French Cay, Caicos to Luperon, Dominican Republic

February 16, 2014

After a weather report check this morning, we raised the anchor and began our voyage towards Luperon, Dominican Republic.  The sky was blue, the waves were small, the wind was coming from the right direction – it was going to be an amazing trip.  We are, at present 9 hours into the trip and that weather guy still didn’t get his report correct.  Instead of the promised east wind at about 10 knots and 2-4 seas, we’ve had the wind from all different directions and usually about 15 knots, plus.  The seas have been more like 3-5 feet with occasional 7 to 8 foot waves thrown in just for “fun”.  I can’t believe we are doing our next 24 hour passage only 3 days after our first and I am having almost as much fun as I did the first time.  Oh, I forgot to mention, we have a 1 ½ knot current “against” us so instead of a 24 hour passage, we’re looking more at a 30 hour passage.  Mark and Amanda are still traveling with us, of course, but their boat is a bigger boat than ours, with more sail coverage, so they’re running faster than us and are presently about 3 or 4 miles ahead of us.  That means, I can’t see them in the distance anymore, they are just out of view.  We can still chat on the VHF radio and we do, checking on each other every few hours or so.  It’s nice knowing they are nearby because we have not seen another boat all day.  We did see a helicopter fly a low pass over us, but other than that, nothing, nada.  Just me, Daniel, Auto and C-Time.  Who’s Auto?  That’s the name we gave to our auto-pilot.  We could not make any portion of these voyages without him.  He is wonderful.  He doesn’t talk back, just does what we say and takes us where we want to go when we don’t feel like steering and most times takes us in a straight line when the seas won’t allow our steering to come anywhere near a straight line.  I did just pop us some popcorn in the microwave for a nice afternoon snack, so I’ll go up top again and enjoy the popcorn and the impeding sunset.

7:00 a.m February 17, 2014 – trip continuation to Luperon

“Oh what a night!” and not in a good way.  The seas did not get any better, just worse as the day / night went on.  I didn’t want you to think I exaggerated my description above, or anything else I write below, so I asked Daniel this morning, as we are motoring, to describe our trip thus far.  He said:  “A long time friend of ours…actually a friend of 3 days now…said just yesterday ‘usually if it starts out bad, it improves.  If it starts out good then it worsens’.  We started yesterday with flat seas and 15 knot winds and 45 degrees off our bow and sunny skies.  Those perfect conditions deteriorated throughout the day and well into the night ending in 7 foot confused seas and 20 knot winds, straight on the nose.  We were able to sail for the first 18 ½ hours of this voyage but after that C-Time had had enough.  We had to motor into rough seas the remainder of the way into Luperon.  Total trip time will be over 30 hours.” 

See, I didn’t exaggerate.  At 2:00 a.m. this morning I finally decided that the boat ride we are on right now is just like the “Tilt-a-Whirl” at the fair.  You can’t get off of it and the ride just keeps going on and on.  It’s a bit of a terrible feeling to know that you’re so far from land and if you’re not happy with the weather/sea conditions, too bad, you just have to deal with it.  No way out.  I would say we managed fine but really we “endured” and C-Time and Auto held up much better than both of us.  The seas were so rough and confused that to just walk down the 5 steps into the galley would literally take minutes to accomplish.  You would have to hold on and wait for a lul in the waves.  Then hurry down the steps but hope you didn’t miscalculate the waves or you could land on your “bum”.  At one point in the night we had a line come loose that was hanging from a halyard close to the cockpit.  Daniel was still moving slowly with his bad back so I said I would go.  The ever safety minded engineer agreed I could go, but only if I put on my life jacket (you know, the new one I got the Annapolis Boat Show that I had only worn once up to this point).  I put on my life jacket and it has a safety lanyard attached to it.  Daniel said, attach the safety lanyard to something before you step out of the cockpit.  I stepped out, attached the safety lanyard to the life line and then proceeded to fix the loose line.  It just took a minute – not a big deal.  I got back in the cockpit and turned around to unhook my safety lanyard from the life line and that was when I realized, I had not hooked the safety lanyard to ME.  Uh oh.  New lesson learned.  Always hook to me AND the life line.  Oh brother, I’m such a novice!

We should hopefully be in the Dominican Republic in time for a late lunch today.  I’m ready!