Arriving in the Dominican Republic

We left Sandy Cay in the Turks and Caicos right after noon - weather report says 10-15 knots of wind, 5' seas, sounded good. Reality is another story altogether - 20-25 knots of wind, and over 8' seas. We were making good time with double reefed main and tiny part of the jib, about 5-6 knots.

 At over 30 miles out, I was off watch, trying to nap in these lumpy seas and smelled electrical wires burning. Of course, my first thought was that we were hours from land in any direction and the water was VERY deep where we were – all in a flash. I kept sniffing, trying to locate the source of the smell – of course it was in the engine area. I finally located the general area and called my partner down to investigate further while I went up on deck to be sure everything was OK.


The problem turned out to be a faulty monitor that was supposed to check for fumes in the bilge area. Luckily, it wasn’t something critically important and since I couldn’t sleep, it was found right away when the problem happened.

I was sitting at the wheel when my partner came up to the cockpit to tell me what it was and that it could remain disconnected until it could be fixed. As the nervousness left my body and I relaxed, I realized I could actually smell land. It smelled distinctly like rich garden soil, green growing things, very lush vegetation smell. We had heard and read that this would be noticed, but I didn’t realize how powerful the smell would be. Possibly it smelled even better after the scare we’d had.

By dawn, we were only about 5-6 miles out, and in the distance we were seeing very high hills, then more mountains in the background. The smell of land was definitely more noticeable.

So much of a change from the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos - what a nice difference in its own way. We found our way into Luperon harbor with no problem and went into the inner harbor and anchored. The hills all around the anchorage were lush green vegetation, palm trees on the tops of hills, so very different from Florida and the Bahamas. 

Such a great landfall, a new island, new country, new day and so different!   So happy to have arrived safely.

Betty Karl
http://amzn.com/B009RCO02G

Night Rainbow

While we were anchored in Luperon, Dominican Republic, for the hurricane season, there were a group of cruisers there for the same reason. We found quite a few things to do in this country, horseback riding, hiking up into the forest and taking the bus to a nearby big city for provisioning. There were lots of parties in different cockpits in the anchorage and pot lucks at the marina as well as domino games there.

One day, we decided full moon was excuse enough for another party and had a dinghy raftup to watch the sun set and the moon rise. Everyone brought munchies and drinks and we rafted together for the event. The moon came up brightly peeking through the trees on the hill and everyone was having a wonderful time until a rain cloud came over and dampened everyone, but not their spirits. This created a phenomenon that none of us had ever seen before, a rainbow at night! It appeared in the sky opposite the moon as a very pale monochromatic, but very complete rainbow, which we named a "moonbow". It was amazing how many people, all various ages, and no one had seen this happen before.

As with alot of things in life, you need to be at a certain place at a certain time for things to happen - good or bad. It's interesting to think about what might have happened if you had taken a different path in life, just one small change could make a total change in your life.