Mona Passge
Well… the girls of WildChild finished a successful passage 2 days ago of the Mona passage. The sailing conditions were fine and to be honest I am not even sure what all the fuss is about. Yesterday we finally managed to check into PR but things did not exactly go smoothly. The girls are safe and the adventure continues.
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Sailing the Mona Passage
I think last Blog I was able to share the details about our great 3 day sail to the east end of the DR where we found a nice little place to anchor just east of Samana. I would say that the anchorage, although well protected from any direct wave action, was pretty rolly as large ocean swells slowly wrapped their way around the point we were hiding behind.
So for 3 days while waiting for our weather window WildChild was getting rolled by 1.5 meter gentle far apart 11 second dominant wave period swells. What we loved about this secret little anchorage though… was that because it is hidden from direct view of the officials in Samana… they did not know we were there… and the Navy did not come out to bother us and nobody came out for bribes. We were left peacefully alone in relative safe protection and did not have to deal with any Dominican B.S. So that was good.
We left on Sunday Nov 3rd in the afternoon at 2pm to begin our Mona passage crossing. I was a bit nervous about my choice of timing as the reported wave heights in the Mona Passage were still over 2 meters and would not come below that until around midnight, but I wanted to have as long a weather window for this passage as we could get.
There were nasty winds clearly coming Tuesday afternoon and for sure we did not want to get caught out there in the coming 25 knots of nasty winds Tuesday.
With the trade winds gently blowing in from the east, and our point of sail being to the east, we had to motor sail out to open waters where we could bear off to the north for about 7 miles to make our tac and try and turn ESE to head to PR. We were sailing nicely ESE about 15 miles offshore of the DR as the sunset.
When sailing Elena and I are not exactly strict about rotating shifts, we each just do what time we can at the helm and when we get tired or feel we should try and get some rest we just ask the other to switch off with us. Elena was feeling much better for this passage and did not have any problems with her tummy, I think the 3 days in the rolly anchorage helped her acclimatize to the motion of the ocean. We do not eat very healthy either, sort of the sailing rule is… eat anything you want while sailing and anything you can keep down is fine. So we eat a lot of candy chips chocolate fruits and cookies while sailing. Elena keeps dehydrating because she does not like to go down below to pee when the boat is getting tossed around.
Although I am a hard core sailor and I sail, not motor like a pussy communist wussie (I think I am funny) the truth is… sailing IS BORING. We just sit for days in the cockpit bored. So during the crossing I watched movies on the tablet and listened to BBC radio podcasts as usual for company. Elena doesn’t chat with me very much, she is too quiet for conversation.
The great news is… the Mona passage was just fine. I am not even sure what everybody gets so worked up about. Why all the dread and fear amongst the sailing community about this stretch of water? Why does the Passages South book by Bruce VanZant propagate so much fear and caution about how difficult this crossing is…? It was fine… no big deal at all. And we even crossed right on the back end of large north Atlantic waves pushing in for 3 days. We did not see any 2 meter waves as forecast really. What we did see was 2 meter large far apart ocean swell that passed under us so gently the boat hardly rolls over unto its side. Two meter ocean swells 12 seconds apart (about 100 meters apart) with gently rolling sides. Easy stuff.
Now I will say… that the ocean bottom topography is a spikey mountain top. We could tell when we were sailing over a peak or underwater hill, you could see it and feel it in the wave patterns. The swells get more confusion and waves to start to loom up. The ocean does get rougher for a while. So we did alter course to kind of slalom around the underwater hills. AND… this is just a thing with me… but you can clearly see the contour lines of underwater volcanoes on the chart plotter… we never sail over the top of a volcano. I do not care how long it has been inactive… one little volcanic burp and your boat loses bouyancy in the bubbles and sinks and you die. No thank you.. no benefit to taking that tiny risk. Also the waves on the waters surface to get rougher above volcanoes. We just go around them.
WildChild sailed easily and happily for 35 hours to make the 140 mile crossing in relatively easy conditions. I was unsure if we would take the chicken route and head only south in the passage or go straight across. I was saving the decision for a last moment see what the conditions are kind of thing, but… conditions were perfect… so I decided we would head straight to the nearest port of entry at Mayaguez.
Because things went so easily and perfectly though we made the crossing much shorter than my plan and much faster than expected… so we ended up arriving in the dark. Its a Captain Lexi rule to try to never land in a foreign unfamiliar port in the dark… but sometimes… you get there when you get there… that’s sailing. So by around 9pm WildChild reduced sail for the last 20 miles to slow down to see how the thermal winds near land were going to affect the boat. The winds got a bit squirrely and many small course corrections needed to be made but we kept finding opportunities to climb back up to course with the wind shifts and sailed 40 deg TWA straight in.
For the last 5 miles we furled up the genny completely and slowly 11 over 3 sailed in calm waters in the dark towards the harbour. We used both the thermal imager and the night vision scope to try and find the entrance marker bouys in the dark. I posted Elena up on the bow (tethered in of course) to watch for dark obstructions in the pale moonlight.
We made it in without incident and in the end this was probably one of the easiest night time harbour entrances I have ever made. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
We had the anchor set in 25 feet of water half a mile offshore before midnight. Hook down we just went to bed.
Tomorrow we will try to figure out how to check into Puerto Rico.
Cheers sailor fans…
Captain Lexi…
… the very tired but safe…