Three's

Yesterday afternoon we had a route planning session at the local bar in town. We met a sailor who had been around the world on his HR and was ready to call it quits. Sad to hear him talk of this but he was genuinely happy to be giving it up after 12 years of cruising the world. He is having his boat shipped back to Australia instead of sailing it there. That's a good long time to sail. I would be immensely happy to acheive that time and in no way will we be cruising the world. I will be happy just to hang out in the Islands for a few years. Nice guy, we wish him well.

The planning session went sort of like this, "When you leaving?" Wednesday sounds good. "OK, Wednesday it is. Beer?" Sure.

So Wednesday morning we leave for the DR. Simple as that. There is a little more wind and waves on Wed vs Thurs but Thursday and Friday shows little if any wind. Some wind is nice even if we are motorsailing. Hate to hear the sails banging all the way down there. We thought about continuing on to PR with the same window but we would have to motor the whole way in dead air and waves. That's a lot of motoring. When we jump the Mona I would like to do it from Samana. So off to Luperon we go tomorrow.

I was talking to the world sailor we met and I mentioned that when things break on a boat it happens in three's. He agreed. Pretty weird but true. Dude said it happened to him all the time in the 12 yrs he's been out here. So first we broke a block on the topping lift, then the head pump stopped working, and the third...
Deb's iPad went belly up. Our primary mode of navigation for the Bahamas has a serious problem. The screen looks like an old black and white TV with a horizontal hold problem. For the younger folks that means the screen went white and gray and is flickering. Very srcrewy. To say Deb was upset in an understatement. We still have the Raymarine chartplotter with Navionics and a handheld Garmin with the caribbean charts. We also have the NV paper charts of the whole area. We just have to navigate through one little stretch of the bahamas and we will be good to go. Somewhere either in the DR or PR Debra will get her tablet fixed of buy a new one.

We are also switching to a Bluetooth GPS for the tablets to eliminate any physical connection. Corrosion comes in fast. These tablets were not meant for this environment and even encased they will still corrode. With the Bluetooth GPS we can then use both the iPad and the Droid ready tablets for navigation.

Let's hope all this crap ends at three. We still have a long way to go but now we are leaving some of the remote areas and getting to places with goods and services. This will be a nice change from the bare bones Bahamas but I bet after after a few years of the Caribe we may long for the solitude of the Bahamas.

Cheers!
P

Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.