Sailing to Luperon Dominican Republic Safely | Salty Podcast #94

This is an update to Salty Podcast #91.  The sea can be glassy at sunrise and still hand you a monster at 10:30 p.m. We’re calling in from two different corners of paradise and chaos as Bill and Catherine share a boots-on-deck update from their Bahamas to Dominican Republic crossing and their new home base in Luperon Harbor, one of the best-known hurricane holes in the Caribbean.

We walk through what changed after leaving Georgetown: an engine overheating detour, a rough stay off Great Inagua, and the small rigging choices that decide whether you sleep or suffer. Then we get specific about passage tactics cruisers actually use, including radar squall avoidance, buddy boat communication, and the surprisingly controversial topic of proper diesel engine RPM. If you’ve ever “babied” a diesel to save fuel, this part may change how you run your engine offshore.

Once we reach the Dominican Republic, the story shifts to real arrival logistics: fish traps and low-profile floats near the entrance, grabbing a mooring when the pendant is too short, and why the Luperon cruiser network is built around WhatsApp instead of radio nets. We also dig into costs and quality of life details like water delivery, laundry service, food and drink prices, clearing immigration and customs with a dog, plus the provisioning reality that pushes Catherine into growing herbs onboard.

If you’re planning Dominican Republic cruising, Luperon Harbor, the Mona Passage, or the jump to Puerto Rico and Grenada, hit play. Subscribe, share this with your cruising crew, and leave a review with the one tip you wish every new cruiser knew.

Transcript

Where We Are Right Now

Capn Tinsley 0:00

Welcome back to the Salty Podcast, directly from the Bahamas and the DR. And we are doing an update with me, Salita, and Catherine and Bill. How are you guys doing? And Gracie.

Bill 0:12

And Gracie. We're doing great, Tinsley. How are you?

Capn Tinsley 0:16

I'm let's tell where we are. I am currently, where am I? Exuma park at the Warwick Mooring Field, the northern mooring field. And it's beautiful. I just uploaded a video of it. And where are you guys now?

Bill 0:31

We are in Luperon, Luperan Harbor in the Dominican Republic, which is along the north coast of the Isle of Hispanola. A very well-protected, well-known hurricane hole in the DR.

Detour North After Engine Overheat

Capn Tinsley 0:44

Okay. And I had the list of things we were going to talk about. Let me find that. Okay, here we go. So yeah, so the last we saw each other was in Georgetown. And we decided at that time that we'd do an update video of your venture there and also what's going on with you there and your opinion, and what's, you know, what do you think of it? So you gave me a nice little list. You sent me some four videos of four videos. And so let's just jump right into it. So where would you like to start, Bill? We're Catherine.

Bill 1:18

Well, when we left Georgetown, we had sort of a four-day itinerary to try to get down here to the DR. And in the middle of that, we ended up with an overheating issue. And in order to try to track that, we ended up having to go north on our plane, on our trip south. So we went up to Rum Key and spent an unplanned anchorage there. Got that thing solved pretty much overnight, and uh and then had a fairly long, about a 26-hour run, I think, down to Great Inalwa Island, which is the southernmost island in the Bahamian chain. That was a roly few days we spent there outside the government docks at at Great Innawa.

Capn Tinsley 2:00

Quite unpleasant. Okay. And what's the name of that town there? Is it yeah? So it was unpleasant. Very did you go into the into the little harbor?

Bill 2:11

We did we we we dingied in there. We had read a lot of scary reviews of bringing a big boat into the government dock. It's fixed only and it's recorded to be very, very high. The looks of it, it probably would have been fine for us, but it would not have been easy to get a Gracie dog on and off the boat. So we just stayed out in the in the harbor in the anchorage, and it was just a five-minute dinghy ride each day, so it was very close. But then we also for the first time deployed a swell anchor, which we had read about in Bruce Van Sant's book about you know passages south and how to how to take the foreignless path. And so we we rigged that swell bridle, and that helped for the first couple days it was out. It would have been better if we would have rigged that initially upon anchoring. So any advice I would give anybody on on doing that is you you you want the the running knot that's going to be on your chain to be as far out on the chain as you can afford to have before you rig it back aft to the boat. We didn't have it far enough out, so we we moved a lot, but it didn't mitigate things. That the swell bridle or swell anchor.

Capn Tinsley 3:19

So tell me, people want to know, some people want to know what why is the swell unpleasant? When the when it's not swell. It's in between butts and all plumbed in some butts because it it's not forward and back, it's side to side, side to side. And it kind of like when you first leave someplace, you put all things away. You put everything away, what's gonna fall and what's not, and you put everything away. Well, even after everything was put away, there was still stuff falling. And and we were at anchor. And and sleeping was very difficult. And I know we weren't the only other ones was a boat from Canada next to us, and they had the same problem. It's just it it's just constant. You can't walk anywhere where you don't get thrown up against a wall or a countertop or anything. Cooking was especially challenging because it messes with your head, it can give you a little vertigo. We didn't well, yeah, actually get a little bit of that, but it was mostly the cooking and the you know, trying to take a shower. You're just getting you're getting you're getting tossed around constantly. You're hard to relax.

Bill 4:39

Think of a roller coaster, how a roller coaster can be fun doing this up and down because you're going up and down straight. But imagine how how poor a ride it would be if all you were doing was going side to side and then almost all the way over and then all the way back, and that never ends like that. It's just it's front to back much, much better.

Capn Tinsley 4:58

Now, in hindsight, do you think you should have gone into the harbor?

Bill 5:03

Well, we had we ended up staying there, what, four nights? Yeah, we probably should have for four nights. For one night, it would be doable, but it would be a restless night. But like I say, the the swell bridle did mitigate it down some. The first night was absolute misery. Worst night since we've been cruising.

Great Inagua Swell Misery Explained

Capn Tinsley 5:18

Yeah. Wow. Okay, the worst night. All right. Did you get out and walk around or anything? Because when I interviewed Kurt on Sailing Jeep, he really liked it there.

Bill 5:28

We went to town, we we we got fuel through a delivery person, extremely expensive. If you don't need to get it there, don't get it there. It's how much what's that? How much was it? Oh, I didn't hear you, sorry. So the they ended up charging us eight dollars per gallon for the fuel plus a $50 delivery fee, and it's cash money only. They didn't take a card. And and we went ashore with the Canadian guy, and even though we were all there together, they charged each of us the $50 delivery fee for one trip in their in their this compact little Nissan car, and the guy gets out wearing a Tyvek suit and he had some kind of a diesel tank in the back of this. Like, I mean, it it you know the models are different when you go around the world, right? But it would be the equivalent of in the US of like a Nissan Versa. It was that small, and then and then he was pumping diesel fuel out of the back of his car. And uh they were nice guys, and and he drove me to the ATM to get to get cash, and so that that was good. We walked around the town quite a bit trying to find uh a grocery store. We'd found some stores, but no groceries. Uh people were people were friendly, it was a very safe place to be. We met some other tourists from England. England from England, very nice couple. They they they they flew over, right? Yeah, they flew over, rented a car. The Great Anagua, many people don't realize, is the home of Morton Salt. It's where their salt manufacturing plant is, and there's a great deal with tours there and flamingos and all kinds of things.

