Fate or what

We have been talking about going to The Dominican Republic for Christmas, perhaps for six weeks, but it's just impossible to find flights at anything like a reasonable price. Shall we go before Christmas, or maybe wait till February, when our apartments free. We've been back to Dom Rep every year since 2005, after buying an apartment there in 2006. We are planning to retire there in a few years, well I don't know about retiring, as we're as poor as church mice, but we intend to live out our autumn years where the sun shines, and maybe do something to bring in a few pennies.

So back to our dilemma of before or after christmas, and what about our continued quest to learn to sail. We have checked out sailing courses in Dom Rep but try as we might our trawling through the internet for courses has turned up nothing in the Dominican Republic. The nearest courses are in the British Virgin Islands, which is not far from Dom Rep but it's not easy to get there, and not cheap. Now whilst surfing around we did turn up one interesting place in Dom Rep and that's a place called Luperon. This an inlet on the north coast, about an hours drive from where we have our apartment. Seems this is a favourite haunt of Caribbean cruisers, as a safe haven from hurricanes, and a stop over point. It sounds like a place we would like, and they also sell yachts there, so we will definitely pay a visit on our next holiday.

We finally decided to book our holiday for late November, for four weeks. Jackie then emailed a guy called Gill who runs the boat sales in Luperon, who she had an exchange of emails with a couple of months ago regarding maybe staying on a boat there. She decided to ask him if there was anybody he knew who could teach us to sail as we had drawn a blank on the internet. He came straight back to us saying he would ask around and maybe knew someone.

Next thing we have an email back saying he's had a word with a guy called Ray, who is English, and gave us his email address. Jackie mails Ray, and Ray mails us back to say he's an ex RYA instructor and yachtmaster, now 70 and living in Luperon and will be happy to help us get some sailing lessons. In fact he's taking part in a round Hispanola reggata the weeks we're there and will be glad to have us aboard to crew. We can't believe our luck, we get to go on holiday to Dom Rep and to go sailing with a RYA instructor, how cool is that, fate or what.