We are in the whirlwind of getting our boat ready for our next leg of the journey, Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. Ourselves, and about eight other boats, are in the Luperon harbour waiting for the next weather window to open itself up to us and safely and calmly bring us to our next destination. Many had hopes of leaving this Friday but it’s not looking good after all. We are estimating that we will have to wait at least another week until something decent comes to us. I keep reminding myself, and others, that things could be worse than having an extra week in the Dominican Republic.
   We have heard of two main ways to make it to P.R. and have yet to decide between the two. The first route is to follow Van Sant‘s recommendations and hug the shore line all the way to Samana and then jump across the Mona passage. The other option is from Luperon sail out north east, way out, and then tack back towards Puerto Rico making for a 3-4 day without touching land. Both options seem viable and have their pros and cons, such as hugging the shore line that closely on a night sail is a little scary with all the rocks and shifting currents, but then again being way out without land to touch in case of emergency also leaves you in a pickle. Either way we have a decision to make.
   We have a friend on the boat with us, who is here to help us with the crossing to Puerto Rico. It is nice to have an extra set of hands for all the prep work Eben is doing, such as lugging all the diesel and water to fill the tanks (all those jobs I can now opt out of helping with) but also for the sailing shifts, since my hands are “baby full”. Kurtis is no novice to sailing, or to our boat, since he was the same friend that helped us sail her from Miami to Bahamas.
   Today is water and fuel, yesterday was food. I sent the guys to Santiago for some provisioning. The grocery list wasn’t too long or complicated, as we are not provisioning apocalypse style, just food for a week at sea. The trip should not take that long but better to have more than not enough. We have also learned through past trips what types of foods we like eating while sailing, and what is just a waste of money. We still have canned string beans from our first provisioning trip, who were we kidding we would never eat those while underway, or at anchor for that matter. Admittedly our menu while sailing is not the healthiest, with cupboards full of Mac and Cheese and ramen, but we like snacky foods that are quick and easy to make. With three that get somewhat seasick, and no one wanting to spend extended amounts of time down below while underway, we can deal with “fast food” for short jaunts. Among other supplies we also got pesto for pasta, sausages, tons of baby food, chips, crackers, candy, chicken, etc. I have a few meals planned out and the rest will be whatever the majority feels like while sailing.

   When they returned home from their shopping mission with the massive amounts of food, we had to figure out where it would all go. This is when the boat got cleaner. Eben’s obsessiveness sort of took over and he decided to empty all of our cupboards and reorganize our food storage. This meant that putting groceries away went from taking half an hour to somewhere around three hours. But I’ve got to give it to him, I have never seen our pantry so organized. I know that with this reorganization there will be more than a few times where I will be asking “hey where did this end up?” but we’ll get used to it. It also gave us the opportunity to purge some of those unused food items from past provisioning trips and other junk that was taking up storage space and have come to see are not of use for us. We were happy to get the extra space and some Dominicans were happy to take home the extras that were unwanted to us. It was win win.

Our groceries
Sushi fixings, we better catch some fish
All of us will appreciate him  having a few extra of these
Excessive amounts of baby snacks, but she loves these things
Mac and Cheese for everyone
A very nicely organized pantry, thanks to Eben