Capn Tinsley 7:04

The largest flamingo population in the world. Really? How many did you see? Oh, we didn't see any of them because they were on the other side of the island, but apparently there's like a couple hundred thousand. The English people did see them, and they said that they were they were incredible. They they there were not only were there a ton of them, but they were extremely, extremely deep, dark red. Okay. Well, it's too bad you didn't get any pictures of that. Where'd you get that drink, Bill? That's my drink of choice.

Bill 7:36

We found this in in here in the in Luperon at stores here. We were very thrilled to get it.

Capn Tinsley 7:42

He hasn't had that in once. Yeah, he is my drink. I dr I order it by the huge packs of them at home.

Bill 7:48

We like the generic one, the Kirkland one from Costco, but we'll take these no problem. Tinsley, I think we only paid 50 cents a bottle for these here. We'll talk about it.

Capn Tinsley 7:58

Usually like a dollar at home.

Van Sant Routing And Engine RPM Tips

Bill 7:59

We'll talk about the local economy as we go through, but yes, okay. So anyway, so one more passage great in Otwa.

Capn Tinsley 8:06

Yeah, okay.

Bill 8:07

So after that planned, we planned, you know, with patience to make sure that we were not gonna face straight up Easterlies, right? So we we had all the time in the world, and so we practiced the Van Sant method of you know, thornless passages, and he's read a lot of books. Yeah, he's really good. He lives here actually in the DR.

Capn Tinsley 8:27

Yeah. Well, I mean, Bill's read a lot of books about that. He's always quoting this method and that method, and somebody this name and that name.

Speaker 2 8:37

I always read the Catherine method.

Capn Tinsley 8:41

Sometimes we use that.

Bill 8:43

It's never failed us, I'll tell you that. But we were we were hoping to get, you know, a southerly wind to head east. A westerly would have been great to deploy our our our our light winds reacher sail. But what we ended up getting was southeasterlies, and so we stayed really high in the latitude of the uh passage and really hugged the coast of Great Inagua. It's a huge island, it's way bigger than I thought it was. For hours we were going along their coast running at six, seven knots. And so it was a total of a 30-hour passage. On the 30 hours, we had the engine off for about seven hours total, including one really nice run of four hours straight. That was really great. But then when we did have, when we did run out of scalable wind, the winds were very low, and we were able to motor right through them with no problem at all. We we had very few easterlies when there was wind, it was it was you know well under six knots, you know, from the wrong direction.

Capn Tinsley 9:42

You don't move a boat this size in six knots, yeah.

Bill 9:45

It's 34,000 gross waves slow, big good boat.

Capn Tinsley 9:50

So we turned the engine on, and we were kind of buddy booting with this other couple to have another island packet. Who had a six-hour head start on us, and we passed them and they really afterwards they came to the DR. They came over and visited us afterwards, and they were like on our chair and gone. Wait a minute, they're done. You do have a fast boat because you you can out you outran me too. Of course, I'm on a trim.

Bill 10:18

You think that was that that always works well?

Capn Tinsley 10:22

Maybe they need some lessons from you.

Bill 10:25

They had an IP 38 with a 44-horse Yanmar, and and we have a 75-horse Yanmark.

Katherine 10:30

So I don't know.

Bill 10:31

Well, I'll tell you something. We learned just right before this last passage through through Hayden Cochran's group on Facebook, the Island Packet Owners Association. I took a lesson there on guys coaching me about not babying that Yanmar to save fuel. They said those diesel engines like to be run at cruising speed, so keep your keep your RPMs around 2600 and and you know use use cruising fuel because you can damage your heat exchanger through extensive running of low RPMs. And if we didn't like $3,000, you could buy a lot of fuel for $3,000. And what and what would be the low RPMs that oh we will, I mean, we were priding ourselves in the past of keeping it around a thousand and still making five, six knots on the wall motors, but they said no, don't do that. 2600 is is is optimal for our engine, and then once every passage go to wide open throttle for a full minute to blow the carbon out of the out of the heat exchanger.

Capn Tinsley 11:33

I hear different things. I hear 10 minutes, five minutes. I heard someone say an hour, so I don't know what the true thing is. And what is when you say a full, what what what do you put it at? How many RPMs?

Bill 11:45

So you go all the way, you you know, take a note of what you had. Now, my original owner, yeah, you got wide open throttle all the way, max out the throttle, and that's why they say you do that once you get it to max, then you let it sustain for 60 seconds.

Capn Tinsley 11:59

Yeah, okay. That would do that for 10 minutes.

Radar Squall Dodge And Rough Seas

Bill 12:02

One out of the back. So we were able to get it up to 3300 RT RPM, and I think our original owner said 34 was the was the the max when he bought it. So we're we're pretty we're doing pretty good. We're pleased. But anyway, back on the passage, we had one really bad squall in the night. Um, Catherine saw it coming on radar. Why don't you tell that story?

Capn Tinsley 12:23

Oh, so I was at the helm and um he was 10:30 at night.

Bill 12:27

He was pretty flat.

Capn Tinsley 12:28

Yeah, he was resting. He came up and he goes, anything going on? And I said, No, not too much. There's a little um, but there is like this squall up here, you know, ahead of us.

Speaker 2 12:38

And he looked at it and he goes, That didn't look like it was really small because it was like two miles away.

Capn Tinsley 12:45

It's got a lot of red in it, yeah.

Bill 12:47

The yellow and the red, or the only red in it, and that'll be okay, uh, or I'll take was it was a beast, it was a beast that and and I can't remember why why I took over, but I took over. And sometimes when I get nervous, I do that. Like I want to take the elm. And and and I was communicating with our buddy boat. That was really good, right? I I called back to them, which is Amani. Shout out to uh to Josh and uh his wife, Laurel. Laurel, is that her name? Yeah, we're they're new friends. But anyway, I called back to him on the VHF and uh told him, hey, you know, there's a pretty big splall coming about five miles away from us because these guys were like five miles behind us and asked if he had his radar on. He said, No, he didn't. So he turned it on and thanked me. And so first we started running to go ahead. So we had our bunny boat following us, uh, IP 38 Amani. Shout out to Josh and Laurel. So I called him on the radio because they were trailing us by about five miles at that point, and I asked him if he had his radar on, and he he he didn't, so he thanked me and he turned it on. And uh so we basically you know used the radar to figure out which way the squall line was running, and we ran the opposite direction. So we ended up heading west quite hard to try to to try to stay on the outskirts of it. It was a lot of lightning, a lot of rain, and I think the highest we saw on the anomometer was 32 knots of wind. Oh my before it ended. And uh when it ended, that's when the seas got really rough. It was crazy. We had eight to ten footers after after the squall line was behind us, and that lasted for quite a while too. Very, very rough, but it subsided and we were fine, so it was good good test for us all.

Capn Tinsley 14:26

How did that 32 knots feel to you on that boat?

Bill 14:29

I'll tell you, for me, because it was dark out, right? There was a lot of ambient night light. You could see the jet black clouds that we were running from, and you could see sort of gray. Actually, you could see pretty well, but because of the cockpit enclosure and the rain against it, you couldn't really see, couldn't make anything out of the head. So I was reduced to just staring at the multi-function display, and I remember at the time thinking this is like playing a video game. I'm running, yeah, I'm running from the monster on the video.

unknown 15:01

Okay.

Bill 15:01

I mean, it was no, we've we've seen winds like that before, you know, but but not coupled with the rain and the lightning and the I've streets that on the 320, and it was it was a little scary, I'm not gonna lie.

