STAYING IN LUPERON

Well, we have decided to stay in the Luperon area for the time being  

 Luperon is actually one of the best hurricane holes. The hurricanes usually are passing east or west of the great mountains of Dominican Republic. Pico Duarte, the largest mountain in Dominican Republic  is around 10000 feet and the last hurricane ( 3 years ago)  which tried to pass across the mountain degraded itself to a 50 knot wind. Of course there is always the monster storm, but. we’re feeling comfortable about staying here. The bay is very deep with many additional nooks and crannies bordered with Mangroves. The decision was easy, the country is beautiful, the people are very poor but very friendly and there is an air of anti-Caribbean here, no big fancy yachts, no big resorts, no major tourist destinations; and it is cheap! Chicken are for sale at Ruth’s pollo, the veggies are local and delicious. I am trying to get local fresh milk, as the cows are everywhere, even in town. 

Since we arrived here we went to the waterfalls, which is about an hour drive from Luperon. The country is hilly, very green, despite the dryness ( it does not rain much in the summer here, winter is their rainy season) with many fields of sugar cane,  tons of cows and goats, bananas and papaya trees.

The waterfall was a lot of fun, a bit too organized for us, but how do you go down 27 falls without a guide, especially we had to jump up to 40 feet in beautiful clear pool. I made my first movie with my Hero camera which came out absolutely terrible!  So the falls will be in our memories, unless we go back with friends or family. It was a lot of fun en famille.

We have been diving locally, not really the best. As everywhere else in the world, the coast has been overfished and the visibility can be a problem. 

Luperon is a wonderful little village and we are starting to make friends. There is Nathalie on her French steel boat, there are the writers (a couple of writers working online editing jobs at anchor).  There are probably 20 boats with people spending the hurricane season and 20 more boats completely abandoned, their owners back to the grinding machine, i.e.  making money in the US, Europe or dead!. I have also helped Lydia, the lavenderia  (she does laundry in town) and her daughter with my back pain treatment.  Lydia usually does the laundry right in the street with huge plastics containers and waddles clothes all day. All the laundry is dried right on the street on immense clothes lines encroaching on the neighbors. Some days I can watch my underwear drying downtown while shopping. Luperon!

There are also Yoga classes on the incredibly beautiful defunct and closed yacht club. We go there early in the morning and Chante, a 68 years old singlehander is teaching, with the breeze blowing wonderfully throughout the abandoned ballroom.

There is something about the Dominican that is very charming. First it is their “joie de vivre”, the ability to be content with very little. They have not much but share it easily, and nobody is hungry. They eat a very traditional meal made of  beans and pollo and milk is locally produced. Right now it is the season of avocadoes and pineapple is all year around.

 Cars are a luxury item, so most families drive around in 50 cc motorcycles, little bikes that are designed to carry only two people at a time.  But not in Dominican Republic.  Sometimes even a couch is strewn across the back of the mopeds. They carry children, large propane tanks, washing machines; anything, and most of the time, nothing is attached, everything is held by one hand. The drivers drives only with one hand. Babies are held across the handlebars! and sometimes entire family pile up to four, flying down the road.  It is quite remarkable, their ability to survive perilous positions, and they do it all the time. I guess we have become so cautious, so within the rules, that we have forgotten that sometimes even if things seem hopelessly dangerous, everything is OK. It is all about perception. Of course driving at night is absolutely scary because of the cows (a lot of them are black) and drunk driviers.

We are having a very simple life at the moment,the food is beautiful, the fishermen are catching great snappers and the chickens are plentifull. Days are passing in a flash, and we can only appreciate how lucky we are to be here.

Virginie

LUPERON !!! DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

860 miles passage

     We finally left Fort Myers with all proper docs stamped and my visa returned to the United States of America.  Of course leaving all my “good friends of Bill” behind. That is always hard, but I was ready to turn of the TV, the internet, stopped getting stupid marina bills and leave les Amerloques  behind... I was ready  to get back outhere where everything is different and the pursuit of the perfect world is living in the unperfect one.

