The whales came no closer to Celebration, and soon disappeared into the gray seascape that surrounded us, obscured by sheets of torrential rain. We had another visitor before nightfall, a frigate bird that landed boldly on the dodger right over the cockpit, apparently so exhausted that it no longer had any fear of humans. It stayed with us several hours before flying away into the stormy night.
George called us after midnight, talking so fast in his broken English that we could barely understand him. He had been motor sailing to maintain speed as he did not have a complete sail inventory on board and did not have a properly sized jib for these conditions. His engine had quit and he was working frantically to get it started again so he could keep up with us. He had lost sight of our stern light and wanted us to signal him with Frank’s bright searchlight. He had planned to maintain visual contact with us throughout the passage, as he had no means of navigation other than a compass and relied on Josephine’s satellite navigation fixes for his approximate position. I was beginning to realize that George was poorly prepared for the voyage he was attempting, and that he relied heavily on others to get him out of trouble. I went on deck and waved the light back and forth in the direction we thought he would be, and after a few minutes we saw his answering signal light and pinpointed him about 5 miles east of us.
The wind was still increasing, forcing us to put a double reef in the main and take down the jib. Frank started the engine to help maintain control, saying the reefed mainsail would help stabilize the rolling if we left it up. I was feeling the first symptoms of seasickness and was shivering from the cold. It was not supposed to be cold in the tropics, but here in the pouring rain and wind in the middle of the night, I felt as cold as I had ever been. I couldn’t imagine what George was going through, trying to get his engine running, working in lurching cabin of Winning Edge amid diesel fumes, all the while trying to stay on course under sail and maintain contact with us. It was all I could do just to hang onto the rail and stay in Celebration’s cockpit without puking over the side.
By 3:00 a.m. in the morning, Josephine’s latest fix put about 20 miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic. The rain had slacked off enough to permit us to see a faint glow of land lights to the south. The seas had not diminished, but instead had grown frightfully bigger, building to steep hills of black water that crested and broke in resounding crashes like surf hitting a reef.
George was evidently experiencing the same conditions when he called on the radio, screaming: “I am in ze big trouble! I can’t start my engine. I am going on ze rocks!”
But we knew he could not be any closer to land than we were. I tried to reassure him. “Look, George! Can’t you see the lights? With the binoculars, I can almost see ze beautiful girls of Puerto Plata!” I said, mocking his accent.
This only mad him mad. He screamed back that he was in deep trouble and this was “no time to make ze joke.” He wanted to know if we could come and get him – somehow get close enough to throw him a rope and tow him to the harbor.”
“What-a-ya, outta ya mind?’ Frank asked when he heard this. “We can’t get anywhere near him in seas like this. Both boats would be smashed to bits.”
Josephine and I argued that we had to do something to try and help him, but Frank said we were crazy. “There’s nothing we can do. Look around you.”
He was right. The seas had grown from frightening to terrifying proportions. I had heard of such waves, but never really believed the sea could get like this. Near-vertical walls of water surrounded us on all sides, until we were lifted to the peak of one and looked down into the yawning black troughs between them. We had to forget about getting to Puerto Plata and focus on survival. Somebody had to climb forward on the wave-washed deck and furl the mainsail to the boom after Frank hauled it down from the cockpit. Wearing a safety harness and tether, I crawled forward as tons of solid water swept the deck and tried to tear me loose from my death-grip on the boom. I wrestled the heavy sail into place and lashed it with a few turns of rope before heading back to the relative safety of the cockpit.
Frank kept the bow on a quartering angle to the breaking waves, using the engine to power up each cresting peak so we wouldn’t be broached and capsized. It was the same sensation I had often felt when quartering my kayak up the face of a roller in the surf zone, only this was a 42-foot, 15-ton yacht that was going almost straight up each time we climbed a wave face. If we encountered a wave much bigger, I feared the yacht would be pitch-poled backwards, end over end. It had happened to others, even on bigger vessels. I felt helpless in this type of boat. In my kayak I could maintain balance with my paddle, sticking a blade into the face of a breaker to prevent a capsize as the wave carried me with it. But on Celebration we had no recourse but to rely on the stabilizing effect of the heavy ballast keel beneath us.