Capn Tinsley 15:15

And especially if there's big C's, you know, because when you have 32 knot winds, there's C's. Catherine, do you think have you in the past have you been on a boat of this this size and and he and heaviness that you've in in the past where you you felt like that wasn't very comfortable for you and you feel safe on this boat in boats in the past? Oh, absolutely. I feel safe on this boat. Yeah, I mean it's it's so solid, it's like a brick house, you know. It's other boats I've been on in the past that are like have thin holes and stuff like that. You when you know, when they slam down on those waves and they shudder, they you know like a caper on the water, right? It makes you it makes you wonder a little bit, but you know, with these, it's just yeah, it slams, but it doesn't shutter and it doesn't, you know you're you have total confidence.

Bill 16:12

I remind myself often in in situations like that that Mark and Janet, when they sailed this boat under the name At Last and they circumnavigated, you know, they face 30-foot C's that sometimes there's a photo of them in a 30-foot C in the book in our salon. And so knowing that they made it through that gives me confidence that we can make it through.

Fish Traps And Safe Harbor Entry

Capn Tinsley 16:31

Right. Okay. All right, so what happened after that?

Bill 16:35

So then it was pretty much smooth motoring all the way to the DR. We had read a lot about watching out for hazards to navigation.

Capn Tinsley 16:43

Gracie wants to be on camera.

Bill 16:45

Yes, she does.

Speaker 2 16:46

Come on, come on, bring around.

Katherine 16:49

Come around.

Capn Tinsley 16:50

Hey Gracie. She knows you're on camera.

Katherine 16:56

No, no, no, this way. This way. Come around. Yes, yes, over here. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me. Hello.

Capn Tinsley 17:10

Hey Gracie, can she hear me? Hey Gracie.

Bill 17:15

She's not gonna watch the TV and film. She wants Catherine to play with her as hard as she can.

Capn Tinsley 17:21

She has this way, like especially when we're underway. She'll and you know, if it's been many hours, we've just been kind of sitting there and not doing anything. She will tell me it's time to play.

Bill 17:34

And then she we play very short games of fetch with uh with uh stuff in play a lot of tug of war and rope pills.

Capn Tinsley 17:44

Yeah, we play a little bit of fetch in the cockpit, but she makes it very clear she's ready to play. Very cute. She is so sweet, she is the good girl. Anyway, what were we saying?

Bill 17:56

So when we got about we got about 25 miles from the entrance to Luperon Harbor, we started seeing some fish traps that that you know were very small in the water. But to the fisherman's credit, everything was outside of the channel on Navionics outside of the line, as they say. So that was great. Then when we got really close to the harbor, we started seeing the little soda bottles and things people told us about the really the really low-end fishing floats. And those were those we had to I had to put Catherine up front to watch for that. So watch out for that when you're coming in here. But nothing, you know, as long as it's daylight, there's there's really nothing to worry about. As long as you have if you're if you're soloing, you better really go slow. But as long as you have somebody up on the bow watching, then you can so it's not recommended you come in there at night.

Capn Tinsley 18:42

Yeah, you can make through no, and they say that they say that on the warrant that it's better not to come in at night.

Bill 18:49

And and we heard about the guy that owns the mooring ball being a really nice guy and really willing to help and come out and lead you in. So I called him on the phone and he answered on a Sunday, which was great. But he said, I can't come meet you today, but pick any blue ball you want, those are all mine.

Capn Tinsley 19:02

So tell me about that. Did so those are owned by an individual?

Bill 19:08

There's a few private individuals that own mooring balls here. You can also anchor here, but you know, the harbor's really dirty, and if you're gonna be here for several weeks or a month like us, you know, you're probably gonna foul your gear quite a bit leaving it in this harbor. So we elected to pay $90 a month for a mooring ball for our 49th.

Capn Tinsley 19:27

Wow, that breaks the bank, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, the 18th. So what do you you know you just want to foul your gear? I mean, there's like a bunch of junk down there. What what are you saying? Or do you just get it you know it'll get real stinky?

Speaker 2 19:41

So remember, we came from the Bahamas, right?

Capn Tinsley 19:44

Right. There's a lot of people that like if when you look out over this mooring field, there's uh a couple hundred boats. There's a lot of boats, and they're very close together. And a lot of these people have come here and stayed for years, for years, and they don't leave to empty their tanks, right?

Bill 20:06

And there's no pump out service, and there's no pump out there.

Capn Tinsley 20:08

That's known, it's known for that, yeah. And I think the DR also dumps in there too, right?

Bill 20:13

What's that?

Capn Tinsley 20:14

Does the DR also dump you know, people there? Also, it's not just the boats. Oh, I don't know.

Bill 20:20

Well, I mean, there's fish, there's a there's a a pretty good-sized commercial fishing operation that comes in and out of here, so who knows who knows what they do, but it is mitigated by a tidal exchange, right? There's a good tidal exchange here. We're only one mile from the Atlantic Ocean. It doesn't smell or anything, it doesn't smell, so that's a nice thing, right? I was very worried coming into Europe.

Capn Tinsley 20:39

We were the nickname is Pooperon, right?

Bill 20:42

It is, it is, and and it looks like river water.

Capn Tinsley 20:46

I thought you'd laugh at that. I thought you'd get a giggle out of you.

Bill 20:49

It looks like river water, and so I you know, I just don't want to go and put you know my my shiny, you know, polished stainless anchor down in that and and have it get all you know fouled up over the course of a month.

Capn Tinsley 21:03

When we go to town, when we come back, we like our sure to like wash it up, yeah. Make sure that sanitary wipes on the thing that got on us is you know that's not the first time I've heard that. Yeah, yeah.

Bill 21:14

And you ding it and you take your stuff with you, and so let me tell you about arriving at the mooring field.

Capn Tinsley 21:21

I was tracking it's like it's really cheap there, but you're kind of in a toilet. Yeah.

Bill 21:28

You don't realize you are, but you may be at any given night. You know what I mean?

Capn Tinsley 21:33

Catherine, I got a laugh out of that, out of her for that. Pooper on.

Bill 21:37

It's a very nice place with a lot of super nice people.

Capn Tinsley 21:40

Yeah, oh yeah, the people here are amazing.

Bill 21:42

But there's not just cruisers here, there's expats that don't cruise anymore. So there's a ton of you know, Americans and Canadians that have lived here for years on end, guys running restaurants here, people that have bought homes here, and it is a great community. So just that that was that was. Exemplified immediately when we arrived. I had trouble with the pendant on the mooring ball. I could not snag the pendant, right? And as it turned out, the pendant was super short and my bow is pretty high. And so it was like two attempts, uh, Catherine at the hound, me on the bow with the uh with the uh dock hook. And immediately another cruiser came to our aid in his dinghy and and hooked us up and got us on the mooring. So, what I've told people is when you come in here, be prepared to not be able to grab the pendant, have a lasso set up with one of your bow lines and lasso the big ball so you can at least bring your boat to a stop and tie that off and then go in with your dinghy and set up your mooring properly.

Capn Tinsley 22:43

Okay, yeah, it was I I did a mooring by myself for the first time yesterday, and it was I said in the video, it was pretty much uh a shit show. But I got it done. I would think that would be really good. I didn't yeah, it looks good.

Bill 22:59

Was the pen was the pendant floating when you got there, or was it floating on separate yes, see here it's on a little floater, yeah. Yeah, here that you have the ball and the and the anchor line going down to the mooring, and and the pendant is is not floating on anything, so it's hanging down too. It's only about three foot long. Okay, it's not coming up to the top of our bow.

