Georgetown, Bahamas to Luperon, DR

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April 7th 2011

Published: April 7th 2011

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s v Tsamaya

The basketmaker

For any that know us you won't be surprised that our first souvenier was a basket made in Georgetown - another one to add to our collection

We left the Bahamas!
On March 23rd we left the safe harbor of Georgetown with 2 other buddy boats, “Happy Times” and “Sea Yawl Later” for a 35 hour “cruise” to Betsy Bay, Mayaguana. This is an island in the eastern part of the Bahamas that we needed to get to in order to make our jump off for the Turks and Caicos.

So what is a buddy boat you ask? It means different things to different people, in our case we arranged to call each other every hour on the VHF radio to exchange coordinates (latitude & longitude). We did this for a couple of reasons, first it's a safety issue, because we can't see each other at night knowing someone's longitude and latitude could be helpful in case of an emergency. Secondly we create more targets on larger ships radar. The term target is generally used when talking about radar however it's not one we're very comfortable with as you might imagine. We are traveling at 5 to 6 kn while the large ships are traveling 16 to 22 kn. If you're not careful these large ships can sneak up on you very quickly and be one hell

The pink government buildings

These buildings hold the government offices in Georgetown

of a big surprise in the middle of the night. Having several sets of eyes looking for these passing ships improves our chances of avoiding "those big surprises". Additionally we all have radar and some of us are better at reading it than others. Again with boats spread out over several miles we have a larger area of observation on the radar again avoiding those surprises. Our boat has the added benefit of having AIS (automated identification system). With this we actually see the name of the boat that is in the area with details on their heading, speed and destination. With the ability to call a boat by name it forces them to respond to you. In one case we had a freighter call us to say that he could see all 3 of our boats on his radar – one he would pass on his port, one on his starboard and one was on his direct heading, guess who that was. Before we could tell him we could adjust he told us that he would watch out for us and adjust his course. What a pleasant surprise that was! The captain seemed like he wanted to talk and

Georgetown Primary School

We got a chance to go inside the school as we met a 1st grader with the name of Tsamaya - just spelled differently -it was fun telling her what the name meant in Setswana

asked us details of where we were going and where we had come from. The technology really has been helpful – we are very happy we made the upgrades to our equipment. However probably the most important part of this hourly communication is for those on duty it really helped break up the boredom of night watchers as we many times talked about other things when checking in.

Cheryl and Mike on Happy Times have a 14 year old daughter, Mikayla, who does her turn on duty just like the rest of us. We hadn’t had a chance to meet her before leaving Georgetown, but as Bob said you can hear her “smile” when on the radio. We definitely enjoyed our talks with her. They are homeschooling Mikayla and she told us it definitely has its challenges, but they seem to be enjoying their time. Our other buddy boat “Sea Yawl Later”, Rusty and Linda joined up with us as we left the harbor in Georgetown. We spoke on the radio with them but never met them face-to-face. We enjoyed listening to Rusty's Texas drawl and creative euphemisms during our trip. We didn't realize until we met up for

Peace & Plenty

This is a well known hotel located in Georgetown

sundowners at Mayaguana that we had met them before at Black Point the night of Frank’s famous send off(see previous blog).

We arrived on the East end of Mayaguana around five in the afternoon. After such a long trip we dropped anchor and slept for the night. The next day we got up had a leisurely breakfast before leaving to travel the five hours to the southeast point of the island. This was an extremely beautiful day winds were southeast 10 to 12 kn with almost a flat sea. We motor sailed with full sales and our engines running at very low speeds (this helps us point better so we can stay on course and not spend a lot of time tacking back and forth). We had a wonderful day sailing in almost perfect conditions looking out over the most beautiful blue-green water you have ever seen. During most of the trip we were maybe 100 yards away from “Sea Yawl Later”. Rusty has a great sound system so he puts his speakers out on the top deck and turns up his thousand watt amplifier so we can hear his music loud and clear. Thanks to the use

A traditional oven

They baked bread in this oven to show the traditional method at the festival in Georgetown

our autopilot Janice and I were able to do a little dancing in the cockpit thanks to Rusty's music. We also had a great opportunity to take pictures of each other's boats with full sails. We arrived at southeast point around three in the afternoon. This gave us a few hours to rest before leaving at 12:05AM on Saturday, March 26th to sail to Sopadilla Bay in the Turks & Caicos. Just want to let all the sailors in the TYC know that we definitely waited till five minutes after midnight so our trip started on a Saturday and not a Friday. Even though we are not superstitious, we figured why tempt fate.

We stayed in Sapodilla Bay anchorage for five days waiting for the wind to settle down so we could make our way across the Caicos Banks in order to stage our next night crossing to Luperon in the Dominican Republic. We had a nice surprise while in Turks. A friend of ours from Ithaca just happened to have a one day layover on the same island we were on so had a nice visit with Dan. Unfortunately there isn’t good public transportation on the island so

We enjoyed Eddie's

The food and staff were great at Eddie's Place in Georgetown

we rented a car so we could have dinner together. It worked out fine and gave us the opportunity to help some other cruisers with transportation to town. We also got to see a little more of the island – it really has extremes of wealth. There appears to be lots of development on man-made canals that reminded us of Florida. Many of the shops and restaurants were high-end. We also got a chance to visit an IGA supermarket which was as large as any market we have seen in the states and as well stocked. However the 24 case of Budweiser beer for $46 really got our attention. Luckily we stocked up before we left Florida.

