March 18-24, 2001 -- Luperon and Weather

Sunday mornings mean swap meet and book exchange time. This morning was no different. We headed in to exchange books, look at what others had and to discuss the bizarre weather goings on with Bruce. After everything was all said and done, we headed back to the boat for some more recovery from our day in Santo Domingo. That evening, we had dinner on Masade with Sue and Leon. On March 19, Mike started out the day badly. He was trying to check the fuel level in Spot, when it upended and he fell out. Immediately, I instructed Michael to go in and shower. He glared at me and told me to get my ass in the dinghy as a counter weight so he could climb back in, and THEN he would go get a shower! That evening, we went into the marina for game night. Tonight's game was basically trivial pursuit without the board. Everyone that was there basically broke up into teams, and the questions were read to us and we wrote our answers on a piece of paper. Our team wound up in second place. On March 20, we checked the boat back into the DR so it's legal, of course, we have been legal all along but the boat was not for a while. That evening, we went to dinner on Masade with Sue and Leon. Sue cooks great Thai, something that we still have not gotten the hang of. It was definitely a special treat. On March 21, Sandra went off to Haiti on a Tour for two days and one night. We had no desire to go, especially since it meant leaving the boat overnight. However, for Sandra it was a once in a life chance to at least see the country since she would never go there otherwise. Blind Date, one of the boats that left without a good weather window returned. They lost their bow sprit going around Cabo Francis Vejo. (See Weather windows in the DR) Mike and I went into the marina for lunch, talked with the folks off of Surprise. Found out about the trouble in Haiti (Port-of-Prince). The DR has had so much trouble with illegal immigrants coming across their border with Haiti that one of the dictators imported alligators and put them into the river border that the D.R. shares with Haiti in hopes of cutting down on the problem. Our pilot house VHF is no longer transmitting properly, so we switched that VHF with the one in the stateroom. Finally, we headed into the marina for Taco night, all you can eat for $5 US. On March 22, we lounged. There wasn't a lot of work to do, so we chilled for the day. We went over to Blind Date for cocktails in the evening. Sandra arrived back at the marina around 9:30 PM AST just as cocktails were breaking up, so that worked out well. On March 23, we headed for another day trip. This time to Santiago. We wandered around the city and checked out the Carnival museum where the prize winning masks are displayed for a year (when we get film developed there will be some pictures put up on the web site). We then hit a McDonalds where everyone pigged out. We then spent the rest of the day wandering the city center and visiting the various open markets there. We ended the day by visiting the same super grocery store and department store that we visited at the end of our Santo Domingo trip. We arrived home in time to go to Lasagna night at the marina. This was interesting. It wasn't quite lasagna, but it was fairly good. Besides, we didn't have to cook it, or clean up after it. On March 24, we spent the day readying the boat to depart Luperon. We expected to leave. However, the weather didn't cooperate. The winds were up to high for us to depart, so we stayed put.