3 nights at sea and we are in Samana Marina Dominican Republic.

“19:11.680N 69:21.31W”

5879 Miles since leaving Sandwich.

14th April 2023

We arrived yesterday lunchtime after 377 miles and 3 nights at sea. Actually, we were surprisingly fresh but then again it was an easy passage. The wind was lighter than predicted for the whole trip and even dropped below 6 knots for periods which necessitated the engine being run for about 20 hours in total. As we were two up, we decided to try out a different watch system of 2 on 2 off which worked pretty well. Both of us covered everything that needed to be done on board from 10 am through to 8 PM. Once we went into a formal watch system, we applied all of the usual restrictions after dark, lifejackets on, clipped on at all times and no one leaves the cockpit without the other one being aware. It worked pretty well, but I do think that 3 nights is about the max before tiredness would become a big problem, it did however work well enough on this trip that we decided to skip the anchor stops and just keep on going. For longer than three nights I think we will do a 4 on 4 off system which should allow for a better sleep pattern, I will let you know how that goes. One sad note of the trip was that yesterday was the anniversary of Normas’ mother Betty’s birthday. Betty died last year, and we laid a wreath in the sea as we approached The Dominican Republic to give her our best wishes and kind memories. We have decided to commemorate our mothers’ birthdays each year rather than the days they died on, happy memories are better than sad ones after all. Norma, clever girls that she is, made the wreath out of the seaweed that has been foiling my fishing efforts on a daily basis. Every time that I brought the lure back in covered in weed Norma piped up. “Save it, save it”, and so we have been sailing along with the sweet smell of drying seaweed wafting in from the aft deck table top. Highlights of the trip, a large flipper type of dolphin that did some serious leaps and jumps on our bow wave, sunsets, being together relying on each other and no one else, and of course our new toy Starlink. 

Norma making the seaweed wreath.

Happy Birthday Betty.

On her way back to Ireland.

On approach the marina responded in very good English and gave us our berthing instructions. Without any drama, (we are getting good at this) we reversed Spectra in and were met by four marina staff all waiting to take our lines. We were also met by Michele and Nick from Maalu IV who we had last met in Isles de Saintes and after a brief chat with them and a tentative plan to meet up later for a beer we got about the business of arriving and putting the boat to bed. I told Luke the lead Marina chap that we needed 220 volts electricity to which he said no problem, but there was. I should have guessed when he said 15 or 30 Amp hook up which is very American terminology for getting power onto boats. Sure enough the socket was an American fixture which wouldn’t fit out plugs. He did say that they had a plug at $200 to which I replied with a smile at that price I think you had best keep it locked up. Anyway, in my big box of bits I do have an American plug from the last trip and after some digging, I found it. Now the problem is that the American plug has 4 wires, and the UK cable only has three, which one gets left out? I stripped the UK plug from the end of our shore power cable and gave it my best guess when wiring up the American replacement. I switched everything off down below and then we plugged it in. 127 Volts coming in so nearly there but no Banana this time. I knew what the problem was but the Marina chaps had a duty electrician from the Hotel come down and have a look anyway. He soon found that one of the wires was in the wrong hole for this type of conversion, I guess they must bridge two inputs of 120 volts somehow, and swapped it over. Switch on again and I have 223 Volts, definitely a Banana for the duty electrician and none for me. I will keep that shore power cable rigged ‘as is’ for future use as I guess the marinas from here on in will be US standard wiring.  Norma went off to speak to the marina office and the Dominican Republic officials while I tidied up, put the sails away, put the deck shade sails on, moved Starlink and generally made everything pretty again. Norma came back after about an hour and after spending 5000 Pesos ($100 USD) on the formalities with a very young Navy guy in tow who wanted to inspect the boat. He was very polite and asked us to show him around which we duly did. He was very interested in the boat but didn’t ask to look in any cupboards or drawers and soon left satisfied that we weren’t the criminal masterminds behind an international drugs cartel or some such. Having completed our chores, like good children should, we decided that a cup of tea was in order and of course when I tried to fill the kettle nothing came out of the tap. After investigations we found that the bilges were full of water and the water pump was running nonstop. The cause was traced to the hot water pipe leading to the forward shower faucet. At some point that morning, while we were otherwise engaged and probably due to the fact that we had been running the engine for 10 hours and the hot water system was boiling, the pipe softened and worked loose resulting in about 500 litres of fresh water being pumped straight into our bilges. Actually, we were planning to use all of the water in the tanks before cleaning them out and refilling from the marina supply so this was no way near the complete pain in the bottom that it would have been if it had happened at sea, and we had lost our fresh water. Of course, if it had happened at sea, we have a backup. We carry 50 litres of drinking water in separate containers for emergency use and having fixed the pipe we could have run the water maker to replenish the stocks. FYI that would take 20 hours of nonstop running to get the full 1000 litres that we carry in the main tanks. I soon had the pipe fixed and we topped the tanks up again giving them a double dose of chlorine tablets to clean them out. A double dose makes the water taste a bit like a public swimming pool, but it certainly does the job. Norma has plans to wash all of the linen and we both have plans to take excessively long showers while we are here and oh so very close to a water outlet, we will burn through that water in the tanks pretty quickly and then replace it with normally dosed fresh. In the interim it will be bottled water for drinking. Another bonus, (I am desperately looking on the bright side of everything today in case you hadn’t noticed) our bilges, both engine and forward are sparkling clean and sweet smelling having had a 500-litre freshwater douche.

