Made It!

We just finished the 170 nautical miles from Virgin Gorda to Antigua!

The dreaded Anegada Passage was a bit salty, but not too bad. Nobody got sea sick, either on Symbiosis or on buddy boat Utopia.

Caught our biggest barracuda to date -- we estimate 4.5' -- but were too busy to take a picture. I managed to save our lure (not to mention my fingers) as well as the fish by deftly removing the hook and letting him swim free.

Sometime Wednesday evening the traveler on our staysail boom chaffed through and crashed to leeward. It scared the hell out of us for a few seconds until we realized what had happened. It turned out to be a relatively easy fix.

Otherwise, smooth (motor) sailing!

A Few Thoughts About Those Online Sailing Forums

Many years ago, I discovered the subsuming world of online sailing forums.

At one time or another, I participated in many of them, namely Sailnet, Sailing Anarchy, but mostly Cruisers Forum, which is (was) in theory more attuned to my desire to ultimately go cruising.

Over the years, I wrangled with the best and the worst of the online denizens -- on topics ranging from cruising budgets to heavy weather tactics. Naturally, I had more experience on some topics than others. On some things, I had no experience at all. That didn't stop me from jumping in and I do think, more often than not, managing to hold my own against the other equally ignorant participants.

At any given time on these forums (or fora, if you prefer the Latin plural), you will find a continuous churn of such ever-popular topics as whether or not to carry a gun aboard. This one is especially popular, i.e., obsessive, with my fellow Americans. The answer, in my mind, is pretty straight forward; however, it's a topic that as you might imagine gets quickly and hopelessly caught up in domestic politics. Not much talk of the true practicalities. Most of the "discussion" quickly descends into ad hominem attacks and anarchy. These threads are invariably shut down by the poor forum moderators. I have seen this happen -- no exaggeration -- at least 100 times.

Hand-in-hand with the gun topic is any number of other threads dealing with modern piracy. The premise is usually that incident X of piracy justifies carrying a gun aboard. Setting aside attacks off the Somalia coast (of which there have been virtually none since 2009, the year of the Maersk Alabama hijacking that inspired the film Captain Philips), the incidents of piracy at sea are so small as to be almost nonexistent. One's chances of getting hit by lightening at sea, for example, are infinitely higher than being attacked by pirates.

Now, I know what you're saying. Yes, these things do happen. A pair of incidents last year off the coast of Trinidad (involving Venezuelan pirates) were quite brutal and got a lot of attention. Even a cursory examination of the incident, however, shows how useless a gun would have been in this circumstance. Five to six pirates, all armed with assault rifles, on a fast-moving boat. Those hapless sailors didn't stand a chance. It's unfortunate indeed, but it pays to keep things in perspective: these attacks are directed at a fraction of a fraction of the cruisers out there. Ninety-nine point nine percent of us will never experience more than petty theft at anchor.

Yet other common forum threads go something like this: "I have absolutely no sailing experience but want to buy a boat for a solo circumnavigation. What kind of boat would be good for this?"

To land lubbers, it probably seems like an exceedingly naive query. Indeed, it seems so to most sailors, too. The problem is that while only a tiny fraction of even much more experienced folks will ever embark on such a voyage, some percentage of rank neophytes do so each year. Many of them learn along the way, doing just fine, albeit after a typically steep learning curve. Others make headlines. Does giving encouragement ("Follow your dreams, man. Yolo!") amount to a moral hazard? I never decided.

Nearly as controversial is the subject of what constitutes a "blue-water boat." Should it be a monohull or multihull? Some brands have a "blue-water" reputation; others not so much. No easy answers here and no entirely right answers either. Feelings get hurt in these threads because someone invariably runs down a certain brand as "not blue-water" and someone else who owns that boat takes umbrage.

My personal opinion: the sea will find any weakness in construction, so a poorly constructed boat is not a good choice to go offshore. I can think of a few of those boats, but won't mention any by name. When it comes to design, some boats (and I'm talking sailboats here, because that's what I know ...) are designed to go on long voyages; others, not so much.

I acknowledge that in the past, I have been a partisan in the seemingly never-ending monohull vs. multihull debate. I still prefer monohulls for their practicality, cost and aesthetics. But, I am much more of a moderate on the subject than I used to be. I can see lots of advantages to a cruising catamaran. I certainly understand why people make that choice. If cost were not an issue, I would have more seriously considered that option myself.

Anyway, don't get me wrong. I did learn a good many things by my online participation. There always seemed to be a contingent of forum folks who actually have enough experience with the subject at hand to be useful sources. But while I still occasionally browse the topic threads when I have decent wifi (which is rare these days), for the most part I don't have much desire to post anymore. That's ironic, I suppose, because I know a lot more now than when I was enthusiastic about jumping on the threads and dispensing advice. Some of it probably wasn't very good.