Capn Tinsley 23:21

Right. Yeah, so okay, well, you learned a lesson now. You you'll be ready for it when you go back.

Bill 23:28

So the guy that um the guy that helped.

Mooring Ball Lessons And Instant Help

Capn Tinsley 23:31

Like, I'll be ready for the shit show. It won't be a shit show next time. Excuse my language. That's the only way to say it. Exactly. I had I had to get my dinghy. We're showing you.

Bill 23:43

So the guy that helped get us on the mooring ball invited us to the cruiser's dinner Sunday night at a local restaurant. What's it called? New Amsterdam. And uh mostly outdoor restaurant with a really nice swimming pool, and uh you can bring your dogs along, and every Sunday they do wood-fired pizzas. And so we went there and we had two, we were starving because we had just completed a 30-hour passage, right?

Capn Tinsley 24:10

So we had probably didn't eat much while you're on the passage.

Bill 24:13

We had two 12-inch wood-fired pizzas. Somebody had a couple of beers. I had two beers, I had a couple of sodas, and the bill in American dollars was 22 bucks. Now, the last time I bought a pizza in the U.S., it was $47 for the pizza by itself. Okay, and that was no beverages or anything equal. So we were thrilled to see that economy. We you can have fuel delivered to your boat by the mooring ball guy, but he's gonna charge you six dollars a gallon, or you can you can dinghy into town and walk your can to the shell station about a two-mile round trip and pay four dollars and 49 cents a gallon yesterday. And what did you do? We took a walk because Gracie likes to walk, so I have started walking five gallons at a time to see you know how much of it I can get.

Capn Tinsley 25:02

It's a workout right there. Yeah, we deliver they deliver water to you.

Bill 25:06

Oh, that's the other thing, yeah.

Capn Tinsley 25:07

Yeah, because we don't want to use our water maker while we're here because because of the water, obviously. So, and that's how it's at 60 cents a gallon.

Bill 25:15

No, it's like 33 cents a gallon. So he he he brings it in these five-gallon jugs, like you know, the dispensers you have in your house with a big blue five-gallon plastic jug, and they'll bring you as many as you want. And so for 10 five-gallon jugs, 50 gallons, we started, it was 1,000 pesos, all right. And uh 1,000 pesos uh works out to uh roughly um remember how much nipples don't no no no, it's not that much because it was 4,000 pesos to check into the country. That was 70 bucks, right? So, so 25 of 70, whatever that is. That's what we paid for uh for for 10 10 jugs of five gallon water.

Capn Tinsley 25:56

I think it works out to 50% and half of that, 17 10 and 17 and a half or something.

Bill 26:03

I think it was like 33 cents a gallon, so not not dirt cheap, but he's delivering it to the boat. And then I learned how to siphon it with a with a you know 5'8 inch hose and get it to go right in our tank real fast. And some people told us the guy that helped us on the mooring ball, he uses his water maker. He said, I'd rather go through a bunch of pre-filters on an incoming tide than spend you know eighty dollars a month for water. Well, we're we have so much money invested in our water maker. I am not taking that chance. We will buy water for the few weeks that we are here, right?

Capn Tinsley 26:35

The other thing is laundry. There's no like coin operated laundry mats here. Apparently, there's one, and it has a washer that works sometimes, and no dryer, and a dryer that doesn't work at all.

Bill 26:48

So the mooring ball guy will pick up your laundry, bring it to his mother, he said, he's like my age. He'll bring it to his mother and she'll do the laundry. So, yeah, I mean it's like hop sing right here on the harbor, right? So you just send the laundry out and it comes back the next day, and we only got one article of clothing that wasn't ours. We have no idea what we're doing.

Capn Tinsley 27:10

How much was it per load?

Bill 27:16

600 pay six hundred pesos, and I think I think the exchange rate now, I think, I think the the US dollar equivalent is like 59 cents in Dominican pesos. So basically the math that I figured out is your your money goes 40% further here, which is why all these people, all these Americans are living here. It's crazy cheap.

Capn Tinsley 27:38

And like the Bahamas, where you can use American dollars to, you know, it doesn't matter if you have Bahamian dollars or not, it is you need pesos here. You have to have pesos.

Bill 27:48

So you go to an ATM, and this is another great tip for your viewers. We heard at the Sunday night dinner our first night. When you go to an ATM, it's gonna ask you if you want the ATM to do the conversion of the currency for you. And the answer to that always should be no. They're gonna do it right, it's just not gonna give you a detailed printout explaining it to you. But if you want the ATM to do the conversion, they add an eight and a half percent fee.

Capn Tinsley 28:17

Wow.

Bill 28:18

So don't do that, but we've used the ATM multiple times here, and I checked my bank the very next day, and everything is up and up and it's accurate. And and our U.S. bank reimburses us all fees for ATMs if we go to a real bank, not just like you know, a standalone ATM.

Capn Tinsley 28:34

Yeah, you were saying that. What bank do you use?

Bill 28:36

We use Fidelity, you know.

Capn Tinsley 28:38

They reimburse you. I've never heard of that on our debit card. Not that I would have heard of everything, but I've never.

Bill 28:44

Yeah, so we have when we started cruising together, we opened a cash management account. You know, most of our our our um retirement accounts are are going to be through Fidelity. I like Fidelity, they're not sponsoring our boat. But I wish they won't.

Capn Tinsley 28:59

Especially if you're watching, they'd love of you to sponsor them.

Bill 29:02

We should start a joint account, you know, for cruising hidden. And so we started a cruising hitty and we each put $500 a month into that account. And that account we each have a debit card. And so it's uh they call it a cash management account. Now that's separate from my retirement accounts or my brokerage accounts. If you use the cash management debit card, they reimburse all fees. I think you need to use your brokerage card or a different card than your paying fees. So that was what we learned, at least through Fidelity.

Capn Tinsley 29:30

Well, and the other thing is that even though we've gone to the bank the last two days, they haven't had yeah, it's been half a month.

Bill 29:38

I think I cleaned it out because they'll only let you take out five, they'll only let you take out five thousand pesos at a time. You can do multiple transactions, I think it's their way of collecting extra fees. I really do, but we get the fees back, so we don't care. But but yeah, the last two days done. No dinero, no dinero a la m. No money at the machine.

Life In Luperon Costs And Community

Capn Tinsley 29:59

And it it is good to be able to speak Spanish here. Thankfully, he does quite well. I'm learning, but it it is good. A lot of the people here do not speak English. Oh, really? Okay. Well, let's see on your list, you first impression of Luperan Harbor. Is there anything else you want to you want to say about that? Well, it's beautiful, it's beautiful. It's surrounded by mountains. I think you can see behind us.

Bill 30:27

Lush green hills, and beyond beyond these hills are real mountains. I mean, if you if you do your favorite search engine of the Dominican Republic, you will find that some of the inner mountains on this island of the Isle of Hispanola, they will rival the the Colorado Rockies and the Andes, perhaps.

Capn Tinsley 30:45

Yeah, they will they will break up a hurricane there when sometimes when they go over there, it breaks them up.

Bill 30:51

Yeah, this place is known as the Caribbean. I've been to like St. Hurricane Hall. Scott and I went area. Uh huh.

Capn Tinsley 30:59

Scott and I went there, you know, by plane. But so we'd been there.

Bill 31:03

But this is known as as one of the number one hurricane holes anywhere, at least in the in the northern Caribbean, because you can get here pretty fast, and there's there's a lot of room, and there's a lot of people to help.

