I've tried six times to come up with an opening sentence, but sleep deprivation has rendered me pretty much all blathery, so we'll just see what happens.
Left you last in lovely Luperon, where we checked out with the throngs of officiales before leaving on Wednesday. All okay with the immigration fella and harbour official, then dodge the goats and cows up the hill to say goodbye to the navy. Commandancia wouldn't stamp our despachio papers until Randy gave him $20 bucks, so it was back down the hill, back to town for more money, then back up the hill where the money went into the commandancia's pocket. On the way back to the boat, we were laughing over the "official" receipt he provided -- on request -- scribbled on a plain piece of paper, something about providing protection....The immigration fella heard us and called us over and wanted to look at it. He shook his head and said that was very bad. He'd warned some people earlier not to allow another official to ding them for any extra fees, but what do you do when the navy guy has a gun, and won't stamp your papers? You sure can't dazzle them with your stream of stinging invective, in English. You can, however, enjoy the terrific beauty of their island, take your first world Canadian sensibilities, and go back down the hill to your beautiful boat, and go somewhere else.
(A note about appearances: people have gone by and said "beautiful boat! You keep it so nice!" and this while I was sitting in the cockpit picking scabs of old varnish off the taffrails. I put it down to the fact that most mornings after a heavy dew, I wipe down the topsides to get rid of the salt spray. Heather on Sea Holly used to do it, and I used to watch while I drank my coffee. So if you want to impress the neighbourhood, wipe down the boat in the morning while they're all sitting on their butts drinking their coffee and watching you through the binoculars. Takes ten minutes, renders the topsides less slippery and salty, establishes your reputation, and they'll be totally blind to other shortcomings. Thanks, Heather.)
We sailed out of Luperon about suppertime, and into crappy swells. I hadn't been feeling so great after an interesting lunch ashore -- Paul's birthday lunch -- cold lasagna at the marina restaurant. Denise and I asked to get ours heated up, but as I ate the still lukewarm goop, I got thinking that meat lasagna ought not to be hanging around being warmish then coolish, then warmish again, should it?, so I ended up sick all night in the choppy swells. Lousy night, and sailed into Rio San Juan in the morning (translated, Saint John River. There are only about three dozen names for rivers in the whole world), where it was, again, rolly. I had another Gravol and slept the morning away, and awoke from a dream of drinking coke and eating chips to drink a coke and eat chips. Slept as much as we could during the day, and left about 9 pm from Rio San Juan with five other boats (Vixen, Sea Yeti, Southern Mist, Paradiso, Andante) and headed for Escondido, about 55 miles away.
Sailing that night was okay, nothing difficult other than not being asleep, and coming into Escondido early in the morning was stupendous (I must get a thesaurus). High mountains, green, green, green, a beautiful beach with high rock walls and caves and big palm trees. After we anchored, I saw a man on a horse going down the beach, and had to readjust the whole scale of the beach. These palms were huge, probably four or five times as big as I first thought. Paul, Denise and I swam ashore later and a young woman who introduced herself as Calista came down to meet us on the beach and walked us down to the cave and showed us the interesting features while we bantered away hopelessly in Spanglish. I think that she ran the beach bar and was luring us over to it, but we explained, with lots of pointing and stupid facial expressions, that we were in bathing suits and had no money with us and were sailing away at suppertime anyway. Being unilingual makes you feel totally dopey. The crews from Sea Yeti, Southern Mist, and Paradiso swam in later and got the same welcome, and they all opted to stay another day, so they did go in later and eat the fresh fish special.
Nancy D, Vixen and Andante (and Watermark 1 and Encantada) decided to push on. The weather window was just so benign for the Mona Passage, we didn't want to miss it, so we left beautiful Escondido that evening. We would have happily stayed for a few days to explore -- it's wild looking. If you want an idea of what it looks like, rent Jurassic Park again. They filmed it somewhere in the DR.
From Escondido we headed across to Puerto Rico, leaving about 6 pm. Not much swell, not much wind, but endless lightning. Alone in the cockpit, overcast, no moon, black as hell except for about a dozen times a minute the sky lights up all around you, and your head involuntary ducks into your neck and all your other bits flinch. It felt like some cosmically tedious little brother kept flicking on the overhead light and yelling BOO, or WHAAA!, every few seconds. I felt better after I realized that most of the lightning was over the land behind us. Then, of course, once I felt better about that, there was lightning over the land on the starboard side, and then, over the water on the port side. Well, I thought, at least it's not raining. Then it started raining. It stopped doing all of that by about midnight, and on my next watch, Randy brought me a cup of very strong coffee, and I spent the rest of the time sailing along in the dark singing old camp songs, car trip songs, Christmas carols, jazz, choir songs from grade three, anything I could remember. Between 3 and 4, there was another bout of lightning that lit up the back of a roundish cloud and looked almost exactly like the Bat Signal. Really. Flashed about ten times.
