The 4 Rules for Surviving Long Passages

We lined up for the mooring ball again. I reached as far as I could with the boat hook; not far enough. I was yelling into the headset BOW TO PORT, BOW TO PORT as we drifted past it, out of reach, a third time. Lance was frustrated, yelling back THE BOAT STILL WON'T RESPOND. We were drifting down onto the neighboring boat in the crowded mooring field. Her crew was alert on deck, hands on hips (this pose is known among cruisers as Bitch Wings, and in this case we deserved it). Our shouting had raised the attention of the other neighboring vessels, their crew were also standing on their decks, eyes wide, enjoying the drama but also hoping not to become part of it. There was a smattering of Bitch Wings in the crowd. Surely we looked like newbies. Or, even worse, credit card captains. A helpful neighbor took pity on us and dinghied out to wait at the ball to help us loop through it.

Night Passage to the Dominican Republic

Brain cells started to sluggishly click into place. There was just not enough wind for Minerva to be fighting us like this. Something basic had to be wrong. That's when we noticed the mizzen sail was still up. Doh! No wonder the boat wouldn't turn - we had a sail on her tail acting like a big wind rudder. A quick release of the mizzen sheet and the sail relaxed, Lance regained close-quarter control and we slowly approached the ball, I handed the mooring line to our new friend on his dinghy. Minerva was secured.

As always, we did the post-mortem over a cold beverage when emotions had calmed and flop sweat had dried. How did we get here? How did we become the day's entertainment?

We broke rules #1, 2 and 3. That's how.

RULES FOR A SUCCESSFUL PASSAGE

1. Keep it Simple. You will arrive tired. Do everything you can in advance. 
1. Study the chart
2. Know the arrival rules 
• Can you rest when you arrive or does Bureaucracy insist that check in  happen immediately
• Have your paperwork in order, ready to grab and go
• Know who to call or where to go (and in our case, where can the dog pee like right now right now right now)
3. Have a backup plan in place in case your planned arrival location doesn't work out
4. Assume everything you need on passage will be difficult to dig out in the dark or when tired, pull it out so it's handy or at least think through how to put hands on it in the dark
2. Sleep when you are not on watch. No reading, listening to music, watching videos, texting, no working on the laptop unless these things actively contribute to making you sleepy. Not tired? Doesn't matter. Lay down and try to sleep anyways whenever you are not actively on watch. Tricks like imagining your body going numb one portion at a time, or acknowledging and actively releasing intrusive thoughts without giving them real attention are helpful.
3. Be Kind. The rest of the crew will also be tired, and brains will not be functioning at 100%. Be gracious. Check one another's work, two heads are better than one.
4. Prepare One-Handed Meals in Advance. A hangry crew doesn't behave well. This one has saved our bacon time and time again when conditions went sideways and hangry started rearing its ugly head and heading towards total assault on rule #3. Most memorable was the passage from Curacao to St. Croix when the autopilot went out forcing us to hand-steer for the last 30 hours, that one-handed meal prep was a lifesaver.

This particular trip was a dream ride along the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. The first day we encountered the typical confused seas of the Mona Passage, and the wind and swell were both much more than predicted but still manageable. By the time we reached the Dominican Republic side of the Mona, the swells started to soften and lengthen into a very comfortable lazy stern swell, sometimes with agreeable current. We traded the jib for a spinnaker and sailed that way all of day #2. Sometime in the night on the home stretch the wind completely died and the spinnaker was put away, the engine deployed and the mizzen tightened down. We came into Luperon that way, after a little over 50 hours at sea. Lance hadn't slept well. We were fixated on the fish pots reported to lurk around the bay entrance the last hour or so and neither of us remembered to take the mizzen sail down (rule #1, should have done it in advance when the sun first came out, and before we reached the fish pots. We were busy drinking coffee instead and completely forgot our trusty mizzen sail on flopper-stopper duty out back).

So we were the afternoon's entertainment. So what. There wasn't any damage, and everyone's been there. Luperon is a tight cruiser community, word has surely gotten around by now about the dorks on Minerva. We'll go to the Thursday mixer and take our lumps.

Spinnaker Sailing is the Best

Dominican Republic and the Mona Passage

The Dominican Republic is beautiful. Mountains, jungles, exotic birdcalls. What's not to love?

Mangroves at the entrance to the Line Caves, in Haitises National Park

Well, they do love to burn things. Lance thinks it's trash, I think it's agricultural burns, could be both or neither. The point is that there's always smoke coming from somewhere. Fortunately there's a lot to do, so we just pick our daily activity upwind of the smoke of the day.