The marina looks very nice and so does the resort, which is very 5 Star, plus everyone that we have met so far has been friendly and helpful which is all boding well for a good stop over in Dominica. As it happened with this whole new playground to explore, we both fell asleep in the afternoon and missed our planned meetup with Nick and Michele but there is always tomorrow and obviously we needed the rest as we slept right through to this morning.

Approaching Marina Bahai, Samana.

Our plans, after visiting the infinity pool or maybe one of the other two pools on offer at the resort, we will hire a car for a couple of days and explore the island, probably taking a night in a hotel somewhere. We have also contacted a local diver who will clean the bottom for us as we are trailing a lot of weed which is affecting our speed through the water. This was very noticeable with our reduced boat speed and sluggish handling on the trip over, the stay in the chemical and biological  soup that is St Martin Lagoon has promoted some serious weed growth. When I say, “We have contacted a local diver”, which sounds very organised and grown up what really happened was as I sat in the cockpit eating my Weetabix this morning a guy came up and said, “Ola, my name is Toni, do you want me to clean your bottom”? Well, that statement took longer to digest than my Weetabix I can tell you. After becoming slightly emotional at his spontaneous generosity and altruistic outlook I grasped what he actually meant. Really, if you’re going to use that approach you should wear your scuba gear, or at least have a baseball cap saying, “Scuba divers do it in rubber”, or something as a clue. Any hew, I digress. After his rather unique sales pitch and after checking with the marina that he was legit, we have decided to employ Toni to clean my bottom and make it all shiny and new again. The cost of Tonis’ services will pay itself back in better fuel economy in pretty short order I would think. We have also met a nice Canadian guy who we are going to closely interrogate on all things Nova Scotia before he sails away. On that note Mel from Sandwich has been back in touch and introduced us to his son Crad who lives in Nova Scotia and is a member of the Chester Yacht Club near Halifax which has four slips available for 50ft plus boats to rent. Things are beginning to slip into place, (get it?).

Ending on a positive note: When we realised that we would need to renew Normas UK passport the timelines were, 2-3 weeks for mail delivery to the UK from St Martin via France then allow 10 weeks for the UK passport office to do their thing and post it to my daughter’s house. From there ???? weeks to get it posted to us somewhere, somehow. As it happened, we got word yesterday that the new and old passports are at my daughters’ house, 4 weeks from posting in St Martin which is pretty damn good all round. This means that my son will be able to pick them up from my daughters’ house before he comes out to us in Nassau.

Looking forward we both now have full visas for America and no hassle taking the boat in from Canada ---- Happy days.