A Nice Place to Wait for Weather

We have been here at Ocean World Marina in the Dominican Republic(DR) for over a week now. We are having some stainless work done and the seas are too high to move on. Getting any work done in the DR is a test of patience as there is always Mañana (tomorrow) to get a job done. I haven’t been too upset since there is a nice pool and restaurants here and our stay has been pleasant. However, the real treat is there is an adventure park that is part of this complex.

Dad got to take Emily to the adventure park for a full day while Kim did some varnish work. I guess this was payback for when Kim took Emily to Disney while I toiled on boat projects. In any event, we saw Love Birds, Parrots, and Toucans up close and personal. We actually swam in a big fish tank full of coral and tropical fish. It was really cool and Emily could touch the fin of one fish (it was a Permit Jack). There were dolphin, seal and bird shows too.

Emily even had the courage to volunteer during the bird show and bowled against one of the trained parrots. He won because he carried the ball in his mouth and knocked all the pins down. She did get three pins down on her turn and I was proud that she took it all as fun. She was OK being in front of all the people and her self confidence that was always good has been getting stronger.

We also saw tigers, sharks and sting rays up close. One tank had piranha fish that have big teeth and Emily learned they can eat people.

The marina here offers free car rides into Puerto Plata to the Supermercado for grocery shopping. I got to dust off my Spanish as we tried to figure out what was on the shelves. We got fresh papaya, bananas and a pineapple that were the juiciest and most flavorful that we have ever had. The language barrier did not detour Kim and we managed to load 7,500 pesos worth of food into our 5 canvas bags.

It looks like the winds and waves will be coming down by Wednesday of the coming week and we can make our move East towards Puerto Rico. We have to play the weather just right, since the Mona Passage between the DR and Puerto Rico has an earned reputation for being a rough passage. This leg will involve at least three separate overnight passages to avoid the roughest waves and keep the entire crew happy. We are still traveling with Bay Pelican and it’s nice to have another captain to review passage planning ideas.

Tom