Crossing the Mona

Dominican softball will carry on without us, but it will not be the same sin crew from "Ultima Noche". We made great friends and built quite the commmunity in a short period of time there in the DR, but the tradewinds died down for us and it was time to cut loose. The furry set in and we made the mad dash to Puerto Rico with twelve other boats. Traveling east in the tradewinds means motor sailing tight along the coast when the cooing air on land rushes back out to sea canceling the incoming winds forming a night lee. Columbus took advantage of this effect by rowing east by night and anchoring through the day. Sunrise after sunset we snuck along the coast. The weather window was short, and the pressure to stay in the comfort of the group was intense. We were all crossing into new territory and none the less the passage has a rough reputaion. Being small and slow we lead the pack off the line in order to stay with the group. Our friend Christa left his anchor and two hundred and twenty five feet of chain because it was hung up on a coral head and the prospect of falling behind and gettting left on the North coast when the weather picks was worse than replacing $1500 of ground tackle. All in all we had sunny days undersail filled with cardgames and watermelon, and the ocasional mecanical problems, but nothing tragic. Sailing around the world, is more or less getting as ready as you possibly can, then setting of when its time with tiller in one hand and wrench in the other.


Humpback whales escourted us along the way, and as we pointed due east just north of the hourglass shoals I saw a whale as big as our boat jump completely out of the water and hang in the air. It was one of those moments where staring off into the sea payed off. The experience was thrilling, and it wasn't far from the boat. The memory will remain and forever testify for me that some of the most amaizing life and natural phenomina happen in that vast and seeemingly void expanse we call the sea. I have spent days on end watching it, and I still see new phenomina after years on the water.
We slipped into Puerto Rico at 3 AM under a cloudy sky illuminted by the industrial lights of Mayaguez. Two boats abondoned the passage due to fatigue and two pulled in behind us. Overall we finished seventh. The race wasn't official, in fact no one else knew about it, but amongst the bigger boats we tend to place better when the race goes on un-announced.:)

Waterfalling

If you were wondering what projects the Peace Corps are resposible for here in the DR, here is an example: Adventure waterfalling!! If you havent heard of it before, it involves a helmet, life jacket, sturdy shoes and two able bodied guides. The idea is that water runs down hill over cliffs and occasionaly carves out narrow slot canyons. The game is to traverse up these features against the water, then to get back you cliff jump into these water holes and slot canyons. Its slick, the rock is hard and the water is powerfull. The rainforrest backdrop and the teal colored water makes the entire experience complete. Its ten bucks and there are 27 waterfalls.

Planting a seed

Well we have been all over the place in the last few weeks. The DR has treated us well and the experience thus far has been idealistic and experimental but we have formed a model for what we can accomplish along our journey. Coming to the DR, we had hopeful ideas, but we were unclear as to what exactly we could offer without spending a significant period of time in any place. So with alot of leg work and some of Derek's magic, we had a party and brought together those who want to help with those who are in need of help. It's the Dominican Republic and everything is a celebration- we roasted a pig and set up the Karaoke machine and with five speakers and an audience of fourty people, we had a fund raiser. It seems we have become "aid brokers without a commission" - Ottis S/V Independance.
Here is the magic. We came here to work for an orphange. You guys wanted to help and you gave us a thousand bucks. We stretched that around and around. That activity stirred the community and more people wanted to help. Soon people emerged from various organizations including local hospitals and the US Peace Corps. The magic of networking lead those with the funds to Viajito, a local family man who had lost his leg and hearing in a diving accident. His family has been struggling futilely to make ends meet since, and there has been no hope for a prosthetic leg. His wife cooks in a local restaurant, has a laundry business and other odd jobs. Crippled and deaf, Viajito's voice and story reached alot of people and the pig roast fund raiser made enough to pay his medical bills and get him a new leg.
Thank you for your support. We ventured out here to see a bit of the world by sea, and do some good along the way and the vision is growing. Our first goal was to raise a thousand dollars for an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. We were amazed that it worked, and secondly we have been blow away by how much can be done and how willing people are to help us help other people. All of what we have purchased has been at tremendous discount and doors have been opened left and right for us.
The money raised thus far has started a wave amongst the community around us. People are lining up to do their part, and amazing opportunities are emerging. The money donated to Theworldbysea.com was matched one and half times last night at the pig roast. That brings us to $2,500. Your contributions started something and it will reverberate even when we have sailed on.