Night passages have worked okay with each of us doing about an hour driving and an hour in what we're still calling Tom's bunk (quarter berth aft). Any longer and I get too stupid (see Bat Signal comment above), particularly after about 3 or 4 am, and Randy doesn't crash effectively for long periods when I'm on deck singing On Top of Old Smokey. So it works, but after four nights of it, we're both really dopey, in any language.
The Mona Passage held no terrors, even after a night of lightning. Pretty much dead calm, interesting currents here and there, mostly in our favour oddly enough, and sometimes enough breeze to assist the motoring. As soon as we'd had our coffee in the morning and Randy had listened to Chris Parker's weather forecast, I put out the fishing line and he hit the bunk for some more sleep. The line, with the attractive red squid lure attached, picked up some weed after about an hour, so I hauled it in and replaced it with the lucky "Yellow Bird," and I sang the song for further luck as I dropped the line astern again. Some time later, I check over my shoulder and the line is gone. Gone where? Gone at a 90 degree angle to the boat. Something is taking my yellow bird north north east. I cut the engine, grabbed the lucky gardening gloves, and started to haul in the line.
Randy wakes up when the engine noise changes, and sleepwalks on deck to stand by with the gaff. "What is it?" he asks, then we both spend the next two minutes saying "whoa! big fish! big dolphin! beautiful! shit! hang on! holy hannah! big fish! crap! there he goes! hang on! big fish!" etc. I finally drag the thrashing mahi mahi/dolphin/dorado alongside and as Randy tries to hook him with the gaff, the fish gives an almighty thrash that hauls the hook off the gaff. Randy is now standing by with a stick. I am NOT losing this fish, so the lucky gardening glove grabs the steel leader and over he goes into the cockpit. Thank god I was wearing my Wonder Woman belt.
Man, there's nothing like great lashings of adrenalin. I'm so totally hooked on this fishing stuff, I'm embarrassed. Beautiful fish, 48" long (which doesn't include the tail, which you're not suppose to include, but Paul does, so it skews our competitive tallies), which makes it more than 4 FEET long and Randy figured it was probably more than 30 pounds. We had fish for lunch, fish for dinner, and it will feed us for another week. [note: in a warehouse discount place in Ponce, frozen dorado was five bucks a pound]
We're now in Puerto Rico, motored in Saturday night after a long afternoon approach watching the huge cloud buildup over the land and preparing ourselves for another few hours of lightning and thunder. But the sun set, the huge clouds dissipated, and we motored into Boqueron and dropped the anchor about 10 pm. Drink of rum for the first time in days, and hit the bunk for the first time in three nights? four nights? We did Boqueron today (like a tiny unpleasant Latin version of Wasaga Beach, Daytona Beach, or Myrtle Beach, nearly naked people, too much traffic, bloody phones that don't bloody work). Heading to Mayaguez tomorrow to check in with Customs and Immigration. Now to bed.
I'd hoped to post this in Boqueron, but the single internet cafe in Boqueron is closed, every day. The place only lives on the weekend, and the rest of the time, everything is shut up tighter than a clam's ass at high water. Lots of phones, half of them work, but you can't get a call through for love or money, cause the government workers, including the phone fellers, are on strike. I did get an operator a couple of times, and when I started to speak in English, they just disconnected me. We are going to buy a modem and get sailmail as soon as we can. And I'm going to learn a few handy phrases and just one stream of invective in Spanish. We're now in Ponce (PONsay) and will be heading into town tomorrow for a look see at PR's second biggest city.
Here I am again, cause there's no joy with finding wifi in Ponce. Lovely place, and we had a blast wandering around like real tourists. Bought a lovely wrap skirt, a great papier mache mask, and an apron with an indecipherable recipe for fricasee de pollo printed thereon. The story behind the masks: pirates used to come and do the rape and pillage bit, so the locals made these masks, and their African slaves would wear them, along with billowing robes and scare the willy-jeebers out of the pirates, who thought they were devils. The pirates never came back, according to legend. Our mask is now on the bulkhead. We have onboard a Mexican mermaid, an Irish Neptune, and a St. Christopher medal. We're trying to cover all bases. Please send rabbit's foot.
We've moved on to the Spanish Virgin Islands - currently (Sunday, May 7) stopped at Isla de Vieques (Vee-ACHE-ees), and will hang around here for a day or two, then off to the BVI. Mother's Day! And where are the emails from my children?