We waited long enough and had good weather window and we chugged along through Key west and nearly  flat condition for the first part of crossing of Gulf Stream,  which by the way can be a nasty crossing, wind and waves contrary to the powerful  2 to 3 knot current creating… well, condition that we prefer to avoid.  We  are still labeling ourselves as aging chickens of the seas, but somehow we still going regardless of our gutless attitude.

With the boys onboard I felt like a passenger on a cruise ship. I would go to sleep at 8 pm and wake up at 4 pm and do a watch till everyone would feel like waking up ( no 3 hours on and off !!). My kind of watch as I love to see the rising sun, and yes I am a morning person... We knew that we would mostly beat all the way to on the northern coast of Cuba  to the windward passage, ( hurricane season is upon us, so no slow cruising through Cuba, but cracking up toward Aruba which is out of the hurricane belt) turn right  then finally goes with the wind and waves to Jamaica. That was the original plan. But in port plans are easy, outhere the ocean has control of the situation. You are just a puppet, making sure that your strings are in order, but ultimately you going to have to endure whatever mother nature will give you. 

The boat as usual was flawless, a little cough up with the generator a broken impeller, presto repaired by Sam with the assistance of Patrick. Autopilot perfect, engine going  only at 1500 RPM and with the Gulf stream current going to 10 knots. Sam checking obsessively that all systems were A ok.  The newly installed and finally completed stabilizers have paid off their very expensive investment, by giving us not much rolling at all. ( whaoa, these work fantasticly !!!)

But as usual 24 hours after leaving Fort Myers when we came close to Cuba and started to follow the 600 miles coast .  The wind picked up ( in the nose of course !) and created a  TIGHT 4/ 5  feet chop.

That was the moment…. when we started to really beat to weather. The boat still going an average of 8.9 knot for 860 miles ( quite remarquable ) but it was hard, Acharne slamming hard on those little nasty walls. The worse was coming out of the Bahamas channels, we had walls coming out of everywhere and we were forced to slow down to 6 knots and hang on.  No one was really sea sick, but the pounding was exhausting. And progress seemed slow. Although that when the sea state resumed to the regular 4/5 seas, Acharne kept the pace up. On my watch I crossed a small sailboat tacking  in the wind and waves and I watched on the binocular,  he was getting a good beating . It was a reminder that I was still going forward, and not tacking so no whinning please !

Approaching the Windward channel the Noaa weather predictions for the Caribbean seas were :  blowing 20 to 25 knots with 8 to 12 feet seas. We also knew that the windward passage can be nasty with a funneling effect and even that we would be going with wind and weather we wanted to go through it with lesser conditions. So the options were to go for it and see what happens ( don’t like to do this unless have to ) or to continue on the northern coast and go to Dominican Republic with better weather.  But with no detailed charts of  the port of Luperon nor a guide to Dominican Republic we decided to send an email ( via the iridium sat phone ) to Vince in Alaska, and see if he could dig up some chart and email us a copy of it.  No problemo ! we got a copy of a hand sketch entrance to the Luperon, thanks to Vince, and way point, so we kept beating up forward. Acharne doing her job, keeping her speed in the condition, and the crew enduring the slamming, the crashing, the wonder when it was a bigger swell and Acharne liked it better and her 80 feet length would climb up and slided gracefully on the other side.. like riding  on a smooth back of a big creature

 Everybody was doing his job,   each wave at the time, staying story on the back deck, listening to music checking the ship traffic, catching a small tuna and a mackerel, trying to sleep, with the slamming ( good luck with that one, unless completely exhausted, then you drifted off regardless of the condition) and may be the wind would lessen and it would nicer ?

We had brief hours, when the wind would stall a bit, the seas would go smoothers and we would stop hanging on to something, then it would come back with a vengeance… We got closer to the lush and beautiful island of Dominican Republic but we kept banging up and down till the very end, and then…. Pooofff we were inside a gorgeous harbor,  the land smelling of dirt and the goats munching of the rocky outcrop. The sea was gone it was flat and we motored slowly with sam checking his sketch and his way point.