Capn Tinsley 31:15

And yeah, there's a huge, huge social network here. They have they're all on what and they have all these different categories. They have categories for events, they have categories where if you need something fixed or you need a tool, they buy and sell.

Bill 31:30

They have buy, yeah, they have all all the restaurants are under their own category. Crass for patient is its own category, and so it's they don't do they don't do radio nets here, they don't have to, because it's 24-7 on WhatsApp if you want to find information or share information. Really, really neat.

Capn Tinsley 31:47

Yeah, so that's even that's better than Georgetown. Yeah, it is that yeah, and there's and you know, it's like there was a guy coming in the other night and his engine wasn't working, and he and he he put something out on WhatsApp, you know, kind of an emergency call that said, Hey, I'm coming in, I'm gonna get there around six o'clock. My engine can't work you. That's when the oldest give me give me one second, I gotta turn this radio down. Give me one second. Okay. What are you laughing at?

Bill 32:16

We're off down.

Capn Tinsley 32:17

He did something when you were gone, and I said, Oh, but you never know what pe what's on the movies.

Bill 32:23

All right, so that'd be right.

Capn Tinsley 32:25

Um I'm coming in, and he his engine wasn't working, and he put a thing on a WhatsApp on the Lupron cruisers net thing, and said, Can somebody come you know, go and get in the dinghy and come and help me in? Because I don't have any power. And I think like three or four people went out in three or four different dinghies, yeah, and helped to help get them in. And apparently that happens a lot, yeah. But yeah, it means a lot. Just like the guy, you know, getting off his boat and helping us get our mooring hooked up. It's uh yeah, I mean, it's great community, great community. A lot of they do they have a Facebook page or is it's all on WhatsApp?

Bill 33:05

They do, yeah. There's no there's a looper on cruiser's page on Facebook, but the WhatsApp is the active one. Yeah, hundreds and hundreds of people active on there every single day talking about things, and and they're really good about taking one-on-one conversations offline so it doesn't get cluttered with all yeah, and they've got all these different categories, so you don't get them all mixed together, you know.

Capn Tinsley 33:25

You put out for whatever you WhatsApp has really changed things. I mean, support social media and and I mean you had the radio, you social media, and and then WhatsApp. That's that's great.

Bill 33:37

So the other thing here, like she alluded to, is there's always something going on. So we we've already been to another restaurant for trivia night the other night. There were a couple dozen people there for that. Great Swin. They do how did you do?

Capn Tinsley 33:49

We second we held our own games. Well, we were with two other people and that we had just met. And yeah, so we came in second. We felt pretty good. And did they the people you were with come in first? No, no, no. No, we weren't with anybody. No, it was teams of four.

Bill 34:07

Teams of four.

Capn Tinsley 34:08

So we we just we just sat down at this table and said, Hey, can we be on your team? He said, Can we play with you?

Bill 34:21

And then their their longtime friend showed up. They said, Sorry, we've recruited these people. This lady looks really smart.

Capn Tinsley 34:26

Right, right.

Bill 34:28

So yeah, Texas hold them like three nights a week here at a different restaurant. There's just there's karaoke night. I mean, if you're a social person, man, is this the place to do that?

Capn Tinsley 34:38

Oh, yeah, they do things that they work for the animal rescue. Okay, you know, they're always looking for volunteers to oh, yeah, that's the other thing that's really cool around here.

Katherine 34:46

Oh, yeah.

Capn Tinsley 34:47

You know, in the Bahamas, when you walk by a dog, you practically get your head bit off because they're all chained up on three inch, three inches of chain. The dogs here all run free, they're all running free. Nobody's chained up. Basically, nobody's chained up.

Bill 35:04

No, we haven't seen any chain dogs.

Capn Tinsley 35:05

Nobody's chained up, they all run free and they're all super friendly.

Bill 35:09

Yeah, they're very, very calm and they're curious, and they'll come running up to Gracie Taylor's wagon and give her a sniff. But we we have not had any aggressive dogs here, and that's been a nice, nice thing, really.

Clearing In Patience Paperwork And Pets

Capn Tinsley 35:22

Remember when we went on that walk? We were chained up in a boat sitting on trailer in a backyard. But never sad, every dog in the Bahamas that we got near was like that. And here they're just roaming free. And I think that makes and the so this organization takes care takes care of and you know, they say spay and neuter as much as they can, and you know, but they they feed them, they're not hungry, you know. Yeah, so it's it's so that parabod's actually really good and healthy. Good okay, check-in process.

Speaker 2 35:58

Okay, well, that's a good one. Did you have to grace the palm at every every no, no, no, no, no bribes required, just lots of patience.

Capn Tinsley 36:07

Lots of patience.

Bill 36:09

So I I you know, I had always said, you know, captain should be I always heard that the captain should be the only one off the boat till you get checked in. So I go in there by myself. How many people on the boat? Two. You need to go get a crew, bring them back. Everybody needs to be here. So I came back, got Catherine, got Gracie. They brought us into immigration and they allowed Gracie to be in the room during the interview.

Capn Tinsley 36:30

And the room is literally like eight by eight feet.

Bill 36:33

Remember that phone booth we saw in Little Farmers? It's like about what two and oath.

Capn Tinsley 36:37

Oh my gosh.

Bill 36:38

But they were very friendly and they processed us, right? So immigration was a piece of cake, $70 for us to come in.

Capn Tinsley 36:44

Did you have to get a pet permit?

Bill 36:47

Not nothing in advance. And we had read on No Foreign Land all kinds of things that made us nervous about needing titer tests, and that our Florida vet certificate from January or December would not be uh January yet. That our Florida vet certificate would not be honored. All is it. That's all BS.

Capn Tinsley 37:05

Tell her about those okay.

Bill 37:08

So so uh no advanced stuff for the pet permit. We just we brought her immunization records. They actually looked at our Bahamas pet permit and nodded his head as he was looking at it, reviewed her immunization records, which of course were current, ten dollar fee, the dogs in the country. Absolute piece of cake.

unknown 37:26

Okay.

Capn Tinsley 37:26

Now, what if you not what if you did not have a Bahamas permit?

Bill 37:31

Who knows? Yeah, okay. I mean, you know, the the so then another organization we had to check in with here is the Navy or what they call the Armada, right? So there was a guy in civilian clothes represented the Navy. He wanted to take he wanted to see a picture of the boat, he wanted to take a picture of our ownership papers, and then he wanted to do selfies with Gracie. I kid you not. He did selfies with Gracie, and every day when we walk by the government area now, it's like Gracie, it's so funny. He loves her. But customs would not be.

Capn Tinsley 38:01

Why did they want selfies with Gracie?

Speaker 2 38:04

Because she's so beautiful, he just everybody's drawn to her.

Capn Tinsley 38:10

Interesting, a selfie, though. I mean, he didn't just take a picture of Gracie, he wanted a selfie.

Speaker 2 38:15

No, he wanted in the picture. And he he was very thoughtful about where the sun was.

Capn Tinsley 38:20

He was convincing with Gracie then work. Oh, really? Who is this guy?

Speaker 2 38:28

He's from maybe Richard.

Capn Tinsley 38:30

Yeah, and he says, hello, and shout out to Richard.

Bill 38:35

So customs on day one, come back tomorrow.

unknown 38:38

Okay.