Occasionally a breaker would crash over the foredeck in such as way as to send a wall of water into the cockpit. Frank and I would momentarily be up to our waist until Celebration’s buoyancy brought us out of the wave and the water was shed overboard through the scuppers. Frank said he had seen such waves while serving on board a Navy ship, and he estimated their average height at 30 feet.
The well-designed Tayana 42 rode out the fury of the waves though, and I was grateful to be weathering this storm in such a seaworthy vessel and not an old wooden boat like Elske or a smaller one like Winning Edge. What could George do in this with no engine? We had not heard any more calls from him and were too busy to try and call him. Frank was certain that the cheaply-built Hunter 27 would not survive this storm, but said that maybe George would be lucky enough to get washed up on the coast somewhere. I couldn’t help thinking the worst, that I would never see my friend again. I tried to imagine being out there in the kayak, and began to think that if I lived to walk on dry land again, I would never board a boat again. I would kiss the dock the minute I landed, and go as high into the mountains and as far from the sea as I could get.
It seemed that dawn would never come as we motored into the breakers each time expecting to encounter the wave that would do us in. When daylight did come, the seascape was even more frightening than it had been at night, as we were able to see the true proportions and fury of the waves. There was still no sign of George, and Josephine’s calls to Winning Edge on the VHF went unanswered. It was hard to imagine that we would not see the jovial, happy-go-lucky Frenchman again, but the reality of these conditions could not be denied.
Despite our motoring into the direction of the wind and sea, we had been carried to the south along our rhumbline to Puerto Plata by the storm, and a couple hours after daylight the waves diminished markedly and the skies began to clear. The mountain that looms over Puerto Plata harbor was clearly visible, and we found the marked channel leading into sheltered waters. As we motored into the safety of the harbor and left the open sea behind, we were shocked to see Winning Edge already anchored, her mast swinging like an inverted pendulum as the hull rocked violently in the surge of the partially exposed anchorage.
The dominating feature of Puerto Plata harbor is the towering green mountain that rises abruptly just inland from the city. The peak was shrouded in mist and clouds, even thought the rest of the sky had cleared and the rain had stopped. I knew from reading Jo’s guidebook that this lush, forest-cloaked mountain was Mt. Isabela de Torres, and that it reached a height of 2900 feet, which made it seem massive for a coastal peak. Lesser mountains and hills stretched away into the distance on each side of the main summit, all covered in carpets of green vegetation. After being at sea and among the desert islands of the Bahamas for weeks, the scent of all this greenery was overwhelming. I took deep breaths and stared at the mountain. Never had I seen such a beautiful sight, and never had I thought land could look so good. The horrors of the predawn hours were now only a memory, and I was close enough to shore that if I wanted to, I could swim to the beach.
The harbor itself was crowded and bustling with noisy activity. To the right of the anchor
age was a long commercial dock where an ancient-looking gray warship and a tired old freighter were moored. Cranes unloaded dozens of containers with the Tropicana fruit company logo from the freighter, and stacked them like toys on the concrete wharf. The warship, which appeared to be of War World II vintage, was obviously a hand-me-down from the U.S. Navy, and was now flying the red, white, and blue flag of the Dominican Republic.
The opposite side of the harbor was flanked by another long dock, lower to the water and lined with all sorts of rusty towboats, barges, commercial fishing vessels, and dilapidated wooden sailing vessels. The sounds of men working drifted across the harbor from this busy dock: hammers and chisels ringing against steel hulls, electric drills and grinders, diesel engines running, and instructions and orders barked in Spanish.
