February 6, 2019
We traveled from Turks and Caicos to The Dominican Republic yesterday. A beautiful 9 hour crossing with calm seas. If every crossing was that easy everyone would have a boat!
Each country we enter and leave gives us an opportunity to visit with customs and immigration. The Bahamas was easy. Visit the dockside office at Bimini, fill out the appropriate paperwork, pay $300 for a cruising permit (that includes a fishing permit for the boat) and you’re good for six months. When we left the country we turned in our paperwork at our last marina stop and we’re done. Last winter we mailed the paperwork back to them when we reached the US mainland with no problem.
Turks and Caicos seems to make it up as they go. We checked in at Turtle Cove Marina. Again, fill out the paperwork, pay $50 and you’re good for seven days. If you want to stay longer than that it costs $300 for a cruising permit but we didn’t think we would stay more than a week. When we left we checked out at South Caicos where they seemed surprised that we had moved around during the week from the original marina. Really? It’s a boat. It moves. That’s the point of having a boat. Anyway we paid our exit fee of $50 and had 24 hours to vacate the country. So we overnighted at Sand Cay and were on our way bright and early the next day.
Dominican Republic is a different animal. When we arrived at the marina the dock guys helped tie off the boat and then told us the procedures. We were to wait on the boat for customs and immigration to come to us. Sure enough, within 30 minutes four guys were at our boat. They came onboard and we filled out the necessary paperwork. They did a cursory inspection of the boat, petted Isabella, asked about firearms (no) and then Gary accompanied them back to the marina office where he paid $100 ($75 for the boat and $12.50 per person) and we’re good until we move to the next marina. Each move within DR requires a despacho which will be asked for at the next stop. When we check out of the country we will be boarded with drug sniffing dogs because we’re traveling to Puerto Rico and the US had made that a requirement for anyone coming from DR. I’m sure Isabella is really going to enjoy that!
A bit about Turks and Caicos. We had been there before about 10 years ago and rented a beach house on Providenciales so we were somewhat familiar with the area. The people are very friendly, English is the language and they use US currency. That makes it very easy to get around. We found that they are not necessarily a cruiser friendly country tho. There are only a handful of marinas. and most of the anchorages are not well protected. We spent the first two nights at Turtle Cove Marina and then moved to Sopadilla Bay on the south side looking for some good diving/snorkeling. Unfortunately the anchorage was very rolly and the water was cloudy. We were out of there the next morning. We then happened upon a beautiful anchorage at a very small cay called Six Hills Cay. There was probably enough room for 5-6 boats but we were the only ones there. The water was pristine and we had a very nice snorkeling area about 100 yards from the boat. A little slice of heaven.
From there we moved to South Caicos to check out with a very rolly overnight in the harbor and on to Sand Cay for another beautiful anchorage. We did manage to see a green flash at sunset so maybe that made up for the rolly movement of the boat…uh no. At Sand Cay we anchored within 100 yards of the beach and as the wind and therefore the boat turned we ended up even closer. It was a little intimidating to look at but having snorkeled earlier in the day to the beach we knew that the water was deep to within 10 feet of the beach. Even with confidence in our anchoring skills Gary didn’t sleep very deeply that night.
So now we’re at Oceanworld in the DR once again waiting for the weather to cooperate. It’s kind of a catch 22. The weather is more favorable in the summer for cruising but our insurance says we can’t be here because of hurricane season. So we travel in the winter months when weather is more volatile. Oh well.