30 June 2009 -- Luperon, Dominican Republic

For the last two weeks have been anchored in the harbor of Luperon in the Dominican Republic. Things are pretty good here. The town is small and dirty, but the nearby cities of Puerto Plata and Santiago offer just about everything a person wants. Living without electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning, a car, or running water in the tropics is challenging, but actually quite manageable and the overall experience is rather enjoyable.

14 -- 24 June 2009

14 June 2009

The big day.  We left early to sail south to Luperon.  I was underway at 5:20 am.  Positions enroute were:  0906WT 2103 7108, 1304WT 2047 7104, 1752WT 2023 7058.  The weather, wind direction, and sea state were absolutely perfect for the trip, even though the passage we just made is normally quite difficult and is the main subject of Bruce Van Sant’s book “A Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South.”  Seems like the watermelon sacrifice did the trick.  S/V Markelle made landfall at dusk and anchored a few miles west of Luperon at Bahia Isabella.  I arrived at the Luperon harbor entrance at midnight. 

 

15 June 2009

Even though many sailors go aground entering Luperon harbor the first time, I did it in the dark, while quite tired.  Going slow and following the chart allowed a trouble-free entry to the deserted east wing of the harbor.  Then it was time for some sleep between kamikaze mosquito attacks.  Mark and Rachelle showed up at 8:30 and we all went to the dock to check in through Immigration, Customs, Agriculture, and the Navy.  The combined power of all the visiting cruisers recently cleaned up the local corruption, so the check in process was cheap and easy.  Then we ate lunch at Steve’s Place, a local cruiser hangout run by an expatriate who is proud of the fact that he has not been in the United States since 1987.  Rumors are that Steve cannot go back to the United States.

 

16 June 2009

Dropped off a bag of laundry for Steve’s pregnant wife Annie to wash.  Steve seems to take more than his share of siestas, while Annie and the kids keep the place running.  Spent midday talking to another expatriate bar owner nick-named Shaggy for his resemblance to the cartoon character from Scooby Doo.  Shopped for groceries in some of the local stores.  Checked out the mostly dismal nightlife scene in Luperon.  Even though one bar did have shower heads above the dance floor that created something like a wet t-shirt contest full of people dirty dancing.  But, without knowing Spanish, it seems you are simply a dumb gringo.  Someone to take advantage of for a fast peso, but not anyone with other values.  Probably very similar to how we view most non-English speaking immigrants in the United States. 

 

17 June 2009

Listened to the Cruiser’s Net on VHF channel 68 at 8:00 am.  Bruce Van Sant gave the weather synopsis and forecast.  Great to get it straight from the local guru.  In the afternoon, we bathed while swimming in Steve’s shockingly cool, but very refreshing pool.

 

18 June 2009

In the morning, Mark and I walked with a group of cruisers for morning exercise.  One guy’s weight and lack of fitness generated quite a bit of concern as he struggled to complete the easy walk.  When he had breath, he proclaimed loudly about how much he wanted to change his lifestyle.  Later that evening, we went to a cruiser potluck at the Luperon Yacht Club, where the same guy was gorging himself on barbecued ribs, cake, ice cream, beer, and cigars.  Some kind of change is definitely on the way.

 

19 June 2009

Walked for exercise with Mark again this morning.  Then enjoyed either two siestas or one long siesta with a brief period of consciousness in the middle.  Later in the afternoon, bathed in the yacht club pool.

 

20 June 2009

Mark, Rachelle, and I hired a taxi for $41 for an all-day trip to Puerta Plata from a local taxi driver named Nino.  Mark and Rachelle are trying to find out how Rachelle can fly home with her pet rabbit.  The airport sanitation officials were adamant that no rabbits could pass through their airport, even though the airlines say it can be done.  The highlight of the trip was shopping for groceries at the new SuperMercado in Puerta Plata.  We made it back to Luperon in time to attend a barbecue at Shaggy’s Bar.  The food was good, but the musician Shaggy flew in from the Florida Keys was a flop.  Micah, the musician is a rather unpersonable, musically-challenged fellow with a website of www.islandgrass.com 

 

21 June 2009

Went for a morning walk to the lookout point over the Luperon harbor.  Saw quite a few free-range cows, horses, and donkeys.  One particularly stubborn, small donkey was determined to mount a large mare, attempting to make a mule.  On the way back, we stopped by the weekly flea market at the Puerto Blanco Marina.  Then in the afternoon, Mark, Rachelle, and I went snorkeling just outside the harbor entrance.  The place was barren of large fish or lobsters, but it felt good to be in the water.  Even without a wetsuit, I was able to stay in the water over an hour.