I suspect I am not alone. It seems more than plausible that I represent a natural trend -- the talkers vs. the doers.

It probably explains a lot about these forums.

Culmination Of The Grand (De)-Tour

Back in the 1970s, a group of scientists realized that they were living in an extraordinary time: If they could only get their act together, and quickly, they had the opportunity to see all the outer planets but Pluto in one go. All they had to do was build a pair of deep-space probes that were more advanced than anything yet done. An extremely rare alignment of the bodies in the outer solar system made possible a sling-shot method, using a gravity assist from the sun, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. But, if they missed their narrow window of opportunity, it would be left to their great, great grandchildren to take another stab at it.

They called the endeavor "The Grand Tour," but most of us know it as the Voyager missions.

What Symbiosis has been doing for the past several months is something I have dubbed "The Grand De-Tour" in homage to the Voyagers. (Because, yes, I am a very big geek). 

And, it is over. Forgive my shifting metaphors, but now we are back on the main highway.

When we first left Morehead, N.C., in November, we expected a two-week passage east and south to the British Virgin Islands -- specifically, to Tortola. As of yesterday, we cleared into this U.K. territory for the first time, anchoring in the very harbour (Soper's Hole) that we had aimed for way back then. Instead, our grand detour has taken us down all the winding (and one-way) local roads and even a few narrow alleys. But we are thankful for seeing some interesting things that we would have otherwise bypassed -- namely, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

Soper's Hole.

We are still traveling in company with our good friends Diane and Frank aboard their beautiful Caliber 39, Utopia. It's been good to bounce around weather-routing thoughts and anchorage ideas with them and arrive at a collective plan. But, that will soon end. Utopia will haul out in Antigua for hurricane season at a marina there that is recognized as among the safest places "in the box" (inside the hurricane-prone part of the Caribbean). We on the other hand are heading to Grenada or Trinidad for hurricane season.

A "pain-killer" ... to assuage the slings and arrows of the "Thorny Path.'

But with the season only a few weeks away, we are trying to get there as soon as we can. We won't make it by June 1, but we are banking on the fact that hurricanes are fairly rare in the Caribbean until the latter half of the season. 

It looks like next Wednesday/Thursday will be a good time to cross over to St. Martin and possibly Antigua. Arriving in Antigua will put the rest of the Leeward and Windward islands chains more along a north-south axis, allowing us a lot more flexibility for moving southward, as the easterly trades will be more or less on our beam, a good place for the wind to be on a sailboat!

Putting up the BVIs courtesy flag.

Who Are These People?! The Sequel

Ken, Kaylee and Danielle from Aqua Vida

Several months ago I wrote a blog post titled Who Are These People?!, which attempted to establish an unscientific breakdown of the folks who are crazy enough to sell all their belongings, move aboard a boat, and then shove off to cross open water.

At the time, we had just arrived in the Bahamas and our view on the matter was necessarily informed by our geographic location. The gist of what I concluded then was that there are basically three groups -- 20-something cruisers, mostly male, who haven't yet established their own families or solid careers. The largest group is retired couples, a not inconsiderable number in their early 70s. And then us, the smallest subset, who decided to carve a chunk out of mid-life and do something completely different. Like the crew of Symbiosis, most of the 'tweeners have the expectation that shore-side careers (or at least jobs) will need to be resuscitated sometime in the not-too-distant future.

As we get farther south, the demographics appear to be shifting. What follows is my second unscientific take on the issue:

The dividing line is drawn through George Town, the cruising mecca of the Exumas. It is aptly nicknamed "Chicken Harbor" -- either it demarks the southern terminus of the journey or the gateway to points south and east along the "thorny path." I would guess that it is the former for about 90 percent of the Americans and Canadians there. For Europeans it's different; most arrived here from across the pond and many of them will make the return trip at some point.

Past George Town, cruisers such as Noi and I (firmly in the middle) become less rare. The youngest subset of "playboy cruisers" seems to have fallen off almost entirely, replaced instead by folks in their 30s and 40s, frequently with children aboard. The oldest subset is decidedly smaller. The older retirees (I say "older" because some in the middle category are on early retirement) are still around, but they tend to be in their early to mid-60s instead of 70s.

In short, the whole group is being squashed toward the middle. Here are a few brief profiles:

-- Lucas and Petra, aboard their Tayana 37 Salicious (same boat as ours) are in their early to mid 30s, with their almost 2-year-old, Oliver. Oliver has  taken to the boat like a baby orangutan. The family are from the Czech Republic. Lucas is a construction worker by trade. The couple flew to Florida, bought their boat, and set off for the Bahamas. They plan to keep the boat in St. Thomas (U.S.V.I.) for hurricane season.

-- Steve and Melissa, roughly 50, aboard a Beneteau-esque 50 Yarika, are nurses from Texas who have two teens aboard, Claire and Aran. They also plan to spend hurricane season in St. Thomas, where they will pick up some nursing work.

