Yesterday we had the worst sail of our lives… HOLY CRAP THAT WAS fuckin AWFUL…!!!!!!
We left Luperon to head east (Yesterday) for 3 days to get to Samana.. (which is the most eastern end of the Dominican Republic where we can check out of the country. Ok… well 3 days into the wind is not going to be a lot of fun but we just did it from Great Inaugua to Luperon and it was not so bad… just long.
Well… it seems we got lucky on that first passage and unlucky on this second passage.
Wednesday when we we were in Luperon we were able to get a look at the weather forecast for this week… and it was not very interesting… same thing everyday for the next 10 days… 15 knots of wind from the east…. a little stronger in the day time and a little calmer at night… this is exactly what we experienced on the last passage.
So we figured… well… if everyday is the same… let’s just get this done. WildChild is a tough girl… we are a tough crew… we just did a 3 day passage in the same waters with the same forecast to get here… Let’s just get this over with… Let’s go.
So we went thru all the silly hoops to get our permission papers to leave Luperon for Thursday morning to go to Samana.
At the end of the day Wednesday we wanted to find internet access to have a last look at the wind forecasts and I wanted to get another blog updated. When in Wendy’s (cruisers bar for us gringos) … your favorite 2 girl crew walks in and the few old men around notice us and chat with us. All good… we are always happy to talk to fellow sailors.
There was a man there… (I don’t know his name so lets say Joe)… an older guy tall and skinny with glasses. I guess he is the local cruiser club like president or whatever… local cruiser representative slash welcoming committee.
Joe at first is warm and inviting and welcoming and happy to give out all the free advice possible. He aggressively asks us a bunch of questions and starts getting like… obnoxious… pushy… I know everything and you girls should do what I tell you… I am right you are wrong… we see this attitude all the time out of men… let’s say macho bullshit… Joe declares that it is a mistake for us to go out sailing tomorrow… it is a mistake for us to go south to Grenada for the hurricane season… we should just do like him and stay safely in Luperon where it is cheaper and cooler and safe and easy… He is so overly confident in his right-ness.
He starts going on about we are making a mistake… he will bet any money that we will come crawling back to Luperon damaged and regretting our decision to leave in the first place.
We get this all the time from men… so we kind of disregarded him.
It turns out he was right… but his approach was very wrong. The way he phrased things and the way he spoke was kind of shameful.
We did however at the same time meet a lovely man named Brendan who was lovely to talk to and very kind and helpful with a very respectful approach who also wanted to caution us that maybe we should wait a few days before we go. He said he had this great book he wanted to share called Passages South by this guy named Bruce Van Sant he wanted to give to us.
Brendon really said that hey this stretch is know for being very difficult and this book would have very useful and helpful information to help us get safely south. Brendon told us that he would phone his wife on their boat to get the book and if we would stop by on our way back to WildChild he would happily give it to us…
We listened and did as he suggested and stopped at his boat that night to meet his lovely wife Pearl… She is a cool chic. We chatted with both of them for another hour but as it was late 11pm and we had to leave in the morning we said our goodbyes…
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The next morning we took WildChild out of the channel and anchored around the corner to make water. We have to run our water maker every 3-4 days and had not run it for a week. The water in Luperon bay is too filthy to risk running it thru our water maker I think. The locals view the creek that feeds the bay as their version of a waste treatment plant. (Yuck)
Elena says she doesn’t want to drink poo water… ha ha… so she refused to let me even try to run the water maker in the bay.
After the brief stop to make water for an hour we headed out into open ocean at around 10am.
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We set out under sunny blue skies and conditions as forecast. We had 15 knots of wind from the east and 1-2 meter waves.
As the day wore on the winds came up to sustained 18-20 knots of wind and steady 2 meter waves…. no problem. WildChild sails in this all the time.. she points great and we are used to it… We had a reef in the main and were only running about 60% Genny… the report from the helm was 20 over 6 with a wind angle of about 45-50 degrees… waves 1-2 meters…
I was actually having a lovely nap from about noon until 3pm when Elena woke me up and said maybe we should reef the Genny some more… Okay… no problem.. we reefed it down to about 40%. She was starting to see sustained winds around 22-23 knots. Still no problem for WildChild.
Given that the forecast says that was about the worst it should get… and we were 20 miles offshore… we should not have much thermal effect winds or storms forming over us. Well… okay I thought… we are fine… this is no problem… and as the evening comes the winds will go back to their forecasted 15 knots from the east… and the waves will settle down. We just have to ride this out for a few hours… as we have done many times… as we did just 3-5 days ago when we were out here.
BUT…. mother nature is a moody moody girl…. and she didn’t read the forecast…
Conditions kept building… and building…. at one point we heard like a bang noise and wondered… Eeek… what the hell was that..?
We soon discovered that we broke our arch. (We have a stainless steel arch over our bimini to support our Wind Generator and Radar and solar array). It failed… it was loose and rocking back and forth… WildChild was damaged and we had to get her back to safety to get her repaired soon before anything else breaks.