We were able to purchase clothes for hundreds of kids at the orphanage. Then we acquired a lawnmower, to alleviate the laborious and lengthy task performed by four staff members of mowing the grounds with machetes. Then $200 went to provision a street orphan soup kitchen which feeds up to twenty kids a day and provides English lessons. Here local schools are short on writing utensils, so if a child is without a pen they are sent home. So we had a pencil drive and have a mound of pens now to meet that need.
And then there is Viajito, who gets a leg. It’s pretty cool to see every dollar go directly to a need. Most importantly, we have observed the tremendous need here, and identified a community that desires to help alleviate that need. Of course, people have been doing their part already, and we merely have helped more people to give- it all seems to be making an impact. People have emerged here to organize the effort and channel the resources. Now the channels are in place. Hundreds of sailboats come here each year from all over the world. If the word gets out that there are volunteer opportunities here and we are taking ownership, then we could have a huge impact.
Your giving inspired us and that inspired dozens of others. For us we have a model to continue on with. We will explore, come across needs, seek out the key players and bring attention to those needs. Thank you for your support. This project has been loads of fun and fulfilling. I hope you all can feel what good your contribution has created down here.

Domincan Sunrise

We eased into the long sought and hard fought Port of Luperon, with eager hearts and wet belongings. The trip, I'm sure, will have prepped us for other challenges that lie ahead in the world by sea. Alas we have found what we went looking for. As we made land fall and called our wobbly legs to use, the sounds of music filled our ears and smiling faces blessed our tired eyes.
As we arrived our friends at the orphanage welcomed us with showers, hot food and a stationary place to sleep. To them we were surely shocking by sight and hard on the nose....

Seeing the beautiful faces here and pleasant camaraderie in the DR is something special to experience. We have been working at what I would call an "after school care center" where kids from a Dominican and Haitian worker camp come to eat their first meal of the day and participate in after-school activities. Here they are helped with their homework, inspected by nurses, given a shower, feed, and allowed to play games in a protected field. The facility borders a Haitian workers encampment and is surrounded entirely by sugar cane fields. It is a definite refuge and symbol of hope in a community where there is very little.
The youngest kids are charming and amazingly independent. A quick tour of their home situation explains all.
We jumped in with a team of nurses for a week as they set up mobile clinics in the area to initiate health records for hundreds of kids and dozens of families looking for answers to their neglected ailments. The people seem tremendously grateful for the aid and greeted our presence with smiles and handshakes.
Derek and I found ourselves most useful helping with the construction projects on site. We put our mark on a shelving unit and some trenched electrical conduit. Actually making a difference with a short period of time is the challenge. We felt like we got alot out of the experience, and we hope that they felt the same. A thousand bucks was raised through the website and that has gone a long way. We asked them to make a long list of things that they need and we explained that we would do what we could to meet some of those needs with the money.
The list was long but full of real basic things like socks and underwear. Apparently the clothes donated to Haiti by the US are brought to the DR and resold to raise money for food. So we found one of these markets and used our bargaining skills to finagle 200 pairs of underwear, 40 pairs of socks, 10 bras, and 17 belts all brand-new for $100 USD.
While at the school we were laboring with five of their paid staff members. Those five guys spent about four days that week cutting the grass around the school with machetes. The land around the school is large and since its overgrown, the students were forced to play in the streets. We asked the director about getting a lawnmower and he informed us that he had ordered one and it was being held until they could pay it off. The construction workers who were supposed to be building a school room were detained a week at a time to re-cut the grass in a painfully inefficient way. We felt that paying off the lawnmower would answer their prayers and be good stewardship of the money raised. Now one guy can cut the grass in a day and the other four can continue to build the school rooms.
After three weeks in the DR we feel that we can go directly to kids in need with the remaining funding. We are holding a slide show and informational event for the sailing community here. Luperon is home to fifty sailboats at any given time and they have shown a huge interest in the local community. Most travelers we meet ask us how they can get involved, and who they should talk to. People who live in the DR ask us if we can help, so we think establishing an avenue for them to meet is a worthy venture. Numerous sailors have gone out on their own to do what they can. Our vision is to organize that group of people who are already doing their part, focus their efforts and connect them with needs.
In the short time that we have been here, another group of sailors inspired by our efforts have started to organize a group focusing on helping kids in a town a few hours east of where we are now.

