Well… after a difficult start here in Luperon for me I am starting to settle down into the local community. Slowly I am getting to know the place and become acclimatized. Now that monkey is blocked from coming here to murder me I can finally relax and feel safe. The animals in the streets still amuse me to no end and I think a local dog has adopted me. So that’s cool.
I am going to share my day yesterday just for perspective to give my friends and family back home what life is like for me here. This place is actually pretty cool once you get to know it, and as I have ventured off the boat more I discover more.
I always try to keep my dinghy stored up out of the water so the bottom does not get overgrown with barnacles. They grow at a prolific pace here in the fertile water. The bottom of my hull was clean 4 weeks ago.. and a week ago when we went out to the channel to make water… and we dove the hull… the bottom was so overgrown with Barnacles (in 3 weeks…!) it was the worst it has ever been. Even brother Mic was shocked at how quickly the growth here over took my hull. So I am thinking that to be safe it is probably best to keep the dinghy up out of the water as much as possible.
It is a pain to lift the dinghy alone without the help of my crew but I have figured out how to do it. So to start anything off the boat step 1 is always to launch the dinghy.
Yesterday I was at Yoga class. Every Monday Wednesday and Friday morning there is a a free Yoga class up at this cool old abandoned resort. The place is actually spectacular exactly the way it is. It is run down and nature is beginning to reclaim it… but the … hmm… Yoga studio… in the back is kept clean every week by a nice Hatian guy for donations from the cruisers to help him get Dominican papers of some kind… like permission to stay here I think. I always save up my local coins and donate them to this nice guy… because you know… if you can help someone… you should…
The Yoga studio in the back has a breath taking view overlooking the bay and always gets a nice breeze during class. This place is like the most spectacular place anybody could possibly learn to do yoga in… wow. The Yoga teacher is this really nice guy named Andrew. I don’t know much about him.. but I think he has been trained as a professional dancer maybe…? and for sure he has had professional Yoga instruction. He is a spectacular Yoga teacher. His classes are really perfect… like he does stuff all the way up to hard level but he also allows for everything from medium down to beginner… he just advises do what you can… listen to your body… bend only as far as you can… as much as feels comfortable for your body.
Of course with my heart condition I pass out like every class. This is very embarrassing for me and I truly dislike having to live with this condition… I have had to tell Andrew and several people in the class about my heart condition because the last thing I need is for someone to panic and call an ambulance. I guess it would also be rather concerning for someone working out beside me… who doesn’t know me… if they see me suddenly faint and hit the floor. Although it is normal for me.. it is not normal for most people.
Yesterday (Monday) after Yoga class i met brother Mic down at Las Velas where he was waiting for the vegetable truck. Yep.. how cool is that… there is a local farmer guy who drives down to Las Velas 3 times a week to sell fresh vegetables. Where else do you get that at a marina huh..? Pretty cool.
I rode my dinghy out after class to check on 2 friends boats here for them. Tequila Tango was bought a few weeks ago buy this interesting nice Texan guy named Steve. He bought a hurricane boat in St. Martin (I think) and fixed it up and was sailing it back home to Texas 2 weeks ago when the delivery Captain they hired abandoned them here in Luperon and jumped ship.
I became friends with Steve and his friend Bryan when they were here and helped them as much as i could. The rule is Sailors help Sailors… After a few days here I introduced them to a great local captain Andre who agreed to deliver their boat to them in Texas in August. There are a lot of awesome sailors in this bay.. real sailors… not yachties.
Steve and Bryan had to fly back home to Texas last week and left their boat here to await Captain Andre to deliver it. I completely understand how it can feel nervous for a new boat owner/captain to have to leave his boat… so I agreed to go visit it for them and make sure all is well. I sent them pictures so they could sleep easy.. their girl is okay.
Next I went to my French friend Alain’s boat. He arrived a day after Steve and Bryan.
An interesting story… Alain sailed all the way across the Atlantic from Europe in 22 easy days 2 years ago. Well… a month ago he left Florida to sail to Grenada… and after 30 days and 30 nights he arrived in Luperon. Yep… he said that was the longest worst passage he ever had… worse than crossing the Atlantic from Europe.
See crossing from Europe you have the trade winds at your back.. its all downwind sailing.. sailing with the wind and waves… Going the other way… against the wind and waves and current.. is WAY harder… so he found out. He left Florida over a month ago… wind forecasts were wrong (big surprise) and after a few days he got pummeled by strong winds and blew out his genny. Then he got becalmed for almost a week. Then he had some help from the US coast Guard to change out his head sail… and spent 2 weeks tacking back and forth upwind against the windward passage until he took shelter here. He arrived with no engine.. and I watched him sail to anchor beside me over a shallow sand bar.