We picked a mooring ( the harbor has probably 20 or 30 boat and everyone seemed to be on some funky mooring.  Popa rushed with his fiberglass, fuel covered panga and announced  with his toothless smiles that mooring were 3 dollars a day, and if we did not mind , he would like to be paid one week in advance, because we might just leave and then…  He also had a Dominican Republic flag with him, and told us to sit tight and wait tomorrow morning to check with immigration and agriculture and Monday custom. Popa was the man, he wanted to offer his services , right now right there, hey if we wanted to see the 25 waterfalls up in the mountain, we probably go right now ! And also he had his fuel tank, and may be we also needed fuel at this very moment… It was wonderful to talk to him.

Ah it was divine !!! to be seating in the salt encrusted Acharne, no place to go, no ripple, no motion,  but the sound of the bird singing in the sunset and crickets, the smell of the land,  the dusk falling into a starry night and the neighbor Mike on “Mink” coming to say Hi and tell us all about Luperon. It was quiet and peaceful and the ocean was gone still thundering on the other side of the land. 

The next morning we went to the immigration and I have forgotten my reading glasses so the officer landed me his.  Just that little human gesture, made me breathe with the sense of the unperfect world. We have gratefully paid our mooring for a week and I am ready to explore Luperon, Yeah !!!

virginie

                                                      Patrick at home

LEAVING FORT MYERS

We are getting the boat ready, leaving in a few days or so hopefully the weather will cooperate.  As usual we are fretting when we have to leave. It is always exhausting when you have to undue ropes, which have been tied too long.

We have been in Fort Myers for 4 months helping Sean settling his Doctor Rocket game online, learning about the gaming business and fine tuning the boat. Sean is going to come with us for the time being, working onboard on his business “rippleware”.
Acharne is nearly finished, with additional cushions, flooring almost done and many technical addition, especially the AC and the stabilizers, which are making a no roll boat. We will experiment with that concept !

                                                         Vince's cabin

 We also took a trip to Alaska to pick up Patrick who finished his year of study in Valdez’s high school. Patrick did not really need any “picking up”, at nearly 6 feet and a buff structure to complete the package. But his love for Alaska and the determination to continue his life in Valdez was to be investigated. We also wanted to thank and meet everyone who helped him going through his year in Valdez. We left Sean and Pencil and the boat in care of each other and took a very long plane  ride north. We arrived in Anchorage squeezed in our seats like unfortunate cattle stuck next to another low fare recipient.

 A very nice and spacious campervan awaited us and we met Alex,  Sam’s old friend living in Juneau, who took us to spend the night with his wonderful family .

It was such a nice welcoming, Alex’s sister is a real fire cracker and I think Jim and her will come to visit us.

                                                    The giants

                                       

Alaska surpassed my expectations. The mountain ranges were still full of snow and the giant river bed were gushing  powerful rivers of grey icy water. There was  tundra a perte de vue, and no traffic, not many towns and only the immensity of impenetrable summit. I love the special way some of the Alaskan seems to scattered their crap out of their cabins. It was a sense of freedom, the sense that you did not have to pick up your dog poop, what you saw, was what you got.  I felt that the power of the place was keeping some humility in the human nature, and also it was chasing away the crowds. The roads were empty and I thought, yes if I could get good curtain I could live here.  (I was already having trouble at night sleeping with the nearly daylight condition.)  I was also intrigued about the Alaskan winter.  I don’t know how I could take the darkness, but when I arrived in Valdez, and surrounded by the cortege of magnificent mountains, I was ready to move in…

We had a blast with Sam’s old friend Alex and Vince and of course I met Jenny Vince’s wife, the second mother of Patrick.  I think he was very much loved that  year.. living with the Kelleys.. I am very grateful to our friends.

 It was an hectic time for everyone but I watched Patrick in his element living a simple life dominated by the powerful weather. I saw that he was home, and that was a good feeling, he knew where he liked to be.

 After spending his younger life on his parent’s boat in the tropics, he was home in the cold rugged North. What a contrast !