The Line Caves in Haitises National Park were once the home to indigenous peoples. They hid their princess there among the caves from the marauding Spaniards in the late 1400s. There remain quite a few pictographs on the walls today, mostly depicting long-legged birds and the occasional whale.

We are still in the trade winds on the thorny path, which means we are picking our weather windows very carefully so as to fight nature as minimally as possible on our route East and South. From Ocean World near Puerto Plata to Marina Bahia Puerto in Samana meant going East, South and then West for a 20-hour slog. The window we picked should have been mostly sailable, and in fact after turning South we should have had a 16knot tailwind to drive us past the shockingly tall mountains of Samana and West into the Bay, although the weather didn't actually work out that way. We timed our arrival to round the corner and pass over the resident whale population at daybreak, and at first light we found ourselves surrounded by little fishing boats wearing no lights whatsoever. Perhaps they don't want to give away their favorite fishing grounds. Anyways, with the skinny moon and overcast skies, we were sailing in near pitch blackness and it was a surprise to blink in the half-light and find so many surrounding us. Hope we didn't disturb any in the dark. Fortunately we did not meet any whales in the dark, either.

Dominican Treehouse Village near Samana

The Marina Puerto Bahia in Samana is a high-end marina and resort with a couple of pools, laundry facilities, an ATM, a few restaurants, lots of wi-fi and lounging space, and customs officials onsite. One night they even threw a party for the cruisers, something I'm told they do a couple of times a month. Everyone was friendly and we felt quite pampered. All of this was surprisingly affordable. I can see how some folks just decide to stay here forever.

The upstairs pool offered some of the best views. Whales regularly spouted as they passed by at sunset.

An ideal place to tackle the Mona Passage plan.

The Mona Passage is the narrow body of water between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean Sea meets the North Atlantic there, the deep trench on the North meets the relatively shallow shoals between the two, both are very mountainous islands. The weather patterns spinning off Puerto Rico regularly cause epic thunderstorms. All of this combines into some potentially hazardous conditions, and the stories the sailors tell around the campfire strike terror into the soul.

You don't have to get far up the hill to find a significantly different way of life; jungles and agriculture replace beaches and bustling villages.

We have been hearing horror stories about this stretch of water for quite some time. Our plan to mitigate the danger is to study carefully the book by the local expert Van Sant, monitor the weather patterns, and to talk with everyone we meet who's done it and lived to tell the tale.

We think we have a strategy mapped out, and it looks like Wednesday afternoon is the weather window to go.

The idea is to sail along the 600' contour to avoid the fishing nets and take advantage of the near-shore night winds, kick away from the land by 8am to avoid the Cape Effect, motor directly into the (hopefully light) winds and seas out past the hourglass shoal, then head South and sail between the little islands into Boca or Puerto Real, arriving anytime outside of afternoon thunderstorm hours.

Let it Go, Let it Go!

We departed Boston for Portsmouth, New Hampshire on the most beautiful day. We could clearly see that we were surrounded by lobster pots. Everywhere.

Eventually we picked our way up the Piscataqua River against a strong outgoing current. There was one anchorage we were looking to settle in for the night, on the Maine side of the river. When we got there we discovered it was covered end-to-end with lobster traps.

We found a spot in the middle and dropped the hook. It didn't grab, which is highly unusual. We backed up a bit, being mindful not to back over any lobster trap floats, and never did hook. It was marked on the chart as "hard". I believe it may have actually been granite. So with nothing to hook onto, we called the nearby yacht club and asked to rent a mooring ball for the night.

One morning we awoke to find this lobster pot in the MIDDLE of the mooring field. Minerva barely had enough room to swing and miss it.

The mooring balls are completely round, and spin wildly against the strong current. The mooring ball we were directed to had wrapped its pennant line all the way around its rode, giving me about 2" of line to try to grab with the boat hook. Lance was having a very difficult time keeping Minerva still in the current and wind, and it took me several tries to finally tease out enough line to pull back towards the bow.

Twice the boat hook was ripped out of my hand. Twice we had to chase it downstream and retrieve it with a backup hook.

Many houses in Maine are decorated with the tools of the trade.

Finally I caught the looped line with the boat hook and teased out enough of it to almost reach Minerva. In my right hand was my bridle line, connected to Minerva's bow.  In my left hand was the looped pennant line. I was just about to loop my bridle through the pennant when a gust slapped Minerva to the side and tried to rip the mooring line out of my hand. But we'd worked so hard to get to this point, I was NOT going to let it go. All I needed was to just get my right and left hands a tiny skooch closer. Then the current caught Minerva and started pulling her away again. I was still determined not to let it go, but my hands were getting farther apart until another shifty gust caught us and then I was violently slammed against the rail. I was still reeling from the shock and trying to catch my breath when Lance shouted "LET IT GO!" and I did. Odd that it never occurred to me until right at that moment. He told me later it was like watching a horror show in slow motion and he thought for sure I was going to get pulled over just like the boat hooks had been.

