You will be relieved to know the sailor girls made it safely into the Dominican Republic and thru pirate alley off the Haiti coast. It was a very long sail though, 3 days and 3 nights. Anybody that says the third night is easier than the first one is lying to you.
We ended up not leaving on the Friday as planned as we were completely becalmed… not a breath of wind and brutally hot. At 6am the next morning though… while princess Elena was still sleeping.. I woke up a detected a little bit of wind… so I lifted the anchor and started the motor to get us going, when in deep water.. I pulled the Genny out and sailed slowly away.
Elena woke up to find us already underway. Given the winds we had I decided to stay north of Great Inagua. We eventually got becalmed again in the afternoon… but no worries we threw a spinnaker for the afternoon and just kept right on sailing.
As night fell we had just squeezed thru between Great Inagua and Little Inagua islands and out into the open ocean of the windward passage. You can see from our route that we had a heck of a time fighting upwind. We tacked a lot and had trouble making eastward progress. Also we were worried about how close to pirate alley off the Haiti coast can we get before we should tac again..?
We never got closer than 30 miles off the Haiti coast just to be safe. When the wind shifted we either climbed our sail angle a little closer to east… or got forced to tac again.
Mostly we had 1-2 meter waves most of the time. Really the ocean was not that bad… mostly the winds were a bit shifty in the 8-15 knot range and we could not really point closer than 50 degrees to windward. Also we had to fight the tidal currents which switched like every 10 hour or so… sometimes helping lift us and sometimes slowing us way down.. I think we averaged 3-4 knots most of the time… so it was slow sail.
By the end of the 3rd day we were only 18 miles from our destination of Luperon… when about 2 hours before sunset we got hit by some nasty storms. AND… THAT GOT A BIT SPORTY!!
Smart Captain Lexi saw it coming and already had the Genny reduced to about 50% when it hit… and using the secondary winches we got the rest of it furled away in the 28 knot winds. We still had full main up though as we just smashed it thru 3 meter (10 foot) waves. We took quite a few waves into the cockpit… and yep… I got the black camera washed and it died.
but some awesome footage before it died.
While sailing in that storm though… we started hearing a banging sound… searching we found the anchor had broken its restraint rope and had gotten washed over board in the nasty 10 foot waves that were washing the bow. It was still attached to the boat as I always keep the chain on the windlass… but it smashed some lovely chips and scratches in our bow in the 10 minutes it took me to figure out that weird sound.
So of course Captain Lexi has to do the dangerous stuff… I clipped my tether into the jack line and made my way forward. In 10 foot waves and 26 knots of wind I crawled my way forward to the open anchor locker. It was full of seawater like a swimming pool. I climbed into the anchor locker and held on for dear life as the bow kept dunking into the big waves. I got completely washed many time up there. With super human girl strength I managed to wrestle the swinging anchor back up onto the bow roller and re-secured it.
But soggy wet and miserably tired I returned a very grumpy girl to the cockpit. Elena knew from the look in my eyes I was not a happy girl. I knew… and told Elena much to her disappointment… that although we were only 14 miles from our destination… the sun had set… and we were going to sail on thru the 3rd night.
By 3am we had reached within 3 miles outside of the channel for Luperon… and we hove to to await the sunrise.
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SO… Luperon
if anybody is curious…
Seems to be a very safe place. It is a small town and the locals know to be good to the tourists.
When we finally awoke from our naps yesterday after we anchored and had a look around… I was not very impressed. It looks like the place boats come to die.
Many boats which for sure should just be scrapped are floating around out here. Yes it does seem to have good protection from the winds by the surrounding mountains… but… the water is filthy. We are afraid to run the water maker. The local idea of sewage treatment is the creek that feeds into the bay….
They do not come out to your boat as some cruising guides suggest. You have to go to shore but it is easy to find them… up the only road towards town to the gate and they are all there on the right side. The nicest people.
Now the thing you need to understand before you come here… is that essentially it is a 3rd world 
country… and it is Spanish… if anybody knows how to do screwed up backwards bureaucracy its the Spanish.
We had to check into 6 different places. 5 of them of course need money. Now the good news is though that all told it only cost us $120usd to get all checked into the country… or $6000 pesos.
The people at the check in building are all very friendly and very helpful and they show you what to do and tell you where to go. 5 of the government places are all represented right there in that small building.
Then you have to go up the hill to the Naval commandante building and talk to the Navy guys to get a permission to come into port paper.. then you have to get a permission to leave the port paper before you can leave.
I have never had to deal with military officials before… but I must say… those men were just awesome… very kind… very helpful. Although their system makes no sense to me at all… these guys were very kind and very helpful thru the process.
The nice man helping us had a gun strapped to his hip… yikes… that scared me… Canadians do not have guns.. never see them… not used to seeing them…. but maybe if you think about it.. these are the good guys here to protect good people like us… so God bless those Navy men.
So for those sailors who may be interested…
Checking into the Dominican Republic requires..
1/ See immigration and pay them $4000 pesos
2/ See Port Authority and pay them (I think $500 for vessel in port for 7 days or $1000 pesos for a month)
3/ See the customs and pay them (I forget how much)
4/ See Ministry of tourism (pay $500 pesos per person for a tourist card)
5/ See ministry of Agriculture (pay them $500 pesos)
6/ go to the Navy and pay them nothing… but get your paper for permission to be there… easy enough but they need to see your passports and vessel registration too.
A note you also cannot move your boat or leave the port without getting your despatio (permission paper) from them or the navy will chase you down. To get this you have to go back to immigration for some paper (Free) and go back to port Authority and pay them for your stay in their port and get a receipt. Show this to the Navy guys and they will give you the Despatio you need to leave again.
I know… this all seems stupid… and it is… but it is the Spanish way… Very complicated… but they kindly walk you thru it step by step… very kind… they will guide you… it is not so hard… just be patient.
Ohhh… and we did not have anybody try to get a bribe out of us… so no worries there… the bribe thing seems to be a myth.. maybe.
The people are amazingly nice and very friendly here. The town is safe and nice. It is a different culture here… it takes some getting used to… wish we had more time to explore…
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Tomorrow the girls are making another nasty upwind voyage (we have all our permission papers) to sail 125nm to Samana. Upwind means tacking though so it will be closer to 200 miles. Tomorrow will be windy above 20 knots… smashy smashy and poundy poundy again… sigh… we suffer so much for this thing called sailing adventure…
We will probably be at sea for another 3 days and 2 nights… they do not allow you to stop anywhere along the coast to anchor… you can only go directly to where your despatio says you are going.. in our case.. next port… Samana.
This is going to suck another pile of suck for these sailor girls… but fuck it… let’s do this crazy thing….
Cheers sailors
Captain Lexi…
… the determined…