Adventures top to bottom

We set out from Georgetown first thing Saturday morning with less than favorable winds. Five other anxious boats departed the same day with the same hopes, each of us fighting into the wind but diverging on to our own strategy. Derek and I were sure we would shortly be lost in the wake of the newer, bigger boats. We chose to fall off the wind a few degrees to gain speed and make several long tacks to stay in the game. The day passed and dark clouds rolled in as the sun set and soon we were deep into what would be a long night of shifting winds and squalls. We watched as an approaching squall swallowed a boat to the south of us, then a boat to the west of us. The rain soon closed in around us and washed away the comfortable sight of the other boats. We sailed sixty miles through the night and at dawn were out of radio contact with our pack- but only eight miles east of where we were sixteen hours earlier.
We had sailed out beyond and around the protective islands and as we tacked back south in the morning, we trailed over the line of the Bahamian bank and hooked our first fish. A shark followed it in and ate it as we pulled it up to the boat. Our spirits were up and we put out another line and shortly hooked a huge Mahi Mahi. The sight of the Mahi is out of this world. Its green and bright yellow body are alien to this world. This time, as we brought it up next to the boat, we scrambled for a method to bring it in and it spooked, breaking the line at the last moment.
So we headed for the next bank off Samana Cay. On the charts the cay is surrounded by three thousand feet of water then an abrupt eighty foot depth. We hit it about lunch time, and hit it we did. With three lines out in flat calm water we could see eighty feet to the bottom. When we reached twenty feet of water beneath us we began to see coral heads reaching up for the surface. The GPS chart showed six feet deep and sandy. Nevertheless, Derek went to the bow to spot for shallow, threatening heads. Immediately he pointed for me to turn hard right, then hard left, then straight on. As the heads approached my end of the boat they were four feet beneath the surface and on both sides of the hull. We proceeded into a narrow channel, conversing in tense loud voices, until we could go no further. We had entered into a impassible coral field. Then the sea surge lifted us up and right on top of the reef. “Boom”- we landed square and the whole boat shook. “Boom…Boom…Boom” and we sat balanced on the reef, looking at each other with new faces. The next surge backed us onto a shallower head and it knocked our rudder up and out of its seat. We were getting beat up on this reef and now had lost our ability to steer. The third surge lifted us up over and off the reef and I gunned it for a clear area of water. We dropped anchor in a patch of sand and proceeded to dive on the rudder.
The rudder was dangling to one side and a bit chewed up. We were on the fringe of no where so we called a passing boat, to let them know our situation. It was Snark, our traveling buddies, so they stood by on the radio as we worked on the rudder. I held the rudder in line from underneath as Derek beat on the post from above, driving it back into place. It was as easy as it could possibly be to fix- any weather and we would have been in trouble.
So I have this big shark fear now that I have seen them rip fish away from us underwater as we hunt. I am pretty paranoid swimming around in the water. All the while fixing this rudder there was a typical sleeping nursing shark right under the boat and lots of edible fish. The Nurse is not supposed to be dangerous unless you manage to get your arm in its mouth. To be fair, they are not interested in us and have no real teeth, but I’m not tough and fear is rarely rational anyways- and so it goes. We lost all our trolling gear in that snaffoo on the reef. I lost a special rig that Jon of the Double Bryun had given me and we came all the way out to Samana to fish, so we couldn’t leave empty handed. So we geared up, intending to spear a fish without waking up the shark beneath us. We eased in like Navy Seals, speared a fish in less than twenty seconds and hysterically scrambled up the sides of the boat before the shark could get it or us. We timidly navigated out of the coral heads and set sail again with rice on the stove and fish in the oven.

Looking for more adventure, we drug the dead fish carcass behind the boat as we glided back out to sea. With the video camera out, we watched and watched and watched for a shark to jump out of the water feigning for our bait. So we watched, we slowed the boat and made splashing noises to simulate struggle, etc. What are the chances, eh?

Well, half an hour passes and we lose interest in the fish, but just then a school of Tuna boils just off the side of the boat and a dorsal fin heads toward us. A massive ocean white tip shark is now circling the boat and narrowing in on the bait. It danced around the carcass for fifteen minutes as we snapped photos underwater and took video from above. It was unbelievable. Sharks are out there, and they are near by, it seems, at all times.

