britt got a workout on the reel. Our sails flogged and flapped this way and that, and any observer would have thought we must have fallen asleep or overboard, but after half an hour we had a monster mahi-mahi gaffed and in the cockpit. This maneuver was about as hard as the reeling in, as it fought all the way, knocking the rod, which I was holding while Britt manned the gaff, back into the bridge of my nose, then whacking its tail all over the cockpit as Britt heaved it in. Britt jumped on its head while I jumped on its tail and emptied our spray bottle of vodka directly into its gills. This fish set a record for us, 54" long from tip to tip, and when we had the folks from the other three boats that we (sort of) crossed with over for dinner the next evening, the eight of us ate less than half of it.
When we finally got ourselves sorted out again, we decided we'd lost enough time fighting the fish to justify motoring the rest of the way, especially since the wind was dropping off as we got into the lee of Puerto Rico. I cooked up some fresh tuna steaks for dinner -- excellent! I hope we catch more tuna. Britt was worn out from his fishing ordeals and went below to nap, so I piloted us through the marks and into Boquerón harbor just before midnight. Radar and computer navigation definitely make night entries much more relaxing. Once we were in the harbor, though, things weren't too relaxing, as very few boats had anchor lights on, so we anchored at the back edge of the fleet. (I woke Britt up to make him help -- I'm sure I could do it singlehanded, but I'd rather not have my first time be at night!)
Statistics:
Luperón to Escondido: 109 miles, 2 hours
sailing
Escondido to Cayo Leventado: 51 miles, 6 hours sailing
Cayo Leventado to Boquerón (Mona Passage): 157 miles, 4 hours
sailing
Total engine hours: 43 (we burn approximately 1 gallon/hour of
diesel)
Total time (including anchored rest time): about 76 hours
Number of fish caught: 5 (mackerel, 2 barracudas we tossed
back, tuna, mahi)