So 20 miles offshore in building conditions we both sat together at the helm with wide eyes and just looked at each other. Holy shit this is bad. We ended up with sustained winds of 28-30 knots for hours and hours that evening… waves building to 3-4 meters (10-12 feet)…
Things just kept getting worse. We were seeing double what was forecast.
I do have some video of what horrifying actually looks like, just not available now.
Let me tell you about it… We sat there and watched 12 foot waves looming over the back of us thinking holy shit that is going to drop into the dinghy on the back… Watched 12 foots waves smash onto the bow and the whole front of the boat disappear underwater then spray shoot right over the whole biminin and slam into the dodger… We tasted the salt in our mouths as we got completely washed in salty ocean water. Soaking wet we watched the horror unfold around us…
….3 times we had 12 foot waves on the beam (side) of the boat lift and curl and break right under WildChild and she rolled over onto her side… boom in the water… mast almost in the water…. ocean water pouring into the cockpit as we stared in terror praying WildChild comes back up and doesn’t roll over. We had to fight down below because I realised that we are having so much water washing into the cockpit there is a real risk of getting it down below and sinking the ship… we had to get the companionway hatch in place to seal off the inside of the boat for safety.
We watched in horror as the winds gusted over 30 knots and WildChild heeled over under the pressure and picked up speed again to 8 knots rail underwater…. 10-12 foot waves quartering on the beam as we had to bear off to reach the nearest safe port. Often the waves slammed so hard into the side of our girl it sounded like we just got hit by a sledge hammer… we stare at each other wondering ohh fuck… did we just break something else..?
We reefed the Genny away under extreme conditions using the secondary winch… we got the Genny down to 10% for stability… we made our sails inefficient so they luffed a bit and the gusts would not heel us over so much. We were still flying towards land at 7-8 knots with greatly reduced sails in terrific winds… We are always strapped into the boat with tethers which saved us many times yesterday as our girl rolled on her side and tossed us across the cockpit and slammed our wet bodies into the side rails.
The dinghy was really getting tossed on the davits adding torsion stress to our already damaged arch. The wind generator whirring away furiously making electricity as the pole it is mounted on sways wildly back and forth with the horizontal stabilizer broken off. We pray… of lord… please don’t let anything else break… we wonder… how close are we to catastrophic failure of maybe the mast… the keel… the rudder….
This is already very bad… and this could go to catastrophy in one bad second. We waited in terror for that sound… the sounds of disaster.. of something else breaking any second as the 3 meter waves and nasty winds toss us around like toys in a bath tub.
We stared in horror watching the next 12 foot monster wave approaching the beam and start to curl and break and wonder…. ohh shit… is this the one that rolls us upside down..?
Hours and hours we sit thru and analyze the situation and try to think our way thru to safety.
What must we do now…? We must get off the Ocean into safe harbor.
Where is this…? we were heading towards Peurto Plata and there was a public looking marine basin with reefs on both sides and warnings on the chart plotter not to approach in strong waves as they break strong on the reefs.
There was some kind of Marina looking place in the middle with no depths and no indication on the chart plotter what it was or if it was private.
There was a cruise ship to the right behind a mountain in a bay…. and we figured.. hey.. if it is deep enough for a cruise ship then we know it will be deep enough for us… but will they freak out if we anchor beside them… is it a private cruise ship terminal…? Can we go there…?
The sunset as we were still 5 miles off the coast and now facing the reality of a night landing in the dark into some strange place in 10 foot waves and steady 25 knots of wind… Things just keep getting worse…
I get depressed and frustrated… my eject handle just is not working… I am still out here… I have to face this… I don’t want to do this… I have no choice…
As we approach a little closer to the coast I sized up the info I had… city basin looked too dangerous with reefs on both sides lifting the already large waves…. I aimed for behind the mountain where the cruise ship was…
BUT…. as we got a little closer… I saw lights coming from that marina place in the middle…. I looked closer on the chart plotter… it had long docks… long docks often mean bigger rich people boats… therefore deep enough draft for us…. The entrance has a break wall that will shield us once we get behind it… there seems to be lighted channel lights to get in… Fuck it… let’s do this crazy thing…
I don’t know if this is a private rich people resort but we are in a state of emergency… and this looks like the least risky place to land… they can yell at us later.
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We made it safely into Ocean world Luxury resort and marina… we tied up to a pier beside a navy vessel. They even helped us tie up.
We are safe… we slept well…
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Today we got WildChild repaired… better and stronger than new. Tomorrow we have to decide what to do….
Do we play it safe… turn back to Luperon and stay in their safe hurricane hole for the season…? Become members of their little town…? do the safe and easy thing…?
OR…
Do we press on…? keep fighting against the wind to make our destination of Grenada to sit out hurricane season there…?
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If we keep going forward… hmmm.. we need a different strategy… It seems that every day the afternoon winds are 30 knots here we are learning. So we cannot sail in the afternoons here anymore…
The DR navy does not like us stopping anywhere but where our Dispatchio says we are allowed to stop. They do not allow free anchoring anywhere we like.
What to do… ?
Cheers… from Captain Lexi…
…. the soggy depressed and uncertain girl…