Found: Beautiful Protected Calm Anchorage

We arrived in Luperon, Dominican Republic, on Wednesday morning after an overnight sail from Big Sand Cay in the T&C. The last two days in the T&C were very nice with the weather settling allowing us to do some great snorkeling and hiking in South Caicos and then moving on early in the morning to Big Sand Cay. The name does not lie. The beach is an easy 3 miles long with perfect sand, that runs out to the anchorage at a very steep angle. The water clarity is hard to the describe and the best I have ever seen. You could just see forever. From above each step lower in the water brought a slightly different color until the deep blue of the Turks passage. The kids raced up and down the steep beach into the water and enjoyed being crashed around by large breaking waves.

The crossing to Luperon brings closure to one of the more difficult legs of our journey so far, and it went out like a lamb. We had a nice sail which is unusual for the passage and a break from lots of motoring lately into the trades. There were several squalls on route requiring several adjustments reef adjustments to the sails. The seas were reasonable and the crew was comfortable. Rae Ann tried a new sea sickness medicine given to us from another boat, Bogus (Dennis and Renee, thank you), that worked very well. We have met so many great people lately, forming a real comraderie with people even if we only spoke to them on the radio. You realize that the cruising community is your only support network and everyone becomes quick to pitch in.

When we were arriving in Luperon there was a boat putting out a Mayday on the DR coast about 30 miles from us. There was no one to respond to this other than the cruising boats, unfortunately almost all of us seemed to be too far away for what the captain of the stricken vessel was describing as an imminent threat of losing his boat on the rocks (remember best speed is maybe 7 knots, so most of us were 4 hours away, which the captain of the struggling vessel would be too late). I do not know the fate and in fact a rescue may have been organized. It just highlights the point made in the previous paragraph.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com