The Fast and Furious....

We finally left Boqueron after waiting for 10 days for good weather. Our forecast was for light and variable wind the first day and night and building to 15 the next day and night. Well, let me tell you what we got; light and variable for the first few hours and then by 10:00 pm that evening we got 27-32 knots of wind, with sloppy 10 foot seas. It rained through the night and waves were crashing over the bow. Crossroads was handling this mess much better than the crew was. Moving around the boat or just sitting required a great deal of effort in those rough conditions. We were flying, making 8 knots with a double-reefed main and half the jib rolled up (not a lot of sail).

By 6:30 am we were exhausted and wondering if we should duck in some where and wait or keep going for Luperon, DR. I called Chris Parker (our weather guru) using the single side band radio and asked if this mess was going to continue or lighten up. He assured me it “ should” lighten up. Fortunately, it finally did and Glenn let me sleep for 3 full hours. I was a new person expect for the million bruises I gained on the passage. We made it into Luperon 7:00am, right on schedule after our 46 hour crossing. (250nm) This was 4 hours faster than our East bound trip last year. Yeah!

We were so happy to be back in the Dominican Republic and in a very calm harbor. We did not even mind that we spent most of the day clearing into the country with 6 different officials. We slept like rocks that night for 11 hours. Monday we check in with the last two departments who were not open on the weekend – talk about homeland security.

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