Luperon, Dominican Republic

Wednesday night's post:
We did a little more exploring today, walked over to the all-inclusive resort to check out the beach. Getting there was interesting; we'd been told that if you try to get to the beach via the resort they turn you away if you aren't wearing a wristband. So we went the back way instead and wound up walking along a cow path (the cows graze within sight of the beach -- isn't that funny?) We walked along the beach to the resort part and it looked like your typical resort - banana boat riding the waves, deck chairs, palappa umbrellas, etc. Rather than risk getting caught checking out the hotel we just turned around and went back the way we came. We stopped at a tourism office and signed up to do a tour of Santo Domingo tomorrow, then we hung out briefly at the marina bar before heading back to the boat. Jim and Amanda from "Adventure Bound" came over for dinner, and we had some pizza, salad, and delicious brownies that Amanda had made.

Thursday night's post:
One of our worst nightmares happened today. Our anchor dragged while we were not on the boat. Let me back up a little: when we first got here, we set our anchor but felt we were too close to several other boats. So we picked it up and re-set it in a different spot, and this is how we met Adventure Bound in the first place because just after we dropped it Jim and Amanda came by in their dinghy and warned us that the area we were in held about as well as teflon. When we backed down on it, we seemed to hold pretty well so we decided to keep an eye on it and maybe back down on it again after it had had time to settle some more. But complacency set in and since we were still exactly where we were supposed to be after three days, we thought the boat was fine. So we got up at 5am on Thursday and went on the all-day Santo Domingo tour (I will have to save that for a different post). We were gone until 7pm and as the bus returned to Luperon we could see from the trees swaying that the wind had picked up considerably. We headed back to the boat and my heart just about stopped when we realized that the boat wasn't where we'd left it. So we knew we had dragged and immediately I started praying that we hadn't hit any other boats. Just as we were tying our dinghy to the boat, Jim came by and told us the story. The wind had picked up to 25 knots and by noon it was obvious that we were moving backwards. Miraculously we managed to miss every other boat, but it was clear to Jim that we were heading towards a pretty shallow spot and would end up aground in the mangroves. So he and Amanda jumped aboard and started our engines and tried to re-set our anchor. Fortunately Jim was familiar with catamarans so he had no trouble with the helm controls, but I just felt awful when we found out that poor Amanda had to haul up our anchor and chain BY HAND because we stupidly left the windlass breaker in the off position and because the boat was locked they had no way to turn it on. It is a tough job for Kevin to pull up the chain by hand even in light winds, but here she was hauling it up in 25 knots! Plus -- it didn't set the first time (the anchor got fouled in some junk on the bottom) so she actually hauled all that chain and the 44lb delta up TWICE. And this is not a sand bottom; it is some of the foulest muck we've seen not to mention that we have doubts about the sanitation level of the water. After hauling it up the second time they decided to put us on an empty mooring ball in the harbor. At this point Roger from another boat "Oma and Opa" had dinghied by and was able to help them get Solstice secured on the mooring. We are just so grateful. Not even sure how to begin to thank them, as they basically saved our house and our cruise.