Another shorter concrete dock that adjoined this work area was reserved for foreign yachts, and a dozen or so were moored there Mediterranean-style, with their sterns facing the dock and anchors off the bow. In the no-man’s-land in the middle of the harbor, about 15 more yachts were anchored in the surge with Winning Edge. Everywhere, the smell of diesel was overpowering, and behind the harbor, in the direction of the city, could be heard the sounds of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, all seemingly blowing their horns at once. These sights, sounds, and smells were a sensory overload to all three of us after spending so much time in the tranquil Bahamas.
We circled among the anchored yachts looking for a sizable open space to drop Celebration’s anchor. A larger ketch-rigged vessel flying the Union Jack had apparently dragged anchor during the previous night’s storm and was now aground on the muddy, garbage-littered beach at the rear of the harbor. A motor-launch loaded with yelling Dominicans strained to pull the stranded yacht free while two Englishmen on the bow cursed and screamed in an attempt to coordinate the effort. We selected a spot near Winning Edge and put down two anchors off the bow to keep from ending up like the British yacht. I called George as soon as we were secure, and he stumbled up on deck, looking quite exhausted and suffering from sleep deprivation.
“My engine… it start again.” He explained when Frank asked how he had survived those monstrous waves and reached the harbor.
“I’m glad you made it, George. I thought I’d never see my one hundred dollars again,” I joked.
“You make ze very bad joke last night,” he reminded me. “ ‘George! I can see ze beautiful girls of Puerto Plata!’ And all this time I am in ze big sheeet with no engine. This was no time to make ze joke.”
After hearing George’s story, we all went below, exhausted and ready to sack out after our all-night ordeal. I fell into my bunk in the aft cabin, oblivious to the surge that made my bunk rise and fall two feet and tilt to each side at a sharp enough angle to roll me over. I wedged myself in between the bulkheads and conked-out within two minutes.
A mere half-hour later, I was awakened by a rapid-fire conversation in Spanish and looked out into the main cabin to see that our boat had been invaded by five customs and immigrations officers. Josephine conversed easily with them in their language while Frank watched with a blank stare, not comprehending a word. The high-school Spanish I had taken 10 years before seemed useless now, as the officers slurred their speech and spoke so fast I could hardly tell where one word ended and the next began.
I pulled on a T-shirt and joined them in the main cabin, thinking how strange it seemed to hear these black men, who could have passed for Bahamian islanders or even Mississippians, speaking this language. The officers made a perfunctory search of the yacht’s storage lockers, then wrote out receipts for our firearms, which we were required to surrender into their keeping until we cleared customs to leave. They left my bang stick, but took the Beretta pistol, my .22 rifle, and Frank’s stainless-steel 12-gauge pump. Josephine paid them $30.00 for our 30-day visas, and the officer in charge looked in Frank’s liquor cabinet and helped himself to a bottle of Scotch for his tip. With this taken care of, they left in their wooden skiff and we all went back to our bunks to sleep the day away.
Puerto Plata Harbor, Dominican Republic
George woke us up banging on the hull from his dinghy and shouting for me to come quickly: “The fellow on Morning Star is in ze big sheeet! I climbed out of my bunk, feeling like I could sleep 12 more hours. I looked at my watch. It was after 7:00 p.m. and the sky was dark. I didn’t know any yacht named Morning Star.
“Hurry! He’s dragging ze anchor and going to ze beach!” George screamed to prod me on.
I dressed and climbed into George’s dinghy. It was blowing at least 30 knots and the bay was churning with whitecaps. What a way to wake up after crawling out of a dry bunk. We got soaked as George rowed vigorously towards a green-hulled sloop about the size of his own Winning Edge. There was no time for introduction as the single-handing skipper greeted us at the stern of his boat and we ran forward to the bow to pull up the dragging anchor while he gunned the engine from the cockpit to give us some slack in the chain. When the anchor was brought on deck from the oil-polluted harbor, it was coated with oozing black sludge which George and I could not avoid getting all over our hands and clothes, as well as the pristine white decks and foresail of the pretty little sloop. But we saved the boat, and after a half-hour of frantic, back straining work, we managed to get two anchors securely set and left the grateful skipper of Morning Star to sleep the remainder of the night in peaceful security.
