Friday 19th January

Luperon
Dominican Republic

19 54.4 N
70 56.5 W

Still here waiting, the weather report is looking really good for us the middle of next week so we are planning to leave here then and do the trip all the way through to Puerto Rico in one hit. Jim – our neighbour here who is a weather guru is also looking at going at the same time so we should have some company. We began the day by Gerry taking off into town to pick up the laundry we left there on Monday – finally it was done. Whilst he was gone I hung pillows, cushions, mattresses, towels out in the sun to air – they just get so sticky on the boat it becomes essential to get the sun on them. Then I swept the floor and tided up the mess from yesterday – I find it impossible to understand how 2 people can create so much mess in such a short period of time, it seems like we are always cleaning up. Gerry arrived back with the laundry and a bit if good news, he had managed to buy a replacement diesel booster pump that supplies fuel to the raycor filter supplying the main engine and the generator (I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that it stopped working when we arrived here in Luperon – mostly because we can run the generator without it). Purchased the pump the next step obviously was to install it. It was relatively painless and now it’s all working as it should again. Whilst Gerry was working on the installation I stitched up our new sun shade. Once that was finished I enlisted Gerry’s help to finish off my project by putting in grommets and snaps so we could attach it outside to the bimini. It took both of us to do this as we had to get the snaps in the right place on both sides of the boat – we only had enough canvas for one shade so it needed to be reversible. Anyway it is now attached and working well. We had a visit from Jim whilst we were putting on the snaps, he wanted to know if we would like to go to Santiago with him on Monday to do some provisioning etc. we of course said yes – a trip to look forward to. Gerry made a run into the marina in the early afternoon to pick up the bedding etc. that we dropped off yesterday, drop off yet another load and to pick up a 5 gallon container of drinking water to top up our tank. He came back saying that he had put our names down for the Fillet mignon special dinner tonight. Gerry began complaining of not feeling too well – had aches and pains everywhere so he took a painkiller and went to bed for the rest of the afternoon, I spent the time reading. When he got up again he went out on deck and in a panic struck voice announced that we had a problem, our dink had gone. I shot out on deck and we scanned the harbour, sighting our dink on the back end of the boat that had anchored close to us early that morning, it seemed strange as the wind and current would have taken our dink in totally the opposite direction. Anyway there was no one on that boat or any of the other boats around us so we were without assistance to retrieve our dink. With many mutters and curses Gerry jumped into the water and swam the short distance between the 2 boats and retrieved our dink. We then got ourselves cleaned up and went ashore to the marina. We met a couple at the marina that we had previously met in Fort Pierce and sat with them, they knew that the owners of the boat next to us had found our dink afloat heading towards the mangroves and had rescued it, announcing on the radio that if anyone had lost a dink it was tied up to their boat. Of course we immediately began blaming each other for not tying the dink up securely but I know it was Gerry who did it as I wasn’t even with him the last time he went ashore! We hadn’t heard the announcement as we don’t keep our radio on all the time and the owners of the boat weren’t there to thank so we will make a point of going across and seeing them. As we chatted more and more people joined our table and we spent a very pleasant evening telling and listening to stories, jokes and lies. The food was very good and we drank far too much rum – well I did anyway. It would appear that after being here for 2 weeks we have finally been accepted into the cruising community. I have even been invited on a clothes shopping excursion with the women – not necessarily my favourite thing but it might be fun. We were amongst the first to leave so I doubt that anyone will be feeling on top of the world in the morning.