THE MOANING PASSAGE.........................

HERE IS WHERE WE LEFT FROM................

We left in what looked like reasonable weather for the MONA PASSAGE which very quickly became a trip from hell..................... not in thirty-five years of sailing have I ever experienced anything like it............. A cross between a giant roller coaster ride and being thrown inside one of those concrete-mixer trucks.............. The miracle is that ARITA stayed in one piece while we slowly went to pieces................We braced ourselves with both hands in the cockpit and hung on as best we could......... Going below, even to use the head, was out of the question................For eighteen hours we motored into the pounding waves, tossed back and forth and running in four distinct directions................ The first part was the worst, as the bottom fell away first to sixty feet, then six hundred and then to six thousand, causing unbelievable turbulence and currents...........Now, have we moaned enough?.................. We heard later from other cruisers for whom the passage took sixty hours...........



AND HERE IS OUR ARRIVAL IN BOQUERON, PUERTO RICO..............

We managed to collapse totally exhausted for a few hours sleep, and then onto PONCE another forty miles further on, in order to clear Customs and Immigration.

It is a good thing that we had finished all our fresh food in SAONA while waiting for the weather to clear................... For after arriving in PONCE a very strange thing happened............. We contacted Customs & Immigration by phone as requested, and sat and waited for twenty four hours till they showed............... Their inspection was thorough and despite the fact that we no longer had fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs or meat they managed to find some UHT milk in the fridge in a sterilised carton.............You know the type........ The "Queen of Florida" said that it was UHt-sterilised, but it was declared 'contaminated' because it came from the DR........And so into a sterile bio-hazard bag went two empty Florida Publix brand vegetable cans, an empty wine bottle and paper towels and a UHT milk carton suitably interlaced with coffee grinds.........All of it taped tightly shut with US Bio-Hazard tape. They offered to dispose of it but we agreed to carry it out of the country upon our departure.................



AND THIS IS GREG on the YACHT "WHISPER".........

Greg was our next-door neighbour in the harbour at PONCE, who was not as fortunate as us............... When Customs and Immigration arrived he had on board six eggs and a pineapple from the DR......... This was duly removed and placed in a bio-hazard bag............. Despite his protests that he intended to eat them on board.....Nevertheless, an hour later a 4-tonne Bio-Hazmat truck arrived, having driven more than 60 mile from Mayaquez, complete with a white-clad 'Darth-Vader' outfitted driver, in the full regalia, who with gloved hands and mask, took the plastic bag containing six eggs and a pineapple and then took $150.00 from him before he could get clearance, at which point the budget-conscious Greg went completely BALLISTIC.....claiming the 'something' bureaucracy is the new form of terrorism......................



After getting our clearance, we shot off to WALMART in a taxi, for fresh fruit and vegetables and as we walked in the door I swear I heard the 'Queen of Florida' saying......."Oh, How I love WALMART"................ But would you believe it........... Right there in front of us, were these two trays of coconuts, clearly marked as having come from......................You guessed it.... THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC..........So how do we explain that one?........................ I wonder if somebody in C & I knows?............



Once in Puerto Rico's waters, we caught this nice 'horse-eyed' jack for the fridge.



Once we were allowed off the boat we could finally assess the damage done to the yacht crossing the MONA passage................ stainless steel rub rail bent back on the port side................. Letters torn off the bow on the starboard side and most of the paint coat missing from the front of the boat......... The paint coat we so laboriously applied back in Ft. Pierce a year ago.................... And on the good side we now know that ARITA is way stronger than we could have imagined..............about ourselves we are not so sure...................

AND HURRICANE SEASON IS NOW UPON US..............