Rainy days

It’s a little hard to believe we’ve only been in the DR for a week (seems longer – in a good way). We were pretty busy last week going on tours, shopping, getting laundry done and working on a few boat jobs. This week things have slowed down and we’re definitely more settled into the dock life. We’ve had lots of rain – pretty much everyday so the deck is nice and clean.

Mark has continued to pick away at jobs, some which have been on the list for a few years (obviously not critical jobs!). Yesterday (Feb. 10) Mark “descaled” our 2 refrigeration units with this stuff called “barnacle buster”. This was a job that had been on the list for a few years so it’s great to get that one crossed off! Mark has also worked on transferring fuel to different tanks. We have a lot of fuel in our starboard tank so transferring some to the port side will make us better balanced. There still is the big job of installing the aft cabin air conditioning unit but that’s not a priority at this point.

We’ve been doing a lot of dock watching (and walking) – checking out boats coming in and going out. 2 days ago, a sailboat from Denmark came in and tied up right beside us. It’s a crew of 5 or 6 young people and they are travelling with a catamaran also from Denmark (that has about the same number of crew onboard). We’ve had another happy hour – this time on Matt’s catamaran. Matt and his son are planning to leave tomorrow (Feb. 12), heading east along to north coast of the DR. We’re having another happy hour on their boat tonight!

We still have about a week here if the current weather holds. It’s difficult to continue east from here because the prevailing winds (and waves) are from the east. We’re seeing winds in the high teens and low 20kts from mostly east which would mean motoring into strong winds and waves – not fun at all. There is a calm (well mostly calm – under 15 kts) window coming on Feb. 17 – 18, so we’re planning to use that time to motor the 120nm to Samana. From that point, it’s about 140nm to Puerto Rico.