Still alive

                                                                         Oct 6 2014

Greetings,

          The longer I go without writing an update the more difficult it gets to do so. I get overwhelmed with trying to recap all we’ve been doing. So, as always, I’ll tell myself, as well as you, that I’ll try to be better at keeping up to date more often.

          At the moment, and for the last month and a half, we’re in Casa de Campo Marina, just east of La Romana, Dominican Republic. Most of the time in the marina has been project/work oriented.  But I’ll come back to that. Let me pick up where I left the last update.

          In early Aug we were in Puerto Rico headed west. When we got to Parguera just past Bahia fosforescente we found that the fact that it had been stormy meant it wasn’t the best time for diving because the visibility was way down, and we could anchor in the Bio-luminescent bay but the tour boat ran through there from about 1800-0100 and it was likely to be more aggravating than it would be worth. Plus we had good weather to move on.

 So we went to Bahia de Boqueron on the west end of Puerto Rico. It was a very calm, well protected, beautiful anchorage with a cute little town and a nice beach.  After a quick road trip up to Mayaguez and back, to pick up a Fedex delivery, we enjoyed a little exploring of the local bars and restaurants.

Then the weather said it was time to make the jump across the Mona Passage to the DR. First we went to Boca Chica. My brother was flying into Santo Domingo to come for a visit and Boca Chica was an easy place to hook up with him. We got to do some diving there while Johne took advantage of time at the dock to work on both Second Star and Kokomo Kat.

A few days after Darrin arrived we moved back east to Bayahibe and anchored with all the day-trip catamarans. We did some more diving there. By then Johne was well into installing our new R/O water maker and didn’t feel he could take time off to come with us. The diving was fun and it was great to have time with Darrin.

The day before Darrin was leaving a storm came through and the anchorage at Bayahibe got really rough. We were planning to come over to Casa de Campo soon anyway, and between having anchor-holding issues and needing to get Darrin ashore for his flight it just made sense to go head and come in.

Darrin left on Sunday Aug 24. Johne got the new water maker up and running that afternoon so now we can make about 50 gallons of water per hour of run time. This will cut the need to run the generator substantially.

Also, since we’ve been here, we’ve gotten our new solar panels up and charging. So now we’ve cut our generator time by more than half. This will make a huge difference in our fuel consumption which is great environmentally and financially.

Right now Kokomo Kat is hauled out for sail-drive maintenance. While she’s out they’re doing new bottom paint and she’s getting all new Garmin electronics. They are almost done with the work that has to happen out of the water and she should “splash” on Friday (fingers crossed).

After Sharon’s sea trails we’ll be moving west again. I’ll really, really try to update as we go and share our adventures through the Dominican Republic and on into Haiti and points west. Until then…