In the Dominican Republic!   11/05/2022

Got here, after a long trip. Ended up heading south around Puerto Rico, because the wind was forecast to be better than on the north coast. Even still, it was relatively slow-going. I’d hoped for a little over 36 hours and it ended up being a journey of almost 48 hours. 

With the wind light and variable it was an easy trip from a sailing point of view. One thing that surprised me was the emptiness of the sea. On Sunday night a cargo ship passed across my stern, about 3 or 4 miles off. That was it – until I arrived on early Tuesday afternoon I passed no other ship. The last section of the voyage involved sailing up and across the Mona Passage, which separates the Dominican Republic from Puerto Rico. It’s wide, a good 70 land miles across, but is regarded as one of the most difficult stretches of water in the Caribbean because there’s a deep trench across it, with the depth going from 300-400 metres to 4,000 metres. It’s also an earthquake zone. Rather amusing that my experience of it was light wind and fairly gentle waves. No difficulty at all – entering it after dark on Monday evening, all I had to do was make sure that I didn’t run aground on Mona Island, which is slap bang in the centre of it.

I got into Cap Cana Marina, just south of Punta Cana, just before 2pm on Tuesday the 10th. The marina offers assistance with the checking in process – vital I think, given that you deal with representatives of seven different arms of the state! For a fee, they bring these people all together, as well as dealing with such delights as the “small gifts” that a few of them require. I took the view that trying to deal with these people alone would be a nightmare – and probably more expensive. Because I radioed the marina from a few miles out, they arrived very promptly, less than half an hour after I’d tied up. 

And yes, seven people, who all came on the boat at the same time. Representatives of Immigration, Customs, Intelligence, Navy, Health, Agriculture… Only two of them spoke English. But they were all very friendly and polite – constantly addressing me as “Capitan” – and were impressed that I’d sailed alone from the British Virgin Islands. And then of course the incredulity when they discovered that I’d sailed alone from England. (This really has become my trump card – it commands respect, which is exactly what you want when dealing with petty officials anywhere! Sometimes the transformation is incredible: from a stony face to warm smiles in seconds!). Three of them wanted to search the boat; they were very proper, saying that I should go below first. It was a very cursory check. Paying the marina does it – if you were abused, the marina would scream like hell, and would be well connected enough to get people fired. So it just ends up being a bureaucratic exercise… They asked me to open one locker and I pulled out a bottle of French cognac, one of them lifted the centre panel of the table and there were several bottles of wine underneath – there was laughter and admiring words – no attempt to say that I was bringing more alcohol into the country than permitted. So it all worked absolutely fine. I saw them off with smiles and thanks. All’s well that ends well! 

The marina itself is wonderful. It’s part of a huge estate of villas and apartments, all set around arms of the water – it could easily be an upmarket resort on the coast of Spain or the Algarve. It’s the most first world place I’ve been in the Caribbean! Wonderfully maintained, beautiful gardens and a private beach, or rather several beaches, two huge swimming pools. All of which I’m free to use as an occupant of the marina. So it’s a pleasant interlude, even though I wouldn’t want to spend too long here.

Successfully took an Uber 12 miles to the centre of Punta Cana today (for less than $10 – good old Uber, standard taxis want $40!). It looks very much like America – a succession of shopping malls, everything built around the motor car. But good shops, a large phone store where I got an (astonishingly cheap) local SIM card (5GB of data for $2.50 or £2.00). And a large, very well stocked supermarket, where I bought as much as I could stagger out with!

So my experience of the Dominican Republic so far has been pretty much the resort tourist’s view.  But there must be a very different side to the place – it is not a rich country: in fact it is one of the poorer Caribbean countries and a lot of its citizens work menial jobs in the other islands. The average monthly wage is under $400. As I sail back down the east coast and head westwards along the south coast, I should see more of the “real” country. I intend to spend several days in and around the capital, Santo Domingo (which is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Americas, founded by the Spanish in 1496), and might even go inland to the mountains for a couple of days. 

Hopefully what the country will offer is something different. It’s so much bigger than most of the other islands, almost 20,000 square miles with a population of more than 10 million. Until now, the biggest have been the two French islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe, both roughly 400,000 people. Racially, the population is very different too – black people account for only 16% of the total, with 70% being mestizo/indio or mulatto. The Dominican Republic is about 65% of the island of Hispaniola, sharing it with Haiti – a country which in effect is off-limits to sailors. Haiti is a basket case – chronic political instability, ravaged by natural disasters, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere – and notorious for violence. Just not the sort of place to venture to on a yacht: when you don’t understand the local dynamics, you’d be a sitting duck.