After watching approximately 15 boats leave Luperon to continue on the Thorny path, it was finally our turn. The winds had stayed low all day. To ensure that we would leave, we had 40 gallons of water delivered to us. It worked. At 3:30 PM, we departed Luperon headed for Escondido after spending exactly 3 weeks to the day in Luperon. Masade and Fortitude joined us, so we kept our speed down to 5 knots for the trip. It was a little lumpy as we left, as we left before dark and we should have waited another hour or so, but it soon smoothed out to 3 to 5 foot long swells with a little chop on top of that. We had winds south of east around 10 knots. After hearing about what others experienced, we were pleasantly surprised at the conditions we experienced. As we approached Escondido, we heard reports from boats ahead of us, and from boats headed in toward Luperon that conditions on the other side of Cabo Cabron and Cabo Samana were conducive to continuing on. After discussing this on the radio, we decided to continue on to Samana. We turned the boats out and headed for Cabo Cabron. Between Cabo Cabron and Cabo Samana, the winds started coming up. It went from around 10 to around 18. The waves came up as well, we were in 5 to 6 foot seas. As we turned more south, the wind came in our sail area and the boat steadied giving us a nice comfortable ride. It was a relatively uneventful trip over all, especially given all the anxiety that built over three weeks! We turned the corner into Bahia Samana and the wind dropped from 18 to about 5 knots! We dropped anchor in Samana at 1800 GMT. Before we even got the anchor completely set, the Commandancia was out to greet us and clear us in. While this was a surprise and a change from Luperon, I do wish they had waited until we had our anchor completely set! After that, we spent a quiet evening resting from the passage.