 

22 June 2009

Today was our first day of formal Spanish Lessons.  Mark and I went to the “American Institute of Languages George Washington” this morning at 8:00 am for our first formal lesson in Spanish.  Santiago, the sole instructor and proprietor, has taught English, Spanish, French, and German for 31 years.  His thick accent and limited vocabulary make understanding his English quite a challenge, but he is the only professional instructor in town.  His main business is teaching English to the local upper-middle class high school kids, so they can land jobs in the local tourist industry.  He is very proud of all the kids he helps to get good jobs.  Some countries have compulsory English education in their public schools, but obviously the Dominican Republic does not.  After a decade or two, I imagine English training in public schools would provide a tremendous advantage to a poor country in the global economy, and would therefore be a worthy investment of tax dollars.

 

23 June 2009

Second day of Spanish lessons.  In the afternoon, Mark and I returned to town answered questions in English for one of Santiago’s English classes.  The kids were bright and eager to learn, but handicapped by lack of native English speakers to correct their pronunciations.

 

24 June 2009

Third day of Spanish lessons.  A French woman was in our class today, so the total of cruisers formally learning Spanish is now three.  Most of the cruisers seem to only know broken Spanish and prefer to interact with fellow cruisers.  Call me crazy, but it seems that knowledge of the local language is a first step to enjoying life in a foreign culture.  Being miserable is easy, enjoying life takes some effort.  I returned in the afternoon to sit in one of Santiago’s English classes and was impressed by the high-quality grammar the kids displayed, but was again dismayed by the poor pronunciation.  During the middle of the day Mark, Rachelle, and I walked about three miles for exercise and stopped at the beach to swim.  The ocean water was so warm that it felt like bath water.

 

7 -- 13 June 2009

7 June 2009

Spent the early part of the day getting ready to sail over to Grand Turk, about 25 miles.  Later in the afternoon, went to the High School and used their WiFi to check the weather. 

 

8 June 2009

In the morning, Mark and I went ashore and made one final trip to the grocery store.    Not sure what we will find at Grand Turk, so it is best to stock up now.  Then underway at 10:20 am, headed across the channel to Grand Turk.  Mark and Rachelle sailed to Big Sand Cay and spent the night there.  I arrived at Grand Turk in the dark and anchored close to the freighter dock on the southern part of Grand Turk, near an old U.S. missile tracking station, now simply called South Base.  What once the taxpayers funded as a Cold War installation is now enriching Carnival Cruise lines as a playground for cruise ship tourists.  In the middle of the night, a strong squall came through and it was quite reassuring to have a healthy anchor and chain.  The winds screamed by at about 45 knots and the steeply-sloped bottom makes anchoring tricky.  Some spots just a couple of miles from the western shore of Grand Turk are several thousand feet deep.

 

9 June 2009

I moved from South Base up to the Front Street anchorage just off the main town of Grand Turk.  The entrance through the reefs was tricky.  Probably the only reason I made it was because the tide was high enough to float over most of the coral heads.  Sometimes it is best just to be lucky.  Went ashore and explored the town.  The town is much nicer than most of the towns in the Bahamas.  Found the national museum and bought another Wavey Line chart of the Dominican Republic that shows the southern harbors.  Mark and Rachelle arrived at 2:30 pm, after stopping for brunch at Salt Cay.

 

10 June 2009

Today was the only day during our stay at Grand Turk that there were no cruise ships in port.  So, no crowds of sunburnt tourists snorkeling in the harbor.  Did laundry early in the morning.  There was only very light wind all day, and later in the evening, the mosquitos came out with a vengeance.

