Traveling Team Fischer

My apologies for the quality of this photo, or I should say lack of photos in general this time. This is the only one we captured during our crossing. Even though it isn’t the best image, you can still make out some of the waves as the sun was setting. Not too bad, and totally manageable.

I should probably share that in potentially stressful situations, especially at night on our sailing journey, I have the tendency to follow my hubby’s energy lead. He is a bigger adrenaline junkie than I could ever be, and is able to stay calm in situations I would not. He was wound a little tight on this part of the trip, and I assumed it was because this was the longest we had attempted yet and it was in the dark. Luckily (?) I had forgotten an important detail about a story a captain shared with us long ago. I’ll get to that later.

A little background as we begin: My hubby gets terrible migraines that really wipe him out and can make him physically sick. One hit him on this crossing. So during one of my shifts at the helm, while I was making sure to only look at the horizon and not the spicy waves to my starboard, he ended up getting sick overboard a bit. This was a test of my motion sickness remedies, and they were failing fast. Still, it was dark, we were about halfway there (yes, I still sang some Bon Jovi because it calms me), so we had no choice but to keep going. He rallied enough to take the helm again, so I settled in to take a quick nap.

Suddenly the whole boat was jarred rather violently. Our first thought was that we found some sort of large floating debris. Then we noticed our reefed jib was fully deployed, and that the furling sheet had snapped. (A good lesson in why it is worth only using Miami Cordage products and not the cheaper stuff you can find online for our running rigging) So I was back at the helm, hubby secured himself to the jack line, and tried to manually bring in the jib as far as he could. In the giant waves I didn’t like. In the dark. With the remains of a migraine threatening to come back. And to add extra drama, also watching the big ships in the shipping lane ahead of us. Ugh.

He was able to bring in about 75% of the jib, we safely passed the shipping lane, fish traps, and finally made our way to the mooring field in Luperon. It was not pretty sailing at all, but we were safe. The Armada came out to inspect the boat and check it in. We apologized for and warned them about the state of the port side of the boat, sharing that we had some rough moments during the crossing. They seemed used to that, then said they needed to take our pictures to finalize their process. Gross, not the Kodak moment we wanted captured. It occurred to me that if we went missing, or perished in some kind of accident, these are the photos they’d use in the news. Double gross.

We settled in quickly, cleaned up the boat and ourselves, and got some rest. The local go to guy brought us diesel, and took our laundry which he promised to return the next morning in time for us to head to our next stop. We looked for something to eat in town, then called it an early night. This was the busiest 24 hours ever. Hubby got to work on the jib, and we were surprised we handled everything as well ad we did. Many other boaters offered to help, as we as words of encouragement. Te world was getting back to normal for us.

Here is the story and the key detail I forgot about: 

It came up in a conversation months after this crossing. Years ago, a captain friend was in the Turks and Caicos islands waiting to cross to the Dominican Republic. He had a boat just like ours and shared this story with us so we would know how solid and safe our new home is. He was part of a group of 6 vessels waiting for a hurricane safely move along its way so they could make their crossing. The group was given the all clear and they set off. Then the storm made a U-turn, and they found themselves in the middle of a category 5 hurricane. Our friend described how his boat was submarining under waves, and all he could think was how beautiful it was, even under water. After what must’ve seemed like endless hours of this, the weather cleared enough for him to better see the situation. Soon he realized he was the only one to make it to the DR. The others were lost at sea.

So, our boat can apparently handle a Cat 5 storm. Rest assured, I know that I cannot. I am not willing to test my theory, and I will continue to be a little over zealous about checking and rechecking the forecast using multiple sources.

We were not at risk of a big storm during this crossing, but this night time trip was a “skills building” opportunity to put it mildly. I am grateful my hubby stayed so calm during our experience. I am also grateful I forgot where the above story took place. And as scary as our story is, I am grateful to be on this journey. It has been beautiful, exciting, and sometimes terrifying, but I think it has strengthened our bond and made us appreciate that we are even able to do something like this.

As we were getting ready to continue on our way, the man with our laundry had an emergency to address in his family, and was not able to pick up our clean clothes. So we wandered the streets of town to see if we could find it. Pro-tip: Google maps is useless for businesses people run from their homes in tropical islands. 

We were also trying to find the Armada’s office so we could check out. The DR required cruisers to check in/out of each port, even if your next stop is still in the country. So we wandered with lost tourist expressions on our faces. As luck would have it, the man from that office happened to see us, and took hubby on his motorcycle to the office to get that stuff done. Thankfully some ladies relaxing on their front porch took pity on me the 3rd time I walked past them, asked where I was trying to go, then called over one of their sons to take me to the laundry lady. Grateful I could muddle through enough spanish to get by, I didn’t even think twice about climbing on the back of a motorcycle with a man I didn’t know in a country I’ve not been to before. It was only after I had my clean load of laundry that I paused long enough to realize that I just rode my first motorcycle! 

Luperon really is a cute town with wonderful people and we look forward to visiting again some day. But first, we had to figure out our route and schedule to safely make our way around the island.