Bill 38:39

So I come back that second day, and they're all on their phones outside the office, like five guys sitting outside. I stand there waiting, I wait, I wait. You know, Richard's not around to vouch for me. And so finally, after like literally five minutes, I think, well, maybe maybe these guys don't even work here. So I go to step into the office. The first guy comes off his phone to you, you know, how can I help you? And I said, They told me to come back tomorrow, which is today. He says, Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow again? Yes. So I walk away, go into town, yeah, be there at eight o'clock. So I go to town, do some stuff. I come back through, somebody flags me down, and that was an agency I didn't know we had to see. That was the port authority. So they bring me in port authority, more paperwork, no more fees. So finally, it was the third or fourth day we got in to see guest jobs and young same.

Capn Tinsley 39:36

So they're all right there in Mr. Not in a yeah.

Bill 39:41

But but anyway, so so it was easy, you just had to be patient. The fees were very reasonable, no, no weird questions about you know things like that. You have to disclose in the Bahamas, you know, those things that we lock up when we go to the Bahamas and they want to make sure they're locked up. No questions about that whatsoever. So don't ask, don't tell, and uh, you know, keep it all locked up.

Capn Tinsley 40:00

So you you had re probably researched that ahead of time. And what did you find?

Bill 40:06

What did you research told me to be prepared for a similar process to the Bahamas? Okay, but no questions about that at all. So the big difference you have to be prepared for here is we had heard that you have to have what they call a Sarpei Z A-R-P-E checkout from your last port if you're coming here. That they they so if we were leaving, like when you leave the Bahamas, Tinsley, you don't have to check out, you just go home and you can clear in on the on the CBP app that let to let the US know you're back in port. But coming here from the Bahamas, we had read that you have to have a paper that proves you're not wanted back in the Bahamas. So we went to great steps and paid a $75 fee to get that.

Capn Tinsley 40:51

Cash, terrain, in a in a like a shady little garage store in the back alley and you know liquor store. I imagine it down gratuit and liquor store in the middle. Yeah, and it was like we didn't go in the office, we just went in.

Bill 41:10

We spent more at customs than at the liquor store.

Capn Tinsley 41:15

The guy, like we didn't even sit down or anything, and the guy goes, Okay, that's $75 cash.

Speaker 2 41:21

Okay, so we took the card, no cash, yeah.

Capn Tinsley 41:24

And and I'm like, Yeah, I wonder if we didn't look at that one, but it was a little shady.

Bill 41:28

Yeah, but the other folks we're checking in with didn't have a Czar pay, and so the Richard from the Navy said, It's okay, most people don't have, don't worry about it. So we didn't need that.

Capn Tinsley 41:38

We didn't even need that, spend that $75.

Bill 41:41

At least here in Luperon, they didn't care. But we've also read and we've heard from these guys that you do have to check out from here if you're going to another Dominican Republic or we're gonna go from here uh 125 miles to Semana, which has a really nice resort and marina. Well, we could probably you know make our own water if we wanted to. But you have to get what they call the despacho, the dispatch. You need a despacho that shows you're not wanted in Luperon in order to check in to Semana. So paperwork is a little bit cumbersome. Be prepared for that, bring your patience and your well.

Capn Tinsley 42:19

The other thing that they do here is so they're are more like motor scooters than there are cars, like hundreds of cars, motorcycles, and none of them have muffers, and they're extremely, extremely loud, and they run up and down the streets, and they are it's really like I would I would think you they scary lost a lot of noise pollution. You know, in Cozumel, we would see a family of five on a scooter. Yeah, and it's like you still have adults and little babies, and then adults would have helmets on and the little baby didn't.

Bill 42:57

No, well, there's no helmet, so there's a helmet law, though, we heard on WhatsApp.

Capn Tinsley 43:01

Yeah, unless you're a cruiser. If you're a cruiser and you're on a scooter and you don't have the helmet on, you're gonna get a ticket, of course.

Bill 43:09

Yes, we read that on WhatsApp the other day.

Capn Tinsley 43:11

They were revenue stream, yeah.

Provisioning Struggles And Boat Gardening

Bill 43:14

But but we will say this we figured out if you walk a block or two off of the main road, oh, 90% of your traffic and noise problems are solved. So you know, bring a map program. The map programs work for you here, and uh, you know, stay off the main drag if you want to save your hearing.

Capn Tinsley 43:31

Oh, tell about the meat.

Bill 43:33

I went to a meat march. Yeah, for provisioning is tough. Now, there's a town like an hour away, Porta Plata, and they have normal big grocery stores. We're gonna try to get there and provision. But there's there's little stores here, sort of like we experienced on Black what's it called? Blackpoint. Black Point, right? The little grocery store there. Sort of places like that, sort of places like in Georgetown, but not near the stop. And so we have not found any green vegetables that we've wanted to buy yet. The farmers market was a bust for us again. We found a little uh a little butcher specialty market, went into asked in Spanish if they had any bone and ribeye steaks. And they said, We can get them on Thursday. Come on Thursday. I said, Oh, okay, great. So we came back on Thursday.

Capn Tinsley 44:22

Catherine's laughing.

Bill 44:24

Well, he died. This is let me show it to you. And he he turns around to the right behind him, says something about, you know, go get this. And he turns to me and he said, Now, this is not grass-fed Angus, like maybe you're used to getting, but it's uh it's a grass-fed animal. I said, What kind of animal? And he said, It's very similar to beef. Oh so he brings out this short.

Speaker 2 44:50

He literally brings out a rib cage and a rack.

Bill 44:57

I don't know. But that but the the stakes were like this small, they were really tiny. They were probably it was an oval probably about four inches max, really, really small. And I looked at it. What kind of beast was it? He wouldn't say he said, Let me cut it, let me cut one and show you. So he cuts one, he shows it to me. I'm like, still, the answer is no, thank you.

Capn Tinsley 45:22

No, so Stephanie wouldn't he wouldn't tell you. There's a big boat going by couldn't tell him.

Bill 45:28

I I don't think he knew what to call it.

Capn Tinsley 45:29

I was couldn't translate it?

Speaker 2 45:32

What I don't know, Tidley. I just didn't want to know. What can he do?

Capn Tinsley 45:36

This is gonna make a great clip, right?

Speaker 2 45:41

It was a very young species now, it's too big to be one of those dogs at the street.

Capn Tinsley 45:48

I don't know what it was, but we oh my goodness, we passed, yeah, and it's like there's no eggs in the grocery store.

Bill 45:57

But you can get eggs. We've paid for a flat of 30 eggs, 200 pesos. That's it's like 175, but we tip, and we're picking up 30.

Capn Tinsley 46:07

You have to tip at the grocery store?

Bill 46:09

No, no, no, no, it was from another creator who who coordinates it, so we just no, there's no eggs in the grocery store. You don't gotta give me 25 pesos, it's like three bucks.

Capn Tinsley 46:17

I mean and I can't make ice cream in anywhere for a while because there's no heavy cream in the grocery stores. Sure. So I told them we're out of ice cream for a while. Yeah, it's just not a big selection, and and and but you have that there's a big, bigger, a bigger box.

Bill 46:36

Well jumbo. It's called jumbo, that's the name of the big grocery store like an hour away.

Capn Tinsley 46:40

Just two nights ago I fixed a Publix. I had I have frozen meat on board. A Publix ribeye. Well, it out. It was on my birthday, it was so good. And then the uh the trawler I was with, they had frozen lobsters, fresh, they were fresh frozen. So that you really can't get that here. A nice Publix ribeye. No, you no, you have to eat some other species. Yes, yes, that's frightening.