George and I cleaned the mud and oil sludge off of us back on Winning Edge, and at his insistence, I agreed to go ashore with him for a beer. We rowed to the yacht dock and tied up to a derelict wooden hulk, where we found a greasy ladder to climb up. I forgot all about my promise to kiss the ground the minute I set foot on land, the horrors of the previous night already fading in my memory. There was a tall chain-link fence around the entire port area, and to enter the city we had to go through a gate guarded by three armed soldiers. I wasn’t confident that I could remember enough Spanish to buy anything, or even find my way to a store, but George assured me that he had been to Mexico and that he spoke the language like a native.
George led the way like he knew where he was going as we followed the street leading from the port past the office of the comandante of the Navy and a public park. We passed the Brugal Rum factory at the corner of the first intersection we came to and turned down a narrow side street where businesses with hand-painted signs and locked wooden doors stood deserted. It was well past closing time, but quite a few people mingled about the streets, most turning to stare at us as we passed. In not so fluent broken Spanish mixed with French, George inquired as to where we might buy a cold cerveza. I quickly realized that his command of the language was scarcely better than mine when we found our way to a store that was little more than a sidewalk vending stand, where beer was sold out an open window. George didn’t understand numbers, and I had to negotiate the purchase of the two Cerveza Presidentes we ordered. We were to find out later that this was the most popular beer on the island, a product of the Dominican Republic that like Brugal Rum, was exported to many countries, including the United States.
The store was a hang-out of sorts, and I was surprised to see boys that couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13 buying and drinking beer alongside several men in their 20’s. Though we couldn’t understand what they were saying, it was clear that we were the subjects of their jokes, as they laughed and talked while we stood there drinking our beers. From somewhere beyond the store came the sound of loud music – a faced-paced merengue beat that reflected the happy and upbeat attitude of Latin culture. There was a sense of excitement in the air here that I had not experienced in the Bahamas, and I looked forward to returning the next day to spend more time exploring this intriguing city. But tonight, unable to carry on a conversation with our drinking buddies and still exhausted from the stormy passage from the Caicos, George and I headed back to the harbor.
When I awoke on Celebration, it was a bright and sunny morning and Josephine and Frank were sitting in the c
ockpit having coffee. I joined them, taken aback as I stepped on deck by the sight of Mt. Isabela de Torres, which seemed much closer and larger on this clear day. The peak was still shrouded in puffy white clouds, but on the lower slopes I could make out the crowns of palm trees thrusting out above a solid carpet of green forest canopy. The waterfront of the harbor was lined with palms as well, growing between run-down shanties and derelict automobiles and small boats. The noise was oppressive – the same sounds of men at work, cars and motorcycles, blasting horns, and yelling people that we had heard upon our arrival. When I commented on this, Frank and Jo said this was why they like Puerto Plata. It made them feel like they were back in New York.
“There’s work going on here,” Frank said. “I like that.”
Not me. Work was the kind of thing I was on this trip to get away from. I much preferred the sound of surf and gulls on the quiet cays of the Bahamas, but I was excited about the mountainous interior of the island, and the possibility that I might be able to do some jungle hiking.
One thing was for sure. I didn’t want to unload my kayak in this polluted harbor. There had been a recent oil spill, which explained the black sludge that coated Morning Star’s anchor and made such a mess of her decks when George and I brought it aboard. Already Celebration’s pristine white hull had an ugly film of black gunk at the waterline. It was just as well that I couldn’t launch here. When Josephine and Frank announced that they would probably stay in Puerto Plata for a couple of weeks, I began making plans to tour the interior.
But first, I wanted to explore the city of Puerto Plata. With Josephine’s knowledge of Spanish, getting around was no problem. We made our way to the central park and changed dollars for pesos. I was pleasantly surprised that my dwindling dollars here had about six times the buying power they would have back home. I would be able to enjoy my stay and make the best of the time spent waiting on Jo and Frank to decide to sail on.
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean Page 16
