Shaggies bar, Luperon

Shaggies bar is in the centre of Luperon on a street littered with potholes and many dominican style shops and workshops. The street looks like it has been abandoned many years ago but in actual fact it's part of the thriving heart of Luperon. Halfway down the street is Shaggies bar, it's a yard with a cana roofed affair behind a small wall with a sort of couple of sheds nailed on the back, one of which is the banos, the other the kitchen/bar. The place is packed, that is all 30 odd chairs are filled with Ex pat faces, all yachties we suspect from the bay. I've brought my guitar, but not too sure what the crack is, we find a couple of plastic chairs and order a cerveza. Next thing we've been spotted by Jeff and Lucy from last night at the yacht club and they join us. Jeff has his own bottle of premium rum and looks determined to get drunk. He's had a bad day as he's just discovered that his yacht has been vandalised, all his lines have been cut through whilst he's been away in Las Vegas. He's in no mood to play music and in the mood for getting drunk. We move tables which proves to be a mistake as we're now in the vicinity of the loudest mouth in Luperon. Lana has her four kids here and it's her birthday, which maybe made it worse, but the frequency of this voice behind me is sharp enough to compete with lightning and the tales she's telling sound more than chilling, this a woman not to be crossed. 'You want cake' she screams at the gathering and I shudder as the decibels rattle my eardrums.
We order the special meal, which is meatloaf and mash potato and watch the PA and a drum kit being set up in the yard. Meanwhile Jeff is proving to be an unwelcome dinner guest, but we're too polite to say anything. Ray and Barry arrive and sit with us which relieves the tension but I'm now of the opinion that Jeff is not my kind of friend, he's loud and just a bit obnoxious, due no doubt to the intake of rum.
Once the drums and PA are set up the stage is set, and there's a guy called Bill whose restringing an electric guitar so it looks like this a serious style jam session, how wrong I was.
There's a guy with a saxaphone, a drummer, Bill and me. Bill noodles about on a very out of tune guitar and I decide to plug in and join them. Turns out that Bill is not at all competent but the sax player and drummer are fine and I take the mic and do a rendition of Stormy Monday. This is sounding really promising and even though Bill can't quite follow us, between me the drummer and sax player it's going well, and by the big finish we get an enthusiastic round of applause. We tackle another couple of tunes before Jeff decides to join us on Bills' out of tune guitar. From this point the session goes slowly downhill until I leave the stage for a beer and a cigarette as Jeff has now taken over playing some durgey blues.
When the drummer and sax player get sick of this and leave the stage I jump in to give a rendering of my new song "Seadogs in old Luperon". I remember 95% of it but break a D string just before the end, but it goes down well.
Now Jeff is back up with his wife Lucy on flute playing music to cut your throat to and at this point Barry says he's leaving as he can't stand anymore. Barry goes up 100 points in my estimation and I pay our bill and me and Jackie sneak out about twenty minutes later, although many of the other patrons have also left by now. I get compliments from Shaggies owner and a couple of others who ask if I'll be back even though I only did a few tunes. It seems they're starved of people who have got some semblance of talent, so it would be nice to go back but perhaps without bill and Jeff who muscled in but didn't bring anything to the table except ego.
We get back to the yacht club at about 9.30 to find the place in absolute darkness and not a soul around. We find a light switch by the bar and sit down with a bottle of rum and play a few games of backgammon before turning in for the night.
When we wake at dawn the club is still deserted, and there's no water to shower so we go for a swim in the pool and watch the sunrise. We pack and leave at 8 with still no trace of any staff and go for breakfast at the top deck in Luperon. At 10am we're back at Puerto Blanco waiting for our friends Suzy and Martin who are joining us to sail again today with captain Ray and Barry.

