The Mona Passage is the infamous bit of water between Puerto Rico and the Domican Republic. It is supposedly the roughest place to sail in the Caribbean. This is because the seafloor is very uneven and constantly changes from great depths to very shallow places. And there are strong currents. This makes for rough high and steep waves. It should not be attempted in more than 15 knots of wind. I was going to have no wind for the first ten hours and then around 20 knots but by then I would hopefully be two thirds of the way through.
After the end of three days there would be thunderstorms on the northern Dominican coast so I wanted to go even if it meant motoring for ten hours. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had to motor that long.
I got up at 4 in the morning and weighed anchor at 0530 before sunrise. The sunrise was very beautiful and apart from the fact that the engine is very loud and there was no wind and it was incredibly hot it was a very relaxed beginning of the trip. I went to sleep a lot because I already had a feeling that the night would be very different. It was. The wind picked up and so did the waves. We had 25 knots of wind and then 5 and then 25 again and so I was constantly reefing and unreefing. It wasn’t getting any better the next morning. And after passing Cabo Cabrón I had hoped the waves to become smaller but no such luck. We now had the wind from behind and were sailing goose winged. This meant I had to fix the boom of the mainsail on one side and attach a pole to the genoa on the other side. When the wind changed direction I would have to shift everything to the opposite sides. This now only took between 10 and 15 minutes but it was extremely strenuous and dancing around the foredeck in 2.5m waves with a 3m pole in your hand is no picnic.
There was a big splash next to the boat and then I saw a small fin. At first I thought it was a dolphin. There were two of them. And all of a sudden both of them jumped out of the water simultaneously. Beautiful large beasts about the size of Amy with a white belly. They were minke whales and apparently playing with us. They would dive just below the surface, aim for the boat like a torpedo and then surface on the other side. I was mesmerised but also a bit scared. One of them jumped not far from the boat with a gigantic splash. This I found the most scary thing. What if they hit Amy by accident?
By the time I had finally grabbed a camera they were almost gone and I was only able to film one whale jumping far in the distance behind the boat. But they came back at night. This time there wasn’t much jumping and it wasn’t as scary.
Luperón is situated on a big laguna surrounded by mangroves. The entrance looks a bit scary because waves are breaking on reefs everywhere and there are rocks with grottos that make loud noises and spry fountains of water. As soon as one is inside it is unbelievably quiet and flat. From Puerto Rico I had already contacted a guy called Papo who rents mooring buoys. But I was now without a working phone and couldn’t see a free buoy so I tried anchoring. There wasn’t much swinging room so although the anchor held well I decided that this was not a good place. I then found a buoy. After a bit of inspection I found that one to be of very dubious security so I dropped it. Then dropped the anchor again in another place where I drifted onto another boat. Trying get the anchor out as quick as possible to be able to run back to the cockpit before we hit the other boat I got all of the mud from the anchor and the chain over my entire clothes and body. No problem as long as we didn’t hit the boat. We didn’t hit the boat and I now looked like a zombie or one of the Woodstock audience in the mudslide and rain after Joe Cocker’s performance.
Two guys in a boat came by and I asked if one of them were Papo. No, this was Handy Andy the other buoy landlord but he showed me were Papas buoys were and we found a free one and I attached Amy to it and enjoyed the quiet. I cleaned up the boat cooked something for dinner and went right to sleep.