Bill 47:11

You know what looks really good is the carbone, the uh the chicken on the grill that they do out on the street. They'll have a big grill and they're cooking whole chickens.

Capn Tinsley 47:18

Are you sure it's that? Are you sure it's chicken?

Bill 47:22

Yeah, yeah, it could be seagull carbone, but I don't think so.

Capn Tinsley 47:25

I'm worried about kitties or something.

Bill 47:29

Chicken and pork, you can't go wrong in these places, but beef, you're you're gonna be disappointed if you're expecting a lot of beef. You know, frozen stuff, like you said at Georgetown, we were able to get things like that if you want to pay $30 for uh how what did you get a steak in Georgetown?

Capn Tinsley 47:46

How were they?

Bill 47:47

No, it was $29 a pound at the specialty butcher and $24 a pound at the grocery store. We just said for a little new crude sweet.

Capn Tinsley 47:58

For $14 a pound, and then you got this big thing of hamburger.

Bill 48:03

We tend to shop of ground beef for $8 a pound at Georgetown. That that was a good buy. And so we used our vacuum sealer to seal it up, and uh some great, great Catherine meatloaf.

Capn Tinsley 48:17

Yeah, I'm so hungry right now. Y'all are making me my stomach's growling. So let's say you so we with that's kind of provisioning, dining out. You kind of mentioned the pizza.

Bill 48:31

Have you had any other cheap restaurants, cheap bills, and good food, and and cheap liquor?

Capn Tinsley 48:36

Oh no, no, no, not not to buy a bottle of cheap.

Bill 48:39

Well, no, no, I've seen it at the restaurant, like meet the hour pricing.

Capn Tinsley 48:42

Yeah, like how much is a drink?

Bill 48:44

Like they like US two dollars for a draft for like a 16-ounce draft beer. It's nothing.

Capn Tinsley 48:49

And it's been a long decade since I drank. What is a draft at home now? Oh, probably five, six, seven dollars. Oh wow.

Bill 48:58

For my family watching, I'm still sober after just in case anybody's wondering. When we were in Matthewtown in the Bahamas at Grandinagua, a 750 milliliter bottle of Captain Morgan was going to be 29 U.S. dollars. And I told her, don't buy that, it'll be cheaper in the DR. So we came here, we got a much bigger bottle of a local rum, and that was $22 for a bigger bottle. So that was a good deal. And then what was that bottle of uh vodpe you bought? Stoly's stone re and how much did I pay for that? It was $18, I think. It was cheap for a bottle of Stoli's. So that that was the liquor's okay.

Capn Tinsley 49:34

It's not very close. We need a lot of company. I was gonna say you're really boozing it up, Kat. Well, one just planting for a vendor, huh? No, no good wine.

Bill 49:50

If we run out of everything else, Catherine has started farming on board the Misolita. Let me just show you.

Capn Tinsley 49:56

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Bill 49:58

From seeds, I kid you not, she has grown this fabulous basil plants and cilantro cilantro right here on the boat. Now we have gone all over town, all over town asking for tierra limpia. We need clean dirt, right? We need some soil for gardening. Nobody has it. We want to transfer these to bigger pots.

Capn Tinsley 50:22

I point you to so far like a hill or something.

Bill 50:24

Like people are making a trick to town. Well, maybe we can find some garden soil or at least get up in these lush hills and dig some up ourselves because it's very green and very beautiful here.

Capn Tinsley 50:34

Well, you need to grow some tomatoes and this is making me so hungry. We have that I've already gotten some peppers. He didn't he doesn't I got some peppers.

Speaker 2 50:44

What's that romaine lettuce you're growing?

Capn Tinsley 50:46

What did you say? He he does not what? What did you say? Some peppers and some I so some of this is growing hydroponically. So I've I've sort of started some peppers that he doesn't know about. Why does he not know? Is it a secret? I mean, not anymore. I just I just have to she's like, he doesn't know.

Bill 51:06

Well, he's eating it like the guy it's the guy at the uh carnesettia, you know. That's all you need to know.

Puerto Rico Plans Mona Passage Grenada

Capn Tinsley 51:14

It's it's a could have been a rap or something. No, it was too I'm gonna have to jet chat GPT that and find out what's going on there. So what's what so you're gonna stay for you paid for a month? How long do you think?

Bill 51:27

We've paid for a month, but we're already looking for a weather window. I mean, we're gonna be here a couple of weeks to rest and and and you know, a few things we want to work on, but no more than a month. And so hopefully we get hopefully we get a uh front that'll bring us a wind other than east, 125 miles to get to Semana, which is still Dominican Republic, and then from that place there, it's Mona. Mona Passage.

Capn Tinsley 51:51

You're gonna go across the Mona Passage, yeah.

Bill 51:53

From from Semana, then we cross Mona Passage to actually get into the Caribbean proper at at what's it called in Puerto Rico, Rio, Puerto Rico or something like that. Anyway, Puerto Rale is where we actually get into the proper Caribbean waters, and you'll be back in America. You will be back in the back in the U.S. That's right. And then it's a couple of 50-day hops to get around to Salinas, where we have been schooled by Hayden.

Capn Tinsley 52:21

Okay, we're back. I had it, now I don't know. Hey, let's show those videos.

Speaker 2 52:27

Oh, yeah, sure.

Capn Tinsley 52:29

So the first video we're gonna show is let me see which here we go. My mouse isn't cooperating. Okay, so this is a view fishing.

Bill 52:41

Yeah, Catherine shot that, I'll let you speak to it.

Capn Tinsley 52:44

So, you know, he's been fishing the whole time that we are going down through the Bahamas and everything and having dismal results. And so finally he came one day, it was almost like a confession, and he says, Hey, I have something to tell you. And I go, What? And he goes, I have a secret fishing, I have a secret weapon, you know, that I could put out to to go fishing with. And I'm like, Well, haven't you for an hour? He's like, Oh, I just it's it's pretty involved, and I didn't want to get it out. And I go, Well, for God's sakes, get it out. So he gets it out, and sure enough, we start catching pelagic fish. He starts catching fish. Are you gonna tell us your secret?

Bill 53:26

Well, it was the daisy chain lure. I I had been mostly I had been mostly fishing uh a cedar plug, which I'd heard good things about, and then you know, some some swim baits, some some little uh, you know, plastic style baits that that swim. And then finally we broke out this daisy chain that had three flying fish running in front of a squid, and it was all kinds of different colors, and you know, it's a lot more cumbersome to put it out and uh to get it in, but it immediately started producing.

Capn Tinsley 53:55

I was like, is this your event invention?

Bill 53:58

No, we bought it at Bass Pro. It's called Mr. So not such a secret, then I used to hadn't broke it out during the trip. I'd been I'd been using uh you know other lures, and so anyway. So that was uh that was a uh you know a good little clip of the sun going down and uh and you and you got a Mahi Might. Yeah, and we got a nice dolphin or Dorado, whatever you want to call it, right before the sun went down, got her all got it all cleaned up, nice bull. And uh so then another the sundowns were you know sunrise and sunset, just as amazing as anybody would think they would be out there at sea. But you can see the the seas are pretty light. I mean, for being between the Bahamas and the DR, that was pretty we had a really favorable passage.

Capn Tinsley 54:38

Now, in the daytime, what color is that water?

Bill 54:42

Just what do you call it?

Speaker 2 54:43

Cobalt blue.

