Sailing To The Dominican Republic – The Thorny Path (Part 1)
Sailing To The Dominican Republic – Heading South
After sailing through Eleuthera and the Exumas in the Bahamas, it was time to start heading south. Our ultimate goal is to make it to Grenada for hurricane season, so we still have a ways to go to get there!
One giant leap on this journey was to sail to the Dominican Republic from the Bahamas. Finding a good ‘weather window’ is key for a safe and relaxing passage.
In this article, I’ll discuss the following:
- Our wait for the right weather
- The route we took to get to Dominican Republic
- How our passage was from the Bahamas to Dominican Republic, and
- Arrival and Clearing customs and immigration
The Wait For The Right Weather To Sail To The Dominican Republic
While sailing our way down the Exuma Chain, there was a particularly nasty weather system coming our way with winds forecasted to be in the 40’s. We decided to tuck into Emerald Bay Marina, about 10 nautical miles from Georgetown on Great Exuma Island.
Emerald Bay Marina is a well-protected marina, particularly for the strong west winds predicted. To enter Emerald Bay Marina, you go through a channel accessed from the Atlantic Ocean. While there was some minor swell in the marina, it was a great place to hide from strong winds out of the west.
Once the strong westerly winds subsided, we still had several days of ESE 20+ knot winds, the exact direction we were trying to head to get to Georgetown, the next stop on our list.
As we continued to wait for the winds to die down, we noticed a very calm weather window shaping up in front of a frontal system that would allow us to sail directly to Dominican Republic from Emerald Bay.
We logged the predicted weather each day, using PredictWind and the National Weather Service, two of our favorite weather apps/websites we heavily rely on, as well as referring to Chris Parker’s daily emails. The predicted weather stayed consistent and all of the weather models were in agreement. Two things we look for when planning a long passage.
To catch this weather window, it would mean that we would leave out of Emerald Bay and miss Georgetown altogether. Alternatively, we could sail down to Georgetown and wait for another weather window, whenever that may be. After waiting for 27 days in West Palm Beach to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, we decided to skip Georgetown and leave from Emerald Bay.
The Route – Which one to choose to get to the Dominican Republic
There are so many options to sail from the Bahamas to Dominican Republic. You can break it up into several days stopping in the outer Bahamian islands of Long Island, Rum Cay, Mayaguana, etc., and/or stop in Turks and Caicos (I’ll explain why this wasn’t a great option for us), or sail straight down to Dominican Republic, which is what we chose to do.
Both Scott and I have read Passages South: The Thornless Path to Windward by Bruce Van Sant. This is a great reference book for sailing south from Florida to South America with a lot of knowledge on the trade winds and currents along this path and crossing challenging sections such as the Mona Passage. Bruce offers several suggestions for how to sail this path in the most comfortable way possible.
One challenge you must face is the trade winds. Once you get south of 20° latitude, you start getting into the trade winds, a weather pattern of consistent and fairly strong easterly winds. We must sail east and southeast to get to Dominican Republic, which means sailing directly into the trade winds.
After studying the weather for several days, we had a large enough break in the steady trade winds due to a frontal system passing through that we could sail directly from Emerald Bay marina on Great Exuma Island all the way to Ocean World Marina near Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. This route would take us approximately 2 days and 20 hours without stops.
Note:
We opted to pass on stopping at Luperon, which is approximately 15 nautical miles to the west. Luperon is a great harbor town that several cruisers stop at along this path. Our thoughts at the time were to make it as far east as possible with the calm weather we had. In hindsight, we probably would have stopped in Luperon, just because we have heard so many wonderful things about the area from other cruisers.
A near three-day passage was the longest passage we have taken to date, with three consecutive overnight sails. In our planning, we marked several spots along the way (Long Island, Rum Cay, Acklins Island, and Mayaguana) that we could stop off at if the weather turned worse than predicted, or we needed to stop for other reasons. However, Turks and Caicos truly wasn’t a viable option for us. They have very strict rules about allowing dogs into the country. If we stopped in Turks and Caicos, we wouldn’t be able to get Mangaux to shore, and stopping would just prolong our trip.
Traveling with a dog adds its challenges to this lifestyle, especially a dog that won’t use the bathroom on the boat. ☹
Our Passage from Great Exuma Island, Bahamas to Ocean World Marina, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
We decided to leave on Monday afternoon, February 12, 2024, knowing that the conditions would be a bit rolly at the beginning of our passage, but were predicted to calm down as the night and next days came. If we waited until Tuesday to leave, the weather window would start to close on us at the tail end of the trip with the arrival of the next front, and we didn’t want to arrive in deteriorating conditions.
Overall, we had a wonderful transit along the planned route with weather conditions always matching up quite well with the predicted weather. Monday afternoon we had 3-4’ swells and 2-3’ waves with SSE winds around 15 knots. This died off as predicted with the swells and waves slowly diminishing to 1’ each. The winds also died off from 15 knots to 5 knots throughout the duration of the passage.
We did update the weather forecast information at least twice each day, using Starlink, which worked exceptionally well along the entire route. We admittedly motor sailed almost the entire trip due to the relatively low wind speeds. However, this is a trade-off that we are willing to make as we value comfort and safety in our travels a great deal.
The morning we arrived in Puerto Plata we were welcome by extremely calm conditions and a very simple entry into the Ocean World Marina.
Our Arrival to The Dominican Republic
Our arrival to the Ocean World Marina went exceptionally well. The weather made it quite easy to enter the marina basin and to moor the boat. Upon entry we were directed to the fuel dock in order to clear into the country. While we worked with the Dominican Navy, Customs and Immigration folks we were also permitted to fill our diesel tank, and walk Mangaux, which made the overall process extremely efficient.
Clearance into the country was a very straightforward and efficient process at the Ocean World Marina, including everyone we interacted with speaking good English.
Once we completed the entry requirements and fueling the boat, we were directed to our mooring location by the dockmaster. The people at Ocean World Marina are extremely friendly and helpful, they assisted us in departing the fuel dock and mooring at our assigned dock location for our stay.
We Made It To The Dominican Republic! Our Three-Day Journey
We felt a sense of accomplishment, and relief, after completing our three-day passage to Dominican Republic. It was great that the weather for our trip matched what was forecasted, and we didn’t need to divert from our planned route.
Arriving to a new country, and being greeted by helpful, friendly people and beautiful scenery makes all of the planning and preparations (including meal preparations) worthwhile.
Mangaux was very happy to see land as well! Prior to this passage, we had taken a 48-hour passage in the Gulf of Mexico, in which he held it the whole time. Before that, we were stuck on our boat at our marina in Mobile, AL for 48 hours due to flooding from a tropical system in our area, and he held it then too. I’m so happy that on this trip, not long after the 48-hour mark, Mangaux finally peed in the cockpit (a very easy clean up too by rinsing it down the drain in the cockpit). He is now enjoying the beautiful beaches here.
Continue following us on our journey as we sail from Puerto Plata to Samana, Dominican Republic, then across the mona passage and the west and south coast of Puerto Rico. Lastly, read about the last leg of our Thorny Path adventure sailing from Puerto Rico through the US Virgin Islands to St. Martin.
Live your dream,