 

11 June 2009

No wind today and the water was so calm you could see the anchor clearly in 12 feet of water.  A stingray and several jacks were swimming around the boat.  Mark and I bicycled to the north end of the island and explored the channel to North Creek, the local hurricane hole.  The entrance channel is shallow and tricky and the anchorage inside has many shallow areas, so we decided not to try it.  As seems typical, there was an abandoned dredge that could have turned North Creek into a first-class facility and provided an economic boost.  Someone had big plans, but the project probably died from the thousand cuts these people seem so skilled at inflicting.

 

12 June 2009

Met Dave on an old home-built green trimaran named Faith.  Dave and his wife are sailing missionaries and are proud of the fact that the number one Google search for “sailing missionaries” lists them.  Their website is www.sailingservant.org  They are transporting generators and bibles to Haiti, and stopping along the way to help local churches.  Mark and I bicycled to the airport, where I checked out with Immigration.  The Customs guy was grossly overweight and safely locked inside an air-conditioned room watching a DVD on his computer.  He had no intentions of working, so he told me to go to another Customs officer, somewhere on South Base.  I decided then to ignore the whole checkout procedure from Customs.  Am beginning to think that their conflicting information and inefficiency is simply used to maintain job security.  Their incompetence seems to breed the very problems they should solve.  We walked through the cruise ship development and watched thousands of tourists partying.  One restaurant was full of people surfing the internet.  Were they on vacation, or were they simply working in an exotic location?

 

13 June 2009

Today, we sailed to Salt Cay in preparation for the crossing south to Luperon.  Dave, the missionary from S/V Faith, rowed over just as S/V Markelle was pulling up anchor.  I talked to Dave for awhile and then pulled up the anchor and was underway at 12:30 pm.  In an effort to appease the weather gods, I sacrificed a perfectly-ripe piece of watermelon by throwing it to Dave as I sailed out of the anchorage.  I think preachers like watermelons.  It was a nice, easy sail south to Salt Cay.  Markelle was moored to a dive mooring, so I tied up to their stern for the night.  The shore is so steep-to that anchoring is tricky.  Mark and I went ashore, where we found an old cannon aimed right at our boats, along with some leftover donkeys from the salt-raking days, a few wild cows, and one worn-out minivan.  About 80 people live on the whole island.

6 June 2009 -- South Caicos

Am falling into a relaxed routine while waiting to cross to the Dominican Republic, of listening to a couple of morning weather broadcasts, followed by cooking and eating brunch, then reading, swimming, or boat maintenance.  Hate to leave the nice weather and peaceful anchorage here for the more populated, less peaceful, more foreign harbor of Luperon in the Dominican Republic.  But, waiting can get boring, so we decided to go to town again.  Mark was running low on fresh water and fortune brought us a local fellow in a pickup truck who offered to fetch some water.  Fresh water here is collected from seasonal rains and a government-built condenser system.  As such, there is no city water supply like we know in America, so outsiders have trouble accessing the fresh water supply.  After returning an hour later with the water, the guy told us about a fish fry at the nearby Trench Town Bar.  Like most events so far, it was over billed and at times we were the only patrons in the bar.  The younger men typically wore their hair in unwashed Rastafarian dreadlocks, and wore baggy clothes with pants that seemed to be suspended only by a constant one-hand grip on their crotch.  A belt seems much more pleasant.  In fact the middle-aged men have discovered belts and haircuts, but maybe only because bellies make reaching their crotch difficult.  The food consisted of conch fritters, chicken souse (a local form of soup or stew), and fried bonefish.  The conch fritters were gooey and poorly prepared, while the chicken souse wasn’t even ready yet.  But, the bonefish tasted great.  It was seasoned and cooked just right and the meat itself had an excellent flavor.  However, bonefish is well-named because it contains a tremendous number of fine bones with branches that make removal almost impossible.  A group practice of the Heimlich maneuver should be conducted before eating bonefish.  Back in the bar, the two young Dominican women bartenders watched television and dozed, while many of the patrons wandered in and out, drinking from personal bottles of liquor and smoking marijuana.  Open container laws, drug laws, and food handling regulations seem to be missing, but overall it was a very peaceful gathering for such a dissolute slice of humanity.  The town only seems to come alive after dark.  No wonder most of the people we see during the day are sleeping.  At 8:00 pm we moved to another establishment to watch a Red Wings hockey game.  The two female bartenders there were chatting with a couple of Dominican friends and everyone seemed content to watch a hockey game.  A couple of guys from India came in and kept eyeing the Dominican girls.  The obese Dominican girls presented a definite body mass mismatch to the skinny Indian guys, but the Indians kept hoping.  With the Red Wings winning 5-0, it was time to head out to the boats and get some sleep.