With luck the adventure has begun. We have luck. Some would think we have had a lot of near-catastrophes, but those of us who pray for an adventurous life are nothing but grateful. From top to bottom we have experienced a few of what every sailor fears most. Days before we left Georgetown, by chance, we changed the mast anchor light and inadvertently found our mast rigging plate completely sheared off at the top, meaning we were moments from toppling our mast. And now we have hit a reef and been rudderless.

The story goes on as we were still only halfway to the DR. Our weather window was closing in twenty hours, so we came to a real tosser. There was another day of no wind, meaning we could motor straight to the Turks and Caicos bank where we needed to cross, but we were a few hours from being out of diesel. And when we reached the Turks bank we would definitely have to motor. We could change course to get diesel from a station that reportsed that it “may” have fuel but we would have to wait ten hours till it opened up. This was not an option, since once we had the fuel, our window for motoring would be over. So we leaned on our luck a little and pressed on. Sure enough, sailing vessel Prudence, another traveling buddy of ours, closed in on us and sold us some of their extra fuel. Thank you Prudence -you saved out backs! That five gallons got us all the way across the Turks and Caicos bank and into a safe anchorage. We did run out again and sailing vessel DIVA, who had provided safe waypoints across an incompletely surveyed bank, also sold us ten more gallons and we were set for the Dominican Republic.
We pulled an all-nighter and fought our way to Luperon, where we are now drying the boat out because everything and everything was drenched in the passage. Nothing was spared- Derek’s passport was too wet to stamp at the immigration office. We are stoked to be here and ready for a break from the boat. The reward of our long fight east has been the smiling faces, beautiful country, and cheap living that we have found here in the Dominican Republic.
All-in-all, the sailing has been hard on the nose and we are looking forward to the downwind passages to Central America.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas all from Wardwick Wells Exumas! We will celibrate the day here with dozens of other cruisers from around the globe on the beach for an afternoon potluck. We miss you and welcome you out here anytime you want to join in.

Naughtso Bahamas

Tropical storm Ulga has pinned us in the Bahamian capital of Nassau. Anchored in a channel /no-mans land between the have’s and the have-nots we lock our dinghy to a free dock on the ghetto side and walk the bridge to where the grass is watered and the beaches are sanded. It’s the scene of a future revolution. A toll bridge brings you from a concrete graveyard to a highly guarded Disneyland. Across that bridge is celebration: nightly fireworks illuminate the casino skyline as timeshare folks file in to drop off their weekly pensions and Carnival cruise line ushers thousands of buffet gurus into the t-shirt stores with their fifteen bucks so they adorn their tanned pot bellies and spare tires with proof of their Bahamian experience, even though tourist day here was designed by the same group that did Myrtle Beach and south Florida and every other tourist coral. If you walked deep into New Providence Island then drew up a t-shirt after the fact it would hardly be yellow with a palm tree, but its no wonder since the seamstress is looking out the factory window dreaming beyond their own rusted corrugated roof line of Sri-lanka.
Informally I have surveyed the impressions of other foreigners and our sentiments concur. Slouched middle aged men line the crumbling city streets of Providence Island with hopeless eyes and idle hands. There is a defeated feel and distance in their eyes and smiles are few and far between. Their ethic is different than what we are living off of from the protestant era. When you do make a connection with someone and venture beyond that first layer the people are beautiful and proud.
The common hope here is that one can land a tourism based job where the tipping culture put you above the daily average wage. Its interesting that people are coming to see a way of life that is contrived for the benefit of and exists solely because people come to see it. So how does it occur?

This weeks adventure has been a high low search for a two person meal under thirty bucks. Our first four days ran us thirty bucks every time we stopped walking. A burger is eight bucks and if you want fries and a coke that’s seven more dollars. Ha! So we found a few shacks built up with scrap plywood and other scavenged timbers on a vacant lot down on the fisherman’s wharf underneath a two lane bridge. I ordered the cheapest chopped onion, tomato and ice burg salad with diced conk and it was nine bucks. This was as local as it got. We need to get further south it looks like. Lobster fetches $19.50 per pound to the fisherman, that’s twice what we get for chasing down King crab in the frigid Bering sea. Sorry folks the Us dollar wont get you far. So we collected a few coconuts from the trees and plantains from the market and we fry that up everyday along with our daily home bake pizzas. Our thirty bucks now lasts two people two days.