The highlight of the trip was a boat trip to Vince’s cabin up an hour or so by boat from Valdez.  Elamar is a small settlement on the wild coast of Prince William sound.  There, only a few Alaskan who are living on the edge of the encroaching rain forest. The weather was turning cold and rainy and we picked up some beautiful northerly shrimp ( tasting more like lobsters) in Vince’s pot. Then drenched to the bones we dried up next to Vince’s stove inside his little trapper cabin.  The Cabin was surrounded by  Muskeg  a sort of moss type ground, squeeshy and weird. There were still so much snow everywhere and very beautiful stinky flower coming out everywhere. We went to visit Vince’s friend Calvin and Leslie  living in a cabin by the water ( a stunning waterfront spot )  trying to reinvent their life after 20 years living  in isolation on the edge of the mountains.

I loved the tight closed harbor of Valdez where a few boats (on the hard ) had been crushed on their stand by the  massive winter snow falls. We were reunited with Rodney and Catherine, cruisers friends met 20 years ago in Mexico.. and we had cosy time in their boat, next to the diesel heater reminiscing about how quickly 20 years can roll by..

Patrick will be returning to Valdez for another year, stay with the Cullens, Vince’s friends.   But for now, he is resuming his life on the boat until he must fly back in August to Alaska

We are planning to leave for Key West, maybe Cuba, Jamaica and Aruba. We also are considering going to Brazil where our old friend Joao on Guardian will be for 6 months, but for the time being , we don’t know where we will land for hurricane season. We only know that we want to be out of the hurricane belt.

virginie

GULF OF MEXICO

PALACIOS/ FORT MYERS

GULF OF MEXICO 800 MILES

We finally left Palacios, on Monday afternoon and headed for the entrance of Matagorda channel. Anyone who is preparing a boat for an offshore passage  will know, it feels like a never ending saga while the boat is firmly attached to its mooring lines. You feel stuck and you are stuck till you must get it together and  admit that is the best you are going to do……….. and………………….. leave !!!.

We parted with our good friend in Palacios and the gloom of the south Texas winter. We were supposed to have a good weather window, with a breezy start and a two day calm period. We estimate the passage to be 3 to 4 days for 800 miles average speed of 200  miles a day.

Sound all great on paper, till we headed out !!. Firstly just one day out the weather report changed dramatically and Noaa predictions went from a calm to a cold front, with head wind and fresh breeze. Brrrr…We did not worry about the wind as much as  the notorious “Gulf sea state”  and yes …beating for 800 miles….

We pushed our way in short nasty head sea + with a gloomy,  cold and very breezy condition. POUAAH !!!!  

 Within 48 hours of crashing and banging at 8 knot ( quite amazing we beat  all the way averaging 8 knot !!! pffff !! never did that with any of our boat)  we were all pretty much grumpy, and tired. Could not sleep forward, so we all fought for sean’s and Patrick bunks in the stern. We all wore hats and coat and basically spent 3 days ducking under the pilot house  to avoid  spray splashing in your face . Not exactly spa treatment. Bonjour the aging process… I  felt like I had the exfoliating treatment for 3 days but I never got the cucumber on my eyes !!!

The Gulf has a bad reputation and this was the third time we crossed it, and again, we were at the mercy of its short/ sh…ty sea .   Acharne did a beautiful job, the autopilot was rock solid ( did not steer for 800 miles) and the engine never went above 1500 rpm. ( only at the end when we pushed to a relaxing 1700 rpm.. and doing 10 knots !!!!easy peasy ….. )  All system worked, boat was great, so I guess it was the crew, let face it, we were not happy campers. We are still major chicken of the sea and we are used to complain, and we certainly did.

We did not have the stabilizers as yet hooked up, just the fins and the short stubby keel.  We were curious to see how the boat would  handle the seas and what a best test that the bloody Gulf  of Mexico  and its washing machine system!!!

Well Acharne feels  like a catamaran, very stiff, does not really get a roll going  and frankly is very stable .  It will be interesting to see how she behave with the additional comfort of stabilizers.

We only had one great advantage that it was a full moon and we had spectacular vision at night. The moon was so bright that it filtered through the cloud cover.  It was very beautiful. Every night, I waited  for the moon and when it came, it cheered me up.

I guess, it all went well, we are pretty exhausted resting at anchor with a arctic blow in Florida and 30 knots of wind !!!!

Needless to say we  are ready to head further south and shed our clothes.

virginie