Left you last in lovely Luperon, where we checked out with the throngs of officiales before leaving on Wednesday. All okay with the immigration fella and harbour official, then dodge the goats and cows up the hill to say goodbye to the navy. Commandancia wouldn't stamp our despachio papers until Randy gave him $20 bucks, so it was back down the hill, back to town for more money, then back up the hill where the money went into the commandancia's pocket. On the way back to the boat, we were laughing over the "official" receipt he provided -- on request -- scribbled on a plain piece of paper, something about providing protection....The immigration fella heard us and called us over and wanted to look at it. He shook his head and said that was very bad. He'd warned some people earlier not to allow another official to ding them for any extra fees, but what do you do when the navy guy has a gun, and won't stamp your papers? You sure can't dazzle them with your stream of stinging invective, in English. You can, however, enjoy the terrific beauty of their island, take your first world Canadian sensibilities, and go back down the hill to your beautiful boat, and go somewhere else.
(A note about appearances: people have gone by and said "beautiful boat! You keep it so nice!" and this while I was sitting in the cockpit picking scabs of old varnish off the taffrails. I put it down to the fact that most mornings after a heavy dew, I wipe down the topsides to get rid of the salt spray. Heather on Sea Holly used to do it, and I used to watch while I drank my coffee. So if you want to impress the neighbourhood, wipe down the boat in the morning while they're all sitting on their butts drinking their coffee and watching you through the binoculars. Takes ten minutes, renders the topsides less slippery and salty, establishes your reputation, and they'll be totally blind to other shortcomings. Thanks, Heather.)
We sailed out of Luperon about suppertime, and into crappy swells. I hadn't been feeling so great after an interesting lunch ashore -- Paul's birthday lunch -- cold lasagna at the marina restaurant. Denise and I asked to get ours heated up, but as I ate the still lukewarm goop, I got thinking that meat lasagna ought not to be hanging around being warmish then coolish, then warmish again, should it?, so I ended up sick all night in the choppy swells. Lousy night, and sailed into Rio San Juan in the morning (translated, Saint John River. There are only about three dozen names for rivers in the whole world), where it was, again, rolly. I had another Gravol and slept the morning away, and awoke from a dream of drinking coke and eating chips to drink a coke and eat chips. Slept as much as we could during the day, and left about 9 pm from Rio San Juan with five other boats (Vixen, Sea Yeti, Southern Mist, Paradiso, Andante) and headed for Escondido, about 55 miles away.
Sailing that night was okay, nothing difficult other than not being asleep, and coming into Escondido early in the morning was stupendous (I must get a thesaurus). High mountains, green, green, green, a beautiful beach with high rock walls and caves and big palm trees. After we anchored, I saw a man on a horse going down the beach, and had to readjust the whole scale of the beach. These palms were huge, probably four or five times as big as I first thought. Paul, Denise and I swam ashore later and a young woman who introduced herself as Calista came down to meet us on the beach and walked us down to the cave and showed us the interesting features while we bantered away hopelessly in Spanglish. I think that she ran the beach bar and was luring us over to it, but we explained, with lots of pointing and stupid facial expressions, that we were in bathing suits and had no money with us and were sailing away at suppertime anyway. Being unilingual makes you feel totally dopey. The crews from Sea Yeti, Southern Mist, and Paradiso swam in later and got the same welcome, and they all opted to stay another day, so they did go in later and eat the fresh fish special.
Nancy D, Vixen and Andante (and Watermark 1 and Encantada) decided to push on. The weather window was just so benign for the Mona Passage, we didn't want to miss it, so we left beautiful Escondido that evening. We would have happily stayed for a few days to explore -- it's wild looking. If you want an idea of what it looks like, rent Jurassic Park again. They filmed it somewhere in the DR.
From Escondido we headed across to Puerto Rico, leaving about 6 pm. Not much swell, not much wind, but endless lightning. Alone in the cockpit, overcast, no moon, black as hell except for about a dozen times a minute the sky lights up all around you, and your head involuntary ducks into your neck and all your other bits flinch. It felt like some cosmically tedious little brother kept flicking on the overhead light and yelling BOO, or WHAAA!, every few seconds. I felt better after I realized that most of the lightning was over the land behind us. Then, of course, once I felt better about that, there was lightning over the land on the starboard side, and then, over the water on the port side. Well, I thought, at least it's not raining. Then it started raining. It stopped doing all of that by about midnight, and on my next watch, Randy brought me a cup of very strong coffee, and I spent the rest of the time sailing along in the dark singing old camp songs, car trip songs, Christmas carols, jazz, choir songs from grade three, anything I could remember. Between 3 and 4, there was another bout of lightning that lit up the back of a roundish cloud and looked almost exactly like the Bat Signal. Really. Flashed about ten times.