cross that one off the list

Continued by First Mate...
We pick up a scruffy guy with a bag and a pretty Dominican girl who look like they need a lift into town. What a small world, the drums turn out to be his, tricky to keep on his boat and ferry backwards and forwards. Geoff (or another Jeff) will be playing at Shaggies on Wednesday night and takes us on a tour of Luperon pointing out various places to eat which are all closed. He takes us past Shaggies before we drop him off near a herd of moto-conchos. There's a guy roasting most of a pig on a bar-be-que and later we regret not picking up a bag of this delicious looking pork. We stop to buy cigarettes and Colin points out a sheep in a shop doorway just watching the world go buy or maybe it's just waiting for the shops to open. Our search for breakfast in Luperon proves futile so we head back to the Marina to wait for the staff, a meagre toastie sandwich and much-needed coffee. Ray turns up and has a list of minor repairs he hopes Colin can help him with and, after pumping up the leaky dingy we head out to Odyssey.
The boys bond over marine electrics and auto-pilots whilst I sit on the upper deck enjoying the tranquil scene and pondering on which boat to buy. Trying to make myself useful, I haul up a bucket of sea water to wash the decks down but only manage to wipe around the hatches and clean up a little. Eventually Colin and Ray have managed to fix the light on the compass but other things need parts or modifications so we motor back to the Marina for a beer and some lunch. Later we wander around to look at a boat which had sunk. The new owner is trying to raise it from the deep, watched by other yachties who all have opinions on the best way to do it. I notice the boat is one that is on my list of possible boats to buy - cross that one off then! What a shame, it is a lovely classic yacht with a teak deck that's going to need some major refitting. We pick our way back along the rickety wooden walkway, stepping over soaked foam seating and other bits of the interior of the sunken yacht. Arrangements made to meet Ray and Barry at Shaggies later we set off in our hire car followed by our Captain and his crew on an orange scooter (which could belong to a past girlfriend of Ray's but that's another story).
I'll leave the story of Shaggies to my skipper, suffice to say it was hectic, chaotic and loud with some interesting looking folk - just what I'd expected but more so. Next day Ray thinks he may have lost his phone when Barry ditched the scooter and tipped him into a bush. Later we find it on the boat with 43 missed calls from his 26 year old girlfriend.

Luperon Yacht club

Tuesday Dec 1st, we arrive back in Luperon to go sailing again at Captain Rays' unique sailing escuela, and we're going to be here for three days so we've decided to seek out some accommodation instead of staying on Rays yacht. Jackie has googled a couple of possible small hotels in Luperon, but after a quick reccy we head for the Luperon yacht club on the off chance of getting a room there. When we arrive the car park is full and we find a full scale wedding reception underway. They have rooms at $50 a night for two, the room we can have has a toilet and shower, aircon, two single beds and a full drum kit!
We'll move the drum kit, she says and we accept the room. The yacht club is a two tier round cana roofed building that overlooks the wide expanse of Luperon bay. The party is underway downstairs where a live salsa band is setting up, whilst we opt for a cold Pesidente on the top terrace. This is when we meet with Jeff and Lucy, he's English and she's an American, they've just got back from Las Vegas where they went to get married. We and this couple are the only non party goers there so of course we fall into conversation and for the next couple of hours enjoy the overspill of the frivolities downstairs as well as tales from Jeff and Lucy of sailing exploits and other less nautical things. Over the next couple of days we'll hear more about this odd couple, she seems a gentle soul whilst Jeff is quite the opposite, perhaps to the extent of crass, but maybe it's the aftermath of their own celebrations and a little too much vitamin R.
We've come to Luperon, midweek to go to Shaggies bar where there's a sort of open mic, jam session on Wednesday and I'm going to go and play a few tunes and meet some of the "local" musos, who are all expat yachties. Jeff, it turns out is one of these, and his wife, Lucy, also plays flute, they'll be there tomorrow.
At about 10pm, with the party now running down and Jeff and Lucy gone we go off to our room. The aircon isn't working and the Luperon night air hangs heavy, the fan just about moves the heat around but doesn't cool us. The lights are out in Luperon but the yacht club has it's own generator, unfortunately the generator is situated on the roof directly over our room. Fortunately we have consumed the required amount of rum to send us both soundly off to sleep, eventually.
We wake before dawn, the yacht club is deserted and Jackie takes an early morning dip in the infinity pool as the sun inches into a clear blue sky, and a giant full moon, all shimmering silver dips below the opposite hill. The choice of a room at the yacht club may have lots of faults in the fixtures and fittings dept but we can't fault the dawn, this is worth the $50, well maybe $25. which is what it costs in the end.
Today we're meeting Ray and are going to help him fix some things on his boat, we've arranged to meet at 9am at puerto blanca marina, and as there's no breakfast at the yacht club we head on down there at about eight to try and find a coffee and a bite to eat.

