Mona Passage

Well, here we are at 0425 hours on the morning of the 3/3/11 after just making a passage across one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world, the Mona Passage. It is here that the Atlantic waters and Caribbean waters meet head on, and coupled with shoals where the bottom of the ocean goes from 1000m to 300m quite abruptly, lends to some very heavy steep seas. We had a great crossing, picked a good weather window, and had John and Cindy from Glass Slipper join us as a ‘buddy boat’. We motored out of the bay in Puerto Rico and into Mona for about 4 hours before the wind was strong enough to put some sails up. John and Cindy were in front having put more power in with the motor, but now it is our turn. You know how it goes, two sailboats, on an ocean, in sight of one another......its a race. We soon caught up with them, and had arranged the previous night for a photo shoot. As you would have it the wind died just as we got to them! Never mind, out comes the cruising chute....yeah, that’s right, the big yellow thing. Wow, off we went, setting sails, taking photos, Marion trying to keep control of the boat, it was all happening. We made good progress and soon lost Glass Slipper but pulled down the chute before dinner to set the boat up for night sailing. You never know what to expect at night so we always err on the cautious side. As it turned out the wind died a bit, till we were flogging the sails at 0300 hours this morning. Marion was on watch trying to settle them down to no avail, but as we only had up to 8 knots of wind it was a losing battle. So out of the cot i got, down came the sails, on went the engine, put Marion to bed, and set up the radar! I hope it works, i can’t see a thing outside so i might as well be in here doing this. It also helps me keep asleep oops, awake! I don’t want Marion to wake up to find us tearing along with me catching a few zzzeds. Engine on is good, charging the batteries and allowing all nav gear to be on, hence the radar. We are due to arrive at Samana in Dominican Republic in about 4 hours. Clearing in here, we are told, is not straight forward......they ask for gifts (we call them bribes). We’ll see how we go. Heading to Cuba, westwards, which is nearly all downwind. Nice easy sailing! Coming back.......seems we have to do a lot of night travel to miss the strong tradewinds during the day that will be against us, and close to shore so as not to get into the equatorial current. Sounds like we are going to need a lot of good weather windows even for the night hops!!! It is recommended we should be anchored by 0800 hours every morning before the winds pick up......not sure how the Mona will do! No stops there! Must go, better check outside just in case there is a boat, or ship, not showing up on the radar. Hopefully i can see their lights. Can’t see Glass Slipper anymore, saw them sneak by about 5 hours ago! PBN: Our trip into Samana, way down in the bay which took a good couple of hours was spent watching whales. Yep, about 1200 of them visit the bay for breeding. We saw lots of blows, and whales breaking the surface though some distance off. This was bettered by our departure from Samana whereby we were pooting along, as there wasn’t much wind, having lunch looking towards shore about 300m off, and a whale breaks the surface about 50m from the boat. Wow, it was huge! He/she finally went under Zenna and headed off. We guessed he had been following us for a while. What a day, you never know out here what is going to happen.