Night passages have worked okay with each of us doing about an hour driving and an hour in what we're still calling Tom's bunk (quarter berth aft). Any longer and I get too stupid (see Bat Signal comment above), particularly after about 3 or 4 am, and Randy doesn't crash effectively for long periods when I'm on deck singing On Top of Old Smokey. So it works, but after four nights of it, we're both really dopey, in any language.
The Mona Passage held no terrors, even after a night of lightning. Pretty much dead calm, interesting currents here and there, mostly in our favour oddly enough, and sometimes enough breeze to assist the motoring. As soon as we'd had our coffee in the morning and Randy had listened to Chris Parker's weather forecast, I put out the fishing line and he hit the bunk for some more sleep. The line, with the attractive red squid lure attached, picked up some weed after about an hour, so I hauled it in and replaced it with the lucky "Yellow Bird," and I sang the song for further luck as I dropped the line astern again. Some time later, I check over my shoulder and the line is gone. Gone where? Gone at a 90 degree angle to the boat. Something is taking my yellow bird north north east. I cut the engine, grabbed the lucky gardening gloves, and started to haul in the line.
Randy wakes up when the engine noise changes, and sleepwalks on deck to stand by with the gaff. "What is it?" he asks, then we both spend the next two minutes saying "whoa! big fish! big dolphin! beautiful! shit! hang on! holy hannah! big fish! crap! there he goes! hang on! big fish!" etc. I finally drag the thrashing mahi mahi/dolphin/dorado alongside and as Randy tries to hook him with the gaff, the fish gives an almighty thrash that hauls the hook off the gaff. Randy is now standing by with a stick. I am NOT losing this fish, so the lucky gardening glove grabs the steel leader and over he goes into the cockpit. Thank god I was wearing my Wonder Woman belt.
Man, there's nothing like great lashings of adrenalin. I'm so totally hooked on this fishing stuff, I'm embarrassed. Beautiful fish, 48" long (which doesn't include the tail, which you're not suppose to include, but Paul does, so it skews our competitive tallies), which makes it more than 4 FEET long and Randy figured it was probably more than 30 pounds. We had fish for lunch, fish for dinner, and it will feed us for another week. [note: in a warehouse discount place in Ponce, frozen dorado was five bucks a pound]
We're now in Puerto Rico, motored in Saturday night after a long afternoon approach watching the huge cloud buildup over the land and preparing ourselves for another few hours of lightning and thunder. But the sun set, the huge clouds dissipated, and we motored into Boqueron and dropped the anchor about 10 pm. Drink of rum for the first time in days, and hit the bunk for the first time in three nights? four nights? We did Boqueron today (like a tiny unpleasant Latin version of Wasaga Beach, Daytona Beach, or Myrtle Beach, nearly naked people, too much traffic, bloody phones that don't bloody work). Heading to Mayaguez tomorrow to check in with Customs and Immigration. Now to bed.
I'd hoped to post this in Boqueron, but the single internet cafe in Boqueron is closed, every day. The place only lives on the weekend, and the rest of the time, everything is shut up tighter than a clam's ass at high water. Lots of phones, half of them work, but you can't get a call through for love or money, cause the government workers, including the phone fellers, are on strike. I did get an operator a couple of times, and when I started to speak in English, they just disconnected me. We are going to buy a modem and get sailmail as soon as we can. And I'm going to learn a few handy phrases and just one stream of invective in Spanish. We're now in Ponce (PONsay) and will be heading into town tomorrow for a look see at PR's second biggest city.
Here I am again, cause there's no joy with finding wifi in Ponce. Lovely place, and we had a blast wandering around like real tourists. Bought a lovely wrap skirt, a great papier mache mask, and an apron with an indecipherable recipe for fricasee de pollo printed thereon. The story behind the masks: pirates used to come and do the rape and pillage bit, so the locals made these masks, and their African slaves would wear them, along with billowing robes and scare the willy-jeebers out of the pirates, who thought they were devils. The pirates never came back, according to legend. Our mask is now on the bulkhead. We have onboard a Mexican mermaid, an Irish Neptune, and a St. Christopher medal. We're trying to cover all bases. Please send rabbit's foot.
We've moved on to the Spanish Virgin Islands - currently (Sunday, May 7) stopped at Isla de Vieques (Vee-ACHE-ees), and will hang around here for a day or two, then off to the BVI. Mother's Day! And where are the emails from my children?
posted by Susan at 3:23 PM
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