Capn Tinsley 54:44

Cobalt blue, yeah. Oh, kind of like the tongue of the ocean where it's like a real deep in indigo blue or whatever. Yeah, okay. It's like an indigo blue.

Bill 54:54

And we only had a little bit of sargassum weed to deal with on the passage. We we've been seeing online that the the big plumes are coming across the Atlantic toward the Caribbean now, so people beware of that. And you know, if you go through one of those from the screen or right away, is it is where's is it coming from?

Capn Tinsley 55:11

Where's it coming from?

Bill 55:12

It comes from you know, from Africa and comes like the storms do.

Capn Tinsley 55:17

And what is that called? Red Tide. It calls us red tide.

Bill 55:20

That's what they call it in Florida, but but this is where gassum weed. It's a seaweed that is basically fertilized by Saharan dust and then the warm water, and it just grows like a huge patch. So is it stinking? No, not when it's live. I mean, you know, when it's when it's dead and it gets up on the beaches and it's been there for weeks and kills all the fish.

Capn Tinsley 55:42

Okay, yeah.

Bill 55:44

But no, we don't have any of that. We just had a few patches, and and our strainers were mostly clear on the crossing. So good good luck. And then this was a sunrise, again, almost lake, right? Almost lake-like conditions. It was for a while, it was lake-like.

Capn Tinsley 55:57

All right, wait, wait, you're talking.

Bill 56:00

Oh, I'm probably doing uh probably doing uh clip for my Instagram channel.

Capn Tinsley 56:06

Can you hear it? I just turned it off. Okay, because I can hear it. It says you were between you're headed for the DR, six something.

Bill 56:16

Yeah, so that's one of the lures that that only produced a barracuda, that lure right there.

Capn Tinsley 56:22

Nice. I see it right there.

Bill 56:25

Yeah, that one only produced barracuda though. Which you don't want.

Capn Tinsley 56:30

Right. Okay, let's see. Let's let's I'm gonna fast forward. Oh, I see the water, I can see that it's that color. Anything to say about that?

Bill 56:39

It was just beautiful. We mean quite we lucky to not have the uh east wind and uh look nice and flat.

Capn Tinsley 56:46

Oh, look at Gracie.

Bill 56:48

He looks great.

Capn Tinsley 56:49

Gracie pretty well. She's on her little patch of grass.

Bill 56:56

And then and then I think the next clip has us in Luperon Harbor, Gracie and I making a dinghy ride back from the from the dinghy docks. She is in all her glory. And me Salita's in the background there. You can see the boat as we as we approach. And we've got our our shade tents out that we have out right now. You'll see that this little trip around and our mooring ball. You can see some of the mooring field there. But you can see, I mean, you know, the water, it's like river water, right? I mean, it's not like you know, literal trap floating along in the water, but it's just not it's not homeless. It is not blue water.

Capn Tinsley 57:27

No, no.

Bill 57:29

You you could jump ahead of some of that and and uh and you get closer to the boat as we round around the come around the yeah. So our shade tent has we put that up immediately when we got in the book.

Speaker 2 57:39

Beverly hillbillies, yeah.

Bill 57:41

But I'll tell you what, that drops the temperature inside the boat by at least 10 degrees. Really nice.

Capn Tinsley 57:47

Is it a car from is it oh, is it made for that? It's it's not just a tarp from Amazon, right?

Bill 57:55

No, it was made for the boat by Mark and Janet, the original owners. Very nice, and it puts a nice uh wind tunnel going through the cockpit, too. Really, really nice, and keeps the rain off of you when it starts raining, right? So you can see our mooring ball and how kind of nasty that is.

Capn Tinsley 58:12

Yeah. Sorry for that reaction.

Bill 58:15

Yeah, that's that's what your anchor would look like after a month here.

Capn Tinsley 58:18

Gracie's like, I'm not going in that water. I took such better coverage footage of your of your boat in Blackpoint. It's in the other video. It really can see the difference in the water. Yeah.

Speaker 2 58:34

Look at this. Somebody done a gallgo work.

Capn Tinsley 58:37

Okay, so you're next, you're going to Puerto Rico. Well, you're another stop.

Bill 58:43

Catherine's gonna fly home for a break for a couple of weeks to see the grandkids. We're gonna do a crew change. I've got my son-in-law and grandson are gonna come out and spend a Tuesday through Tuesday with me from Arizona. We're gonna come fly into Puerto Rico, no passport needed, and spend a week on the boat with me.

Capn Tinsley 58:58

Oh, and you're just gonna hang around. Are you gonna go to the Calibra?

Bill 59:02

Yeah, if the weather's good, I want to go to Calibra and show them.

Capn Tinsley 59:05

And the other what's what's the other island up in there?

Bill 59:08

Uh Viecas.

Capn Tinsley 59:09

Yes, Viecas. Right. Okay, and so you're gonna just stay in Puerto Rico and then you're gonna fly back?

Bill 59:16

Yeah, so Catherine will be back in two two weeks later, and then we'll hit the US VI, maybe the BVIs, whatever the weather will allow us to do, right? So, you know, El Nino summer, maybe maybe a slower start to the uh Caribbean hurricane season.

Capn Tinsley 59:30

What's the final destination?

Bill 59:31

Or you you're you're gonna go all the way to the bottom and kind of see what we we want to make it to Grenada before August before things can get really, really scary. Right. If we if we find ourselves, you know, it's it's 450 miles from Puerto Rico to Grenada. So if we get more than halfway and storms threaten, we'll run to Grenada. If we don't get that far, we'll turn around, come back here, and and hang out in Lukeron, you know, until the storm passes.

Capn Tinsley 59:58

Okay. Let's see.

Bill 59:59

But we're not, you know, we're not gonna put the boat on the hard and and leave for the season. We are we are continuing our cruise through the summer and uh destination Grenada, and we'll stay there until storm season is over and reassess. We might come back up to the windward islands of the Eastern Caribbean, or we may start heading west and check out the ABCs and Columbia and Panama.

Capn Tinsley 1:00:21

All right, so why don't we catch up again and do another update after Catherine's back on the boat? I want to hear about the Mona Passage, so take really good notes. That is a huge monumental step for a lot of people. First the Gulf Stream, big and scary, and then the Mona Passage. And it's it's kind of treacherous because it's where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic. And there's the Puerto Rican trench, which is like the deepest on earth point of the Atlantic. Yes. So we'll catch up after Catherine's back and uh and and see where you're going next and all that.

Bill 1:01:03

And I'll ask quick. So do you do you know the island packet youtuber on SV Paquita, Tim?

Capn Tinsley 1:01:12

A video of his popped up because it was on the Island Packet Facebook page. I mean after you said that, I saw it. I noticed it.

Bill 1:01:18

Yeah, so I've watched him for a while and he popped in here to say hi to us yesterday. And he said he's gonna give us a shout-out on his channel, so we'll be giving a shout-out on yours.

Capn Tinsley 1:01:27

And damage control is there too. I forget the name of their boat, but that's the name of their channel. They're also on an island packet. And well, I don't need them. Now he posted a video in the DR. He may be gone by now, but I did so maybe you'll be on the lookout for I think on Instagram and Facebook. I may be wrong about that. On one of them, it's called Damage Control, and it's a couple. So look out for that one. All right, guys. So until I'll be talking to you, but we'll do another update after Catherine's back. Right, so all right, so we'll we'll say uh salty band it out and Salita quote.