First Passage - Luperon, Dominican Republic - Dec 29, 2006 - Jan 15, 2007
The trip for me, Ulf, started on December 29 when I, together with my friends Alberto Brucci and Scott Johnson, flew to the Dominican Republic. We were an international crew of a Swede, an Italian and an American.
There, we also met our friends from Brooklyn, Sandie and Ron, plus Madeline from Lexington, KY, who came there to wave us off and celebrate New Years. It was great to have good friends together and we had a great couple of days which included some swimming and also some pool table competitions which ended with a broken billiards table on New Years.
When our friends had left us we started to prepare for our sailing to Cuba and later on to Jamaica, but then lots of things happened such as a broken water pump and a starter that didn’t work. To make a very long story short, it’s not possible to get any marine parts at all in Luperon; we drove twice to the nearest city, Santiago, but with no luck. We all got frustrated since we wanted to leave as soon as possible.
After a lot of work on the engines by Alberto and Scott, we finally could buy a spare starter from Kenny, another sailor, who luckily had the right one. When the engine got going again, the weather went from nice and sunny to five straight days of heavy rain and strong winds. So we lost another week of sailing, and Scott, who teaches art in Colorado, had to go back to work no later than January 19.
Scott is the one of us with experience sailing in the Caribbean, and he is also a very good sailor. Alberto’s total sailing experience was two hours on a boat in the Mediterranean. And myself, I had done mostly coastal sailing in the Baltic, and I hadn’t been sailing for awhile and felt more than “rusty.” On the last day that we could possibly leave Luperon, we took off, although the weather report indicated that we should wait another day or so. We were all excited to leave Luperon, but because of the delays, we had to skip our plans of sailing to Cuba, and head straight for Jamaica.
We cleared customs and immigration without too much hassle, and went out to sea. We had heard some stories about Haiti, and were recommended to sail by that country at night, at least 10 nautical miles from the coast, and without any lights or radio, to avoid “bad guys" -- which we did.
But the wind was stronger than expected, and the line for the furling headsail was locked in the furling gear, and we couldn’t figure it out until daylight. Too much head sail was pushing the auto pilot off course, so Scott and I had to hand steer the whole night, which was a lot of work. We got the waves from two directions so the boat rolled a lot. I have to admit it was a little scary to sit in the cockpit by myself in the middle of the night and hear the winds and see the waves rolling in from behind. But as the days passed by we all felt more and more confident that Sea Quill can really handle the waves without any problems.
One day, as we sailed between Cuba and Haiti in international waters, a large US Coast Guard helicopter came flying to check us out and circled around one time, then flew away, only to come back 10 minutes later, flying pretty low. We wanted to take some photos of them but we had a feeling that they shouldn’t like that at all. We think they came flying from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I winked at them but they ignored me….
On the second night, when it was pitch dark, a huge cruising ship sailed by us. It was like seeing a floating Las Vegas on the sea. Unreal. The days went by, and we enjoyed some amazing sailing. Thanks to Scott, everything worked out really well. I learned a lot from him during those 70 hours we sailed and I have to say that he was very patient with all of my questions, and I’m very thankful for that. Alberto, who had only sailed two hours before this trip, did really well; on the second day, he hand-steered the boat for six hours straight, just like an old salt.
After the third night, we were all very tired, but the next morning when we sailed into Port Antonio, Jamaica, we all felt very good and a little bit proud of ourselves.