-- Aqua Vida, with Ken and Danielle and 7-year-old Kaylee are roughly in the same middle category as Steve, Melissa and us -- though they are on early retirement. Ken and Danielle, from Tallahassee, worked together before taking early retirement -- he as a civil engineer on water projects and she as a mathematician in the same office. They don't have a schedule per se, except the plan is for Kaylee to re-enter a regular school at some point. So, it's not open-ended for them. This year, like us, they will go to Grenada or Trinidad for hurricane season.

-- Frank and Diane, aboard their Caliber 39 Utopia, exemplify the "new normal" for the last group. They are in their 60s and made a decision to shove off immediately after retirement. Both from New York, he worked as a salesman for many years. They plan to put their boat on the hard in Antigua for hurricane season.

Diane and Frank from Utopia with Noi

Why has the cruising clique acquired a middle-aged bulge? I speculate:

The "playboy cruiser" group has time, but not too much time. They can justify taking perhaps a year off from getting their lives underway, but two or three years begins to look more like a misspent youth on a job application. So, for many of them, I think, it's one-year and out. That makes the Bahamas a practical destination, but not so much the eastern Caribbean.

The oldest subset is shrinking for the simple reason that cruising is more strenuous than many non-sailors realize. Aging bodies, some with creeping health problems (knees, hips, etc.) are starting to limit this group. Another factor: grandchildren. Grandparents want to be there. Cruising doesn't always make that easy.

As for the 30-somethings with small children, I am not entirely sure why this group is getting a bit larger, but that does seem to be the case.

What about the lone-wolf single-hander? They are still out there, but pretty rare. Dan aboard Vagabond, a Vagabond 47 ketch, is technically going it along, but he nearly always travels with pick-up crew.

The irony, for us at least, is that we started out thinking we were a rare breed (or perhaps a bit crazier than average in the estimation of our fellow cruisers), but as we keep going, we are finding that in fact we have become well, commonplace!

Ooooh ... Barracuda!

We can't stop catching these things!

DR To PR

Parguera, Puerto Rico.

This will be a difficult blog post to write -- so much has happened since I last wrote here, which was prior to my computer going into an endless reboot cycle thanks to the latest Windows 10 update.

... After leaving Luperon in mid-March, we had a problem just a few miles offshore. A hose popped off our exhaust and sea water poured into the bilge. We turned around and headed back into port, while our friends and would-be traveling companions, S/V Neko, went on to Samana on the Dominican east coast.

The fix for the exhaust problem was relatively easy, but we had no desire to go back into the thick of it for what would likely be 30 hours of motoring without first stress-testing the repair. That meant losing a narrow weather window and remaining in Luperon for some time, which turned out to be another two weeks. This ended up giving us some more time to get to know the local people in town, as well as the marina folks.

When we came back into the harbor, another boat was already in our old slip at Puerto Blanco Marina. So, we decided to grab a mooring ball, like dozens of other boats there. The first and second mooring did not look good on close examination, but we finally found one that seemed OK (little did we know!). Many people dive on moorings to check them out. That's a great idea when it's possible. However, not only are we not great snorklers, but the visibility (the "viz" as divers say) in Luperon is not very good. In any case there are, shall we say, a number of "floaters" about.

A few days later our mooring broke free and Symbiosis drifted up like a lost puppy to the marina, where we happened to be having a drink and chatting with friends. We dropped everything, rushed to the dinghy and sped out to the boat. She had (miraculously) not hit anybody on her way in and made a soft landing in mud near the mangroves. With help from some fellow cruisers, we managed to get Symby off the bank and back out in the harbor. We had heard of other moorings breaking here, but had naively thought it wouldn't happen to us!

Rushing out to the boat after it snapped its mooring. Photo courtesy Kaylee Jones.

Our unexpected extended stay in Luperon allowed us to meet a whole new group of cruisers who came in on the weather window we originally had planned to leave on. Among them, Ken, Danielle and 7-year-old Kaylee Jones aboard S/V Aqua Vida and Frank and Diane on Utopia. Kaylee, who has been cruising with her family for several years now, is a very bright, boat-schooled young girl. She's very social and is obviously learning much through her family's adventures. New Yorkers Frank and Diane, on their Caliber 39, have been cruising for a few years now. We also got to better know Joyce, She and her partner, Sarah, lived aboard their boat in the harbor. Among other things, "Joy" was instrumental in helping start "Dogs & Cats of Luperon," a sort of SPCA for the area. Sadly, a few weeks after leaving Luperon, we learned that Joyce suddenly passed away,

When we departed for the second time for Samana, we were in a group of eight boats -- Aqua Vida, Yarika, Sailicious, Wandering Star, Vagabond, Pepper, Magic and Exit Stage Left. Of the eight boats, there were a number of incidents. One lost an anchor and rode that paid out unexpectedly just a few miles out of Luperon. Apparently, a windlass pawl had not been properly set. Another boat was experiencing overheating problems; two more had issues with dirty fuel. We (thankfully!) had no mechanical problems, though we very nearly hit something big at night, sailing at 6 knots. It was not on the charts and should not have been there! I caught a glimpse of a large white object resembling a buoy. I surmise that it broke loose from its mooring and was simply drifting about out there. Scary!

