Adventures on Beannacht

We arrived in Dominican Republic knackered having fled the scene of crimes against humanity in Haiti late in the evening. We dropped the anchor in a bay north of Manzanillo before getting down to some much-needed sleep. On Thursday morning we motored down to the dock at Manzanillo to check in and get started on our Spanish. It’s funny having spent two weeks in Haiti speaking French how hard it is to replace ‘merci’ with ‘gracias’.

We’ve read a fair bit on DR and were aware that one of the things we’d have to watch was officials trying to extort little tips here and there from us as we made our way across the north coast, stopping in Luperon for a while and then heading east to Puerto Rico. We’d bought a case of beer in Turks and Caicos with which to ‘tip’ the officials without having to hand over cash. Arriving in Manzanillo was our first test.

We anchored off the dock at 8am and prepared our paperwork to go ashore to meet with immigration. As we were anchoring we were hailed on the VHF and some arm waving from the pier explained that we needed to move the boat to the other side of the pier and tie up beside a Navy boat. The pier was a tall concrete construction designed for tankers so there was no way we could tie to it directly.

Once secured we were boarded by five officials and a translator who talked us through the process. I’m not sure what the average is, but five officials per vessel must be close to it for DR. At the end of a simple process the translator said that the immigration official wanted a tip of $20 for not throwing things around our boat during the search – ha! We explained that we didn’t have very much money but we would happily give them a beer each and hey presto the problem went away. Of course the economists amongst you would realise that bottles of Corona are $2 each and so this little event cost us $10 anyway. But we feel it’s the principle of the thing, just because we own a boat doesn’t mean we’re loaded, and the immigration officials are paid to do their job, it’s not our duty to tip them every time. In making two more stops on the way to Luperon last week we managed to avoid most of these little ‘fees’.  

Once cleared by immigration we moved the boat out to anchor and then went ashore to find some diesel for the boat. The translator had offered to help us out so I asked him to get a price for diesel while we anchored and I’d meet him ashore. When I got ashore I was greeted by the translator and one of his buddies and told fuel was $4 a gallon – too expensive. I declined their offer and then met a Dominican called Moreno and his English wife Susan. Moreno invited us for a beer and I collected Kel from the boat and we enjoyed a nice beer ashore and got the scoop on the locals from Moreno and Susan.

Throughout the day our relationship with these two developed in slightly comical fashion. Susan talked to us about the Domincan ways, they’re highly skilled scammers and can sniff out an easy tourist from a mile off, we should stick with Susan and she’d help us out. Moreno however we discovered was a skilled Dominican scammer who happened to be married to an English wife, to throw us off the scent! I wanted to give the translator $5 for his help because Kel and I felt he had been very helpful and he didn’t get paid by immigration. Moreno agreed to give him cash because I didn’t have any on me and gave him 100 pesos. When I got ashore I gave Moreno $5 for the 100 pesos only to discover later that $5 is actually 175 pesos! At the end of the day we wanted to give Moreno and Susan a gift because they’d been very helpful and were trying to start a business servicing visiting yachts. I gave Moreno $10 to which he responded by asking for more sighting the beer earlier in the day, I reluctantly gave him $5 more despite the fact that he’d invited us for beers and that beers only cost $2.50! At the end of the day Kel and I worked out that we’d bought Moreno a 50 peso phone card, given him $15, a further 50 pesos for gas in his moped on which he collected 10 gallons of diesel for us at the accurate price. This guy had seen us coming! Despite feeling slightly scammed Moreno and Susan did invite us into their home for coffee and dinner, and so at the end of the day I gave them a little feedback on how the day had went. Not sure if it made any difference, but Kel and I at least felt we could leave with a clean conscience having made peace with our $15 and 100 pesos investment in their business venture!

Leaving Manzanillo was also a little drama. I went to the Naval port office, the Comandanzia, to get a Despatchio that would allow us to exit the port and arrive in Luperon. Kel and I were planning to leave at 5am the next morning. The officer explained that the weather was bad and that he would not grant us permission to leave. I was amazed. He claimed that it in DR law he was responsible for our safety and thus could not grant us an exit unless the weather was good. Ridiculous, just another attempt to extract money from us I thought. I returned to the boat dejected and explained to Kel that they wouldn’t give us the paper. The winds pick up very strongly by 9am as the night-lee effect of the island (I’ll provide a definition later) wears off. We were both worried that leaving later than 5am would mean that we couldn’t get into our next anchorage before the winds arrived. 

The next morning we went to the dock at 6.30 which neatly coincided with the arrival of the banana boat from England – the boat that collects bananas, rather than a large inflatable that working class kids in Northern Ireland spent too much time on each summer. Our dispatchio was delivered without any fees and we were shooed off the dock to make space for the freighter – another lesson learned, always time your departure with the arrival of a large freighter that keeps immigration busy!

We’re now in Luperon and haven’t managed to write anything for over a week for the simple reason that we’ve been having too much fun socialising with Tom and Karmen from Ellyda. We first met Tom and Karmen in Georgetown and were really excited about meeting up again, it’s the first time this has happened on the trip and it’s been wonderful to have familiar relationships after two weeks of daily change in Haiti.

Luperon is one of the best hurricane holes in the eastern Caribbean and many of the boats here, including Ellyda, are here to weather the season until November before travelling south to the Windward and Leeward Islands next winter. Tom and Karmen have been doing their best to encourage us to stay for the season also, but so far we’re resisting the temptation, not least because the water is so dirty here we can’t swim off the boat, surely one of the most important aspects of living on the water. Kel also commented today that I’m losing my tan because we’ve spent so little time in the sun during the last month – I’m returning to a life of vitamin D deficiency.

Sailing from Luperon to Puerto Rico requires us to cross the Mona Passage, one of the most challenging passages of water in the northern Caribbean. We’ve been in Luperon for one week already and there’s no sign of a weather window to move east. So we’ve been capitalising on free time with daytrips to both Puerto Plata and Santiago, and some boat maintenance projects.

On the way from Manzanillo we stopped at Puerto Rocia to shelter from the weather and I decided that was the time to change the fuel filters. I should have done this months ago but had been procrastinating. The primary Racor filter was really straightforward and the engine fired up immediately after the change and ran for over 10 minutes before I shut it off. Getting air in the fuel line is a big problem in diesels and an inevitable part of filter changes, to manage a change without having to bleed the engine is a big plus. The secondary filter is mounted on the engine and is more difficult to change; in fact this one defeated me for about 24 hours. I fitted and refitted the filter three times before I could get the fuel lines to bleed successfully, forcing us to stay at anchor for another night. The relief when the engine finally fired up and ran on the third attempt, 18 hours later, was immense. We’ve also emptied and flushed the water bladders and the fuel tank, scrubbed the desks and fitted a new alternator this week so I’m feeling pretty zen.

Last week we instigated cleaning days on the boat for the first time. Tuesday and Friday mornings are cleaning mornings when we give the boat a once over and keep up with the general maintenance tasks. It can be really difficult to give time to cleaning when there’s so much nice stuff to be busy with off the boat like sandy beaches and interesting new cities, so the captain has initiated structure to our lives and so far I like it.

It’s Taco night tonight on Beannacht so I’m off to enjoy great grub prepared by Keli and Karmen. It’s a hard life this.