Jinxed!

Not sure if anyone was actually fooled by my April Fool's Day post yesterday. Our original intent was the exact opposite -- to leave the Dominican Republic that night (Thursday) and head to Mayaguana in the Bahamas. Well, we didn't leave and Kevin seems to think my post is the reason why.

The forecast for yesterday night was for 12-17 kts with 6-10 foot seas at a 12 second interval. The higher digit interval is important because the farther apart the waves are the more comfortable it is, so even with bigger seas than we usually like this seemed like it might be do-able. And although it rained most of the morning yesterday, we were still planning to leave as scheduled. So we spent most of the day preparing the boat for the two-day trip. Around noon we went up to the office, climbed the stairs to the third floor and took a look at the ocean. We didn't see any whitecaps, and the windspeed was under 15, so we still were thinking it was a decent weather window. We cleared out of immigration just after lunch, intending to get our despacho from the navy and clear out of customs later in the afternoon, closer to our departure time of 6pm.

We went back to the boat and continued our preparations. Specifically, I took off the sailcovers, started the log, and made two nights' worth of dinners and two days' worth of sandwiches (it is really no fun to cook on a rolling boat, so I always do what I can in advance). Meanwhile, Kevin re-adjusted the docklines, programmed the route into the chartplotter, double-checked the weather, did engine checks, and a bunch of other stuff to get us ready. Around 3pm I finally finished cooking and looked around for Kevin but he was nowhere to be found. I went outside and saw him on another dock, chatting with a couple decked out in foul-weather gear. I walked over to find out what was going on.

Turns out that the couple had left the marina earlier in the morning, and after several punishing hours of taking waves into the cockpit they came back. They said that the swells were closer together than 12 seconds and easily ten feet high, plus wind chop that would break periodically and soak them. It was so miserable they just decided to turn around. Well that settled it for us, we weren't going. Kevin had already been second-guessing the weather window, but we definitely weren't about to take ten foot swells/windchop on the beam for hours on end. So we went back to immigration and luckily the lady was nice about granting us an extension -- it's looking like we're going to be here for at least another week. Sigh. On the plus side, we found out we will be getting a tax refund this year, and there's a casino only a few feet from the dock, so...