Sailing with Captain Ray.

19 53.60N 70 57.0W
We're in Luperon at the Puerta Blanca so called "Marina", it's 9.30am and we're half an hour early, so we've ordered breakfast and are waiting for Ray to arrive to take us on a weekend sail down to El Castillo. Ray arrives with his friend Barry at about 10, and over coffee we get the low down on our itinary. Plans have changed, since we spoke a few days ago, because Ray tells us, that to leave Luperon he would need a despachio, which basically is a piece of paper from the harbour master to say we are not new arrivals to the country. Without this we can't dock in El Castillo so Ray suggests we go for a day sail and return to Luperon Bay for the night.
Ray then tells us that although he bought his boat, a 36ft contessa, three years ago he has only sailed it for one day and that was yesterday when he and Barry took it out to see if everything still worked. Still he seems confident that every things fine and so we head off to the jetty to climb aboard the dingy, although first Ray has to blow up the dingy as it's got a slow leak that he's tried to fix but so far he's failed to find it. Well I know what he means little leaks can be a bother, so we brush this off as an everyday hazard with dingies. Hold on, says Ray as he goes to start the out board it may shoot off at high speed as he has to start it at full throttle.The engine kicks into life and in a cloud of smoke we leave the jetty and skip across the calm waters of Luperon bay to find "The Odyssey" waiting serenely at anchor for us. On board we find ourselves on a blokes boat, it's a bit of a mess to tell the truth and badly needs a womans touch, and a good bit of spit and polish. Anyway we're hardly going to be below so what the heck, we're here to learn to sail, and what we can see, and understand the bits that make the boat go are all there and Ray exudes an air of confidence that make us relaxed and ready to and learn to sail.
Ray shows us where the life jackets are, although we never put them on I'm reminded now, and showed us the toilet, which for some bizarre reason they call Head, and the rest of the downstairs stuff.
Once underway, Ray turns on his hand held GPS and gets out the chart. His chart for Luperon bay is an A4 copy given to him by a friend in Luperon which, although the course is clearly marked, it's relation to the shore is a little unclear to me. However there are, what they call waypoints, which are marked on a map of the sea and correspond to degrees of longitude and latitude. North to south lines go one way and the others go around the circumference, listen to me with me long words, they both represent 360 degees of a circle, and I remember being taught about that in school 50 years ago, and now I get to use it. A GPS can pinpoint where you are at sea to within a yard. So looking at the readout on his GPS Ray is confident that we're on course and we putter out towards the mouth of the Bay, and out to sea. The waypoints, scribbled in biro on the "chart" proved to be fine. In my RYA dayskipper manual Ive read up on the international rules of the bouying systems,for harbors, and expected the same, or if not a little like it here. But when you leave Luperon there are no bouys. So these waypoints are crucial to the sailors, especially leaving and entering harbour. Ray has put Barry on the tiller, and Barry is not the quickest of wits, and once or twice on the way out we had Ray chastising Barry for his heading skills, and his confusion in picking out transits, or landmarks as your landlubber would call them. Besides the GPS Ray has a bit of kit made by "Garmin" which I recognize from our Largs start yachting course. It tells you your depth and speed, unfortunately, this one is