So I earned some new bruises. And the folks sipping cocktails at the yacht club on the hill got a show. Probably one they've seen before, I expect they have a scoring system setup at the bar.

Once we were safely secured we caught a ride with the water taxi to the Maine shore and had a lovely lobster dinner on the patio. We find Maine to be weirdly uptight about some things, such as dogs at outdoor restaurant patios, and unusually loose about other things such as letting the kids run through the restaurant and bar, BYO alcohol to restaurants, and forgetting to ask for money at their restaurants. We've had to chase down more than one waiter to settle up.

The locals know: bring your own table mat, place setting and alcohol. Order the lobster from the restaurant. Relax with friends. Let the kids run wild around the patio.

Finally, we made it back to Maine. One year and a couple months later than planned, the lobster is just as sweet.

Chloe and the Cat Burglar of Connecticut

As the dinghy powered silently towards the island in complete darkness Chloe was dancing from one side of the boat to the other, leaping up on the pontoons and peering down into the inky blackness. There was just the tiniest sliver of a moon and it was doing little to clarify if our chosen landing was going to be effective.

With a sigh I glanced down at the Luci light lying deflated at my feet. Ordinarily it proudly tops our Torqeedo motor and announces to everyone that we are a dinghy under way in the dark. Tonight it wouldn't even light up. We had blown a small hole in it on a high mountain pass in the Rockies long ago, and multiple repairs had scarred it over the years but held it together, until last night's rainstorm infiltrated its lighting system, finally leaving it unable to illuminate. RIP good and faithful equipment.

Armed with the brighter-than-the-sun boat flashlight, Chloe and I ventured out for her last shore break of the night, heading for a small island close to where we had anchored Minerva. There was a house on it but it looked uninhabited at least for tonight. I reluctantly turned on the powerful boat light to examine the shoreline as we approached, the rock face was clearly too high for us to successfully land. It took a while after extinguishing the light before I could regain night vision. Damn that light is bright.

OK, redirect to landing location #2. On our way in I had noticed a pile of kayaks on a beach further away, a beach appropriate for kayaks would be a good landing for the dink. Chloe whined as I pressed the tiller and we veered away from the little island. Yes she was past due for her evening shore run. The day had not gone as expected. Our first, second, and third planned overnight landing locations stops did not pan out because the areas listed as anchorages turned out to be inhospitable for a boat of Minerva's size in such strong winds. In the end we selected a safe spot with some room to swing on the anchor, but it made for a long day and since it wasn't part of the plan we were somewhat unprepared for the evening shore break. Chloe still refuses to use her lawn patch on the boat. Which is how we got here, dinghying in the dark to an unknown shore location.

The shoreline along this part of Connecticut is mostly fancy homes. Private beaches, how nice. For someone, I suppose, but not for us. What we really needed right then was a friendly beach, a boat ramp, a dinghy dock, a public park. Any of those would do nicely.

The kayak beach was quite far still and we were heading there when the noise on the rocks alongside us changed, softened a little bit, sounded like the waves were slower somehow. I turned on the power torch for a quick moment and confirmed a rocky beach with a slow surgey inlet. The dinghy bottom is aluminum, she could take the abuse. I turned in, twisted the Torqeedo throttle to goose her into the channel then lifted the propeller out of the water just in time as the hull bounced over the first of many smooth round rocks. We had arrived. I jumped out and pulled the boat onto shore, Chloe didn't even wait until the boat stopped moving to bound out and run off to pee. My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness again and I lost sight of her fuzzy tail quickly.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" boomed a man's voice, low and clear and way too close in the darkness, "are you trouble?"

I about jumped out of my skin, remembered the huge homes we had seen lining the coast, and concluded I must be talking to a homeowner. "Nope, just bringing the dog to shore for a quick pee break before bedtime." My announcement was met with silence. After a few beats I called for Chloe and she bounded across the rocks and into the dinghy. I pushed the little boat out with the next wave set, slipping on the slimy round rocks, jumped in, lowered the propeller just barely into the water and twisted the throttle, and away we went, ping-ponging in the surge between the rocks until we were deep enough I could put the propeller all the way down, sit properly in the boat and catch my breath. As we passed the bluff I could barely make out the outline of a person standing there, hands on hips. Still silent, but the disapproval rolling off his posture spoke volumes.

After we were safely aboard Minerva I relayed the whole story to Lance, and he pointed out that I must have looked like a thief; approaching from an unexpected direction, lights out, with a super stealthy electric motor.

Yep, that's us. Chloe and the Cat Burglar.