We are living in a foreign country. We have flown a handful of international courtesy flags off of our starboard flag halyard this year, but the Dominican Republic is the farthest we have been from the US yet…by a long shot. We speak Spanish, we eat fried vegetables, we drink El Presidente, and we absolutely love every minute of it.
It’s strange how it can be difficult to remember how much we love sailing. Sometimes the winds are too light, sometimes way too strong, The seas can be uncomfortable and unnerving. Sometimes you have to move when you don’t want to. But SOMEtimes, everything comes together and we are reminded of how much we love this. Our passage from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic was smooth sailing and proved that Sailing. is. Awesome.
Yesterday we waited excitedly for the Eastern Caribbean weather update from Chris Parker and then double checked our GRIB files this morning and it looks like we are all systems go to cross the Mona Passage over to the Dominican Republic!! In just a few short hours we will be heading out to sea for a two day passage to a new country.
We slowly wound our way through mangroves and small cays to reach the anchorage in Salinas on the south coast of Puerto Rico. It looked like about 100 other boats had already nestled their way in, but we have learned that there is always room for one more boat to join the fleet (the same holds true for dinghy docks). I toured the anchorage watching the depth and maneuvering around our new neighbors until we found a spot to drop the hook and call home for the next week – Salinas boasted a super cruiser friendly harbor and we needed a safe spot to call home base while we explored the mainland. Ready, set, GO! (Anchor set, dinghy down, to shore!)
Isla Culebra is just about 30 miles west of our last anchorage (Red Hook) in St. Thomas, but as soon as we dropped the hook here in Ensenada Honda harbor we realized we had entered a whole new kind of place. There were no charter boats, no mega yachts, and no rolly swells. As we went through our routine of tidying up the boat, we watched a few small charter planes take off, admired a solo cruiser drop anchor, and enjoyed the swift breeze that cooled off our below decks to almost chilly (we have a new scale for chilly these days!). We looked at each other with big grins on our faces and said, “Cool. This is really really cool.”
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After six weeks in the Virgin Islands and with plenty of islands left to explore, it’s time to say so long. We have spent the past week outlining a ‘plan’ for the rest of our adventure. It’s time to head west and north back to the US!
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Stella anchored off the beach
We just dropped off Logan’s aunt, Lori, at the airport here in St. Thomas and we have decided to let our hook get stuck here in Lindbergh Bay for a while. Logan and I have moved pretty fast for the past year, but hosting guests on vacations makes us some seriously busy bees. With Lori aboard we decided to sail, sail, and sail some more…and catch a few beaches in between.
There are a hundred people standing on the beach waiting for the big event – the lighting of the burning men…but the darn things just won’t light! Some blamed it on too much wind, some blamed it on fire starting skills, and some just took advantage of the down time to snap pictures. Finally, a cowboy felt his calling and ventured off the beach into knee deep water to take things into his own hands (or his cowboy hat)! He fanned and fanned and fanned. The fire starters danced in the water around the wooden statues; their skirts draped in the salty bay. Before long the crowd was whistling and clapping as the men went up in a fiery blaze. Happy Valentine’s Day – now it was time to party.
After months of traveling and eating food from all kinds of questionable (and sometimes more than questionable) grocery stores and food stands, Logan and I finally got knocked down by something and it was something awful.
Our time in St. Thomas was a blur. We worked, we cleaned, we provisioned, and we made it to Duffy’s Love Shack. We knocked ALMOST everything off of our to-do list (… we have started a new one already!) before we picked my mom up at the airport on Wednesday night. On Thursday we cast off the dock lines and set out for a Virgin Islands Adventure.