Leaving Luperon.

The next morning as we rounded Cape Samana, Humpback whales spouted off our bow. Aqua Vida, a few hundred feet in front of us, got the best show. I took photos from the bow pulpit:

The Luperon to Samana run is one of the thorniest of thorns on the thorny path (along with crossing the Mona Passage from Hispaniola to Puerto Rico). Even so, we got the weather window right and all went well. It was lots of motoring/motor-sailing, but we did have about 6 hours of very nice night sailing.

Once in Samana, we stayed at a marina for a few days and then crossed over to Bahia de San Lorenzo at Parque Nacional Los Haitises. Beautiful spot. The limestone formations remind me of the west coast of Thailand.

Bahia de San Lorenzo.

Exploring the Mangrove River at Los Haitises National Park.

The crossing from DR to PR (via the Mona Passage) turned out also to be uneventful. We did have a very nice 12-hour sail from the time we left Samana in the evening until daybreak, Also caught a good-sized Skipjack Tuna -- probably our best fish to date. We finally arrived the next evening about 10 p.m. for a 28-hour run from Samana to Boqueron.

Tuna sushi

For all the hassles we expected to experience with customs and immigration in the DR, most never materialized. Although different cruisers had different experiences, most encountered no problems or demands for "tips." One individual in Luperon demanded a tip and a Czech couple were charged for an interpreter in Samana even though they speak perfect English. For us, the bigger headache was in our home country. Puerto Rico ended up taking a whole afternoon because of Homeland Security red tape!

Currently we are enjoying ourselves in PR. We visited a coffee plantation, did some shopping and re-provisioning and are, generally, taking it easy.

Playa Salinas, PR. Nice anchorage.

Isla Caja de Muertos (Coffin Island), Puerto Rico.

Symbiosis and Utopia anchored at Coffin Island.

One Of Our Favorite Anchorages

We've been in Luperon for two weeks now waiting for weather. It's turned out to be possibly our favorite anchorage to date.

When we arrived in the harbor (towed in during light winds by our new friends, Peter and Mary aboard S/V Neko), the earthy smells, green mountains and cool breeze were welcome after the beautiful but barren Bahamas. The picture telegraphed that the Dominican Republic is a real place, not just a postcard.

Luperon harbor

Leo, the manager at Puerto Blanco Marina, greeted us upon arrival and helped us (and Neko) through immigration and customs. Anyone who has read cruising reports on Active Captain or elsewhere (as we did) would have some trepidation about this procedure. In short, it's been advertised as a shakedown. We found it to be quick and relatively painless. According to Leo, things have been changing for the better with a new, honest commandante. The previous local chief of immigration acquired a reputation for being on the take.

Since getting here, we've spent most of our time in the harbor or at the nearby village, but we've also ventured out to Puerto Plata and to the "27 Waterfalls" (recommended!). A few boat projects and a lot of time to relax.

Miguel, Leo and Scott at Puerto Blanco Marina restaurant and bar

The marina is basically a single dock with only a few spots for transients. It's inexpensive and the restaurant (and the wait staff), very pleasant. It's not fancy, but very functional. Leo apparently has a long-term lease on the property, which had fallen into disrepair under the previous owner. He's making a concerted effort to renovate it. Miguel seems to be in charge of the restaurant operations and doing a fine job of it. The harbor itself is surrounded by mangroves and extremely well protected. If for some reason you couldn't get south for hurricane season, this would be the place to wait it out. Moorings are available for $2/day (that's not a typo!), or you could just anchor -- lots of room and the holding is reputed to be very good.

For anything from laundry service (cheap and excellent) to boat repair, "Handy Andy" is the man. Just ask, everyone knows everyone else here. When I first met Andy, he handed me a flyer with a list of his services and a phone number. I'm leery of touts, but Andy proved to be an honest broker and an all-around good guy. His English is not bad at all and he proved extremely helpful.

So, the final test for us is the check-out procedure. The DR does require you to acquire a despacio to leave each port, even if you're going to another Dominican port. Clearly it's a money-making thing and a bit onerous if you're on the receiving end, but that's the way it is. This part of the process could still prove aggravating, but we shall see.

The point of this post? Luperon has, in our view, gotten a bum rap -- or else, the problems it once had are fading into the background.

For anyone thinking of following in our wake, we give this place two thumbs up!