Well… he became my chess partner for the last week (and yep he beat me every game). He flew home to his wife in France last week and I agreed to watch his boat for him. He left his dinghy motor on the back rail which worries me around here… but the good news it is still there. My Navy friend warned me several times that there is stealing in the bay and to make sure I lock up all my stuff… so I’m not sure if that means he knows of recent crimes out here… but I trust him and follow his advice.
After going below and making sure Alain’s boat was all good I headed home all sweaty from the heat of the day around noon.
Back home on WildChild the boat is always stinkin hot when I get home because I have to lock up the hatches when I leave her. So I go below open her up and have to wait for a few minutes in the cockpit for her to cool down. The nice thing about this harbor is there is always a great afternoon breeze. The reliable breeze is actually what makes this place such a good place to sit out the hurricane season in the heat of summer. If it wasn’t for the breeze it would be awful.
After messaging my friends pictures of their boats and reassurances all is well brother Mic came by and asked me to go into town with him yesterday. He has been having problems with his new phone.. it won’t do hotspot. His old phone broke so 2 weeks ago he bought a brand new unlocked phone at a local store here and got it on an Altice unlimited plan. However… the phone just doesn’t seem to want to be able to do hotspot…? So last week we took it to a local technician who said it was running on a 2017 Andriod software and he said he could update it.
Yesterday I went into town with brother Mic to pickup his phone from the technician. He could not update the software but he was very nice about it. Mic ended up having to buy another new phone directly from Altice (cell provider here) and it works fine. The young guy at the Altice shop is very cool… knows his stuff and very helpful.
After the walking around town and doing errands yesterday… and there is no breeze in town and it is really flippin hot… we were both getting heat stroke so we went to a local place beside Wendy’s called the Patio. Like an outdoor bar that also sells food… great food actually at great prices.
In the picture beside here the owner of the Patio is in the white shirt (I don’t actually know his name) and in the black shirt is this amazing guy I just met here named Steven (Ears)… he’s a sailor here with an amazing story and one of the coolest people I have ever met. Well anyway… as we are all sitting around chatting this local Dominican girl comes into the place with a bucket.
This is a thing here I guess… there are some local people who make a living going around selling snacks to make a living for their families. This girl sells fresh roasted peanuts and fresh real peanut butter. Back home this kind of thing would get her chased out of an establishment but here the owner supports her and buys a bag of peanuts. I’m thinking you have to admire her entrepreneurial spirit.
Again later when we were at Wendy’s bar the same thing happened.. a local young guy came in with a basket to sell food his mom baked that day. I guess that is the way they support their family. Mic supported the kid and bought some snacks.. he liked them… interesting local food. I am not used to people always coming up to me to sell things like this… it is not very Canadian to approach strangers and make them uncomfortable like this. We never see this back home. So at first I was uncertain as to the schema of the event… what am I supposed to say or do about this… as I Canadian i feel very uncomfortable having to say no and possibly hurt their feelings.
but… this isn’t Canada… they are never too aggressive in their sales pitch and they don’t seem upset when I say no thank you. They seem very gentle and kind about it… but I did have this boy chasing me down the street today saying something in Spanish as he chased me down the street. I was very rude about it and just kept walking as I had something important to do and didn’t have time to focus on him. I feel bad about it… not sure how to handle it… not used to it… Don’t know enough Spanish yet to have a conversation and be polite about it.
So every Monday night Wendy’s bar has a free movie night for cruisers. They have a projector and hook up speakers and even provide free popcorn. Like how amazing is that. So Mic and I decided yesterday that we wanted to stay in town after dark and catch a movie night. It was great. The Kraken family chose (and provided I think) the movie Napoleon Dynamite.
The movie nights are well attended by the sailors and we love it. I have been thinking lately more about Norm and his wife Yani and her sister Wendy (who owns the bar)… like how cool are they…? They themselves were once sailors.. cruisers like we all are. They settled down in Luperon some time ago and decided to open a gringo bar just so the sailors can have a safe place in town to meet, hang out, use free wifi and get free advice and help with the local community, (like where do I buy..? how do I find..?).
They provide all this amazing support for probably not a lot of money… but mostly just out of their own internal goodness. Just because they care about sailors. This is in such stark contrast to the world we left behind hungrily driven by corporate profit and greed where goodness in a business would be quickly stamped out.
Mic and i walked in the dark down the government pier back to the dinghy around 10:30pm and went home.
What a strange place I have landed in… but maybe it is secretly a gem…
Cheers sailor dudes…
Captain Lexi…
… the fish out of water…