M/Y Mary Ann

It is the middle of the night, at least it seems like the middle of the night when you have become accustomed to bedtime at 2100, and we are racing along at 10.6 knots in the midnight blackness, paired off with Cinnabar VI, the Royal Van YC boat with my friend, Ken Herkimer, in charge, assisted by another licensed captain, Dave Laws. I have moved out from my daylight tail sniffing position right behind Cinnabar VI, the lead dog, and now have their green light a half mile to port as we thunder along on a westerly heading of 299 in 5-6’ following seas with an east wind of about 15 knots.

We meant with some anxiety on the water today. Not the kind of anxiety that has anything to do with the failure of mechanical parts. I’ll leave that kind of reporting to Captain John who lives and breathes on dramas coming out of the engine room. I prefer to report on occurrences having to do with Mother Nature. Today she tried to deal us a blow and I mean that literally. We were about twenty miles out of Beaufort when the Coast Guard issued another one of their scary alerts.

It just goes to show that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions until all the horses are back in the barn. Not only did my esteemed guide neither have me on radar nor have a working GPS during our nighttime rush across the ocean from Puerto Rico, but when we staggered the last mile in a serious beam sea through rising swells, he let me know further that he, like myself, had neither a harbor chart nor any other chart of the Dominican Republic.

Looking at Luperon and generalizing about the Dominican Republic is like the blind man describing the elephant by feeling its’ nose, but I can say that the country is mountainous in an Appalachian sort of way, low rounded hills and plenty of them, but not the precipitous volcanic upthrusts that we saw back to the south in the Leeward Islands. It’s very green and appears fertile and, from the little I have seen thus far, seems like a pretty nice place to live.

Enough of Steve and his clean toilets. Back to something interesting. I have managed to remove and change out the Racor fuel filters, and without spilling more than a gallon or two of fuel in the process. I don’t know what made the difference but last time I tried to unscrew these things they would not budge, showing evidence of their previous recalcitrance to removal by a series of dents in the canisters and resisting even the mighty efforts of Dick Souslin on the strap wrench.

Back out in the dark just 13 hours into an expected 31 hour run from Luperon, Dominican Republic to the Flying Fish Resort at Clarencetown on the island of Long Cay in the Bahamas where my fried and traveling companion, Captain Kenny, informs me that we have a reservation for moorage in the 16 slip marina there. I have the ‘good watch’, 2100 to 2400, while Mary Ann got the doggy watch of 2400-0300 and Isabel has the early bird 0300-0600 shift. This figures to be our last overnight run as the rest of the way to Florida there are easy stopover harbors, marinas, and anchorages.

Here we are, docked at the Flying Fish Marina, once again holed in and waiting for a weather window so that we can again move out across the water . . . safely that is. I don’t know when we will get out of here but certainly not in time to make the plane reservations that we have out of Miami on the 13th and l4th at the beginning of next week. I think that when we changed our plans about taking our boat through the Panama Canal we screwed ourselves royally as far as weather conditions are concerned. We are into hurricane season—and on the east coast . . . just where we had planned not to be.

Here we still sit. I know that only the boring are bored but I must admit that I don’t find this island particularly stimulating. It does have a few unique attributes, however. (1) The water here in this slip is the cleanest, clearest looking marina or harbor water we have seen anywhere, (2) It’s only a short half mile walk along the beach to the two grocery stores, each the size of a half stocked 7-ll, (3) In that same half mile walk we pass the two restaurants located here, and (4) the Shell service station has ice cream bars.

We are moored at Staniel Cay, a place about which we have heard much over the months but for which we had no particular expectations since we have heard many glowing reports about places in the Bahamas and found them generally to be a little south of ordinary. This place, however, is pretty, fun with a bustling bar, lots of boat people on the docks and very friendly and helpful employees. I’m glad to be here.

We’re on the next to last leg of the thousand miles or so journey back to Florida from the Virgins and wherever else we have been for the last three or four months.