Buddy boats keep changing as destinations vary along the way, but we have been very pleased to always find others that are going our way. “Sea Yawl Later” stayed in Turks and Caicos but we met up with another boat "0 to Cruising" a Canadian couple Mike and Rebecca. We made it across the Caico Banks without any problems – we just had to keep our eyes open for coral heads along the way. This is much like the Bahamas banks the

Local church in Georgetown

A view across Lake Victoria at the local church in Georgetown

water is very shallow a long ways away from the islands we only had a few places that we had to alter course to avoid hitting any coral. One of the highly recommended places to leave the Turks and Caicos is Grand Sand Cay. What a spectacular anchorage it was! It would make a great advertisement for the area with its long white sand beach and turquoise water. We stayed overnight here and took some time to go ashore to stretch our legs and explore, but then had to get going at 2PM on Saturday April 2nd as another long passage to Luperon. This time we had great company with 4 other boats heading the same way. Luckily for us the night before we left one of the boats caught a mahi-mahi and was willing to share with all of us. We had already invited everyone over to our boat for sundowners when Martin and Johanna made a very generous offer of bringing some of the fish over to share with everyone. I gladly turned over my galley to them and they made a great meal with fish and fried plantains. We were able to add a side of rice

Is this the computer shop?

It was a surprise to see what they had inside the computer shop - you can't judge a book by its cover

to the meal and some of the beverages. We had a great evening getting to know the people we would be traveling with the next day.

Another night crossing and unlike the last one we didn’t have any moonlight to help light the way. We also got stronger winds than were predicted (we do have to remember they are only a forecast and not a fact). Unfortunately they were coming from the wrong direction (again). We keep wondering when we will ever travel in the right direction. Once again we were sailing into the wind against 6 to 8 foot swells and 20 kn winds. We had a reef in the main (non-sailors this means we take a fold in our mainsail to reduce the amount of sail we have up) and we put out the staysail. Everyone tells us we will have fun sailing when we head north again – something to look forward to! The seas were bouncing us around. It isn’t as bad during the day when you can see them coming, but at night it can surprise you when you take water over the bow or worse when it hits you when sitting in the

The entrance to Lake Victoria

You must dinghy under this bridge to get to the dinghy docks in Georgetown - there is quite a current running through here

cockpit. So, how do we describe this night crossing? If anyone can imagine riding a bucking bronco that could give you a slight idea of what it was like. Now, just imagine doing everything from fixing something to eat, trying to take a nap, and even go to the head while riding a bronco. This would pretty much give you the picture of the trip to Luperon. We were very glad to see the harbor on Sunday morning. One interesting thing to note is that you smell the island quite a bit before you see the island. It's not an unpleasant odor. We arrived at the island just as the sun was rising.

We entered the harbor without any problem and were greeted by Papo a local man who directed us to a mooring. We couldn’t beat the price at only $2 per night. From what we heard the harbor bottom is very thick mud that you have to wait for your anchor to sink in to for a couple of days to actually get a good hold. It was a no brainer to take a mooring. We have found since getting here that he is the person

Georgetown achorage

This is only a small part of the anchorage in Georgetown

to contact if you need anything from a delivery of diesel fuel, ice, beer or anything else that you might need. He can even arrange to have the bottom of the boat cleaned for a very reasonable price of $1 per foot. What a deal! We first had to get checked into the country – we were able to do part of it on Sunday but had to finish the rest of the paperwork on Monday. It is quite an interesting system as there were so many “offices” involved. The only common denominator was that each one wanted some money. It starts out not sounding too bad as it is $10 here and $10 there, but in the end it will run almost $100 to check in and out of this harbor. As Bob said tonight at least it seems that it gives quite a few people a job. The irony is that of all of the offices we had to report to only two had any official paperwork; the others just took notes down on a sheet of paper (one even had to borrow paper from us!)

After having a very long nap on the first day in

Plastic at Sea

We came across these yellow mats of weeds covered with plastic waste - something really needs to be done to control this type of waste

country we went out to dinner and to listen to music with Martin and Johanna from Snowbird (one of our Buddy boats). It was the perfect way to end our first evening in country.
We hope to be here for a few days to take time to explore some of this country. It looks like it has quite a bit to offer and this is the part of cruising that we truly enjoy.

We are still updating our location on the SSB with the maritime service. Please note a correction to the site we put in the last blog entry – please go to www.shiptrak.org and put in KC2TIU for the call sign in the top left corner. You can then check out the log of our entries at the bottom – this will tell you where we are located based on our reports to them.

Additional photos below

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