Samana

The trip from Luperon to Samana was fairly straightforward but, after two weeks in one place it felt great to get back into the routine of life underway.

Luperon  was a very well protected and popular harbor.  It was completely shielded from the oceans swells by a narrow mouth and 90 degree turn before it opened up into a spacious anchorage.  More than 100 other boats were at anchor around us while we were there, fowling the water.  Mark counted.  The farther in you went, the less water circulation there was.  We were anchored pretty far in. 

Back out in the clear water of the open ocean, Strolla's underside, showed gray and mossy.  Nothing we could do about that at the moment.  The bottom of our dinghy was equally unpleasant.  There was something we could do about that.  With driver's licenses and credit cards, Mark and I spent half an hour scrapping the algae growth and barnacles off the dinghy's rubber bottom and then washing it down with bucket after bucket of clean Caribbean sea water.

The trip to Samana from Luperon was an overnight one.  We expected to arrive midmorning the next day.  At about 2200 that night, I was at the helm.  Mark was up next.  I'd spent much of my shift steering towards a series of tiny lights along the horizon.  In the few minutes before Mark was to take over, I watched as those lights winked out one by one.  Squall coming, fast.  With my landmarks no longer visible, I was reduced to steering by compass.  I felt the first sporadic raindrops begin to fall.  I yelled to Mark, still down in the cabin.  He poked his head up, sleepy, sipping a cup of coffee and I sent him back down for a raincoat.  As soon as he took the helm, I dove inside just as the raindrops began to quicken.  Within minutes, the deluge was upon us.

Mark later described it to me as the hardest rain he'd ever seen.  It certainly was the hardest rain I'd ever seen, but I watched it through the tinted Plexiglas of the companionway cover, damp but mostly dry.  The rain fell so hard, Mark couldn't lift his head, couldn't even see the hand compass held in front of his face.  I had to shout directions to him over the roar of the rain.  Looking at our recorded route on the chart plotter the next morning, it was easy to see when the squall had hit.  It looked like someone had sneezed while drawing a straight line.

Samana wasn't much of a town.  The harbor had been discovered by the cruise ship lines in recent years.  Cheap, tourist stores lined the streets filled with over priced knick-knacks.  Taxi drivers and store vendors were much more aggressive in their attempts to win our business.  After an afternoon of walking around, we were tired of being hassled.  The weather still wasn't in our favor for crossing the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.  So, we decided to cross Samana bay to visit Los Haitises National Park for a couple days of climbing and cliff diving.