5 June 2009 -- South Caicos

Spent the morning and early afternoon studying emergency navigation.  Practiced taking sun sights with a cheap plastic sextant and then reducing them manually.  Mid-afternoon, we went to town, used the internet WiFi at the High School, and then bought a few groceries

4 June 2009 -- South Caicos

Worked on some minor boat projects.  Re-worked the eyes for the jib halyard, the main halyard, and the topping lift.  Sewed on a leather chafe protector to prevent the line in the eye from chafing against the shackle.  Then whipped the tails of the knots so they would not come untied.  After that, Mark and I snorkeled a nearby shallow-water dive site named The Admiral’s Aquarium, right in the South Caicos harbor.  The reef contained an extensive variety of colorful tropical fish and many different types of coral.  Definitely the most impressive snorkeling so far, and definitely a reminder to buy a good underwater camera as soon as possible. 

3 June 2009 -- South Caicos

Went to town today.  Dumped a bag of trash in the community dumpster by the town dock.  Then trekked out by the Boiling Hole salt pans, now containing a flock of pink flamingoes, to the High School to use the only internet WiFi in town.  The High School still shows the ravages of last year’s devastating Hurricane Ike.  By now the blue disaster tarps are in shreds and the roofs are again open to the weather, with no signs of ongoing repairs.  The most noticeable damage was to the roof of the Industrial Arts classroom.  You would think that the shop class could fix its own roof.  Mark, Rachelle, and I sat outside amongst the ants checking email, until we finally went inside the music classroom and used their chairs.  The first wall outlet I plugged into gave a vicious spark, but the second one was much better behaved.

2 June 2009 -- South Caicos

Mounted the MSR backpacking stove on a board today to make it safer and easier to use.  The Walmart-special Coleman seems to have finally clogged up after using gasoline for the last few weeks.  The MSR is much easier to unclog and repair, and enjoys burning gasoline, which is the most available fuel so far.  Even propane is real hard to find most places.  Late in the afternoon, Mark and I took his dinghy a couple miles south to the end of Long Cay to a likely fishing spot.  Technically, it was in a protected wildlife area, but a quick look showed the lobsters were overpopulated and the herd needed to be thinned.  As the saying goes "they have to catch you to hang you."

1 June 2009 -- South Caicos

First trip into the town of Cockburn Harbor on South Caicos Island and impressions are that the people are closer to the Stone Age than even the Bahamians.  The older streets in town were laid out with British precision.  Other than that, the town presents a terminal aspect of decay.  Some newer cars drove along the streets, past scattered piles of horse manure, but the town was generally littered with dysfunctional cars in various stages of disassembly.  Once a car fails to start, it is slowly dismantled to provide assorted yard ornaments.  Many door less, windowless, blocked-up rusting hulks contained sleeping people.  People with nothing better to do on a beautiful, sunny Monday.  Mark and Rachelle found the only working internet WiFi in town at the high school.  It probably works because nobody seems to use it.  Basketball practice must be much higher in the local school curriculum than computer use.  But then computer use really involves a progressive inventory of learned skills, starting with the concept of an alphabet.  The most noticeable achievement of this school system is shown by the adults’ mastery of a mangled form of English that is marginally more understandable than hand gestures.  After checking in through Customs and Immigration, scouring the town for a nonexistent Laundromat, and shopping at both disappointingly run-down grocery stores, I joined Mark and Rachelle at a local bar, where the bartender was imported from the Dominican Republic.  Much of the work here is performed by economically-disadvantaged immigrants from the Dominican Republic or Haiti.  Maybe they learned that trick from America.  After all, the bar’s several patrons were engrossed in American television programming.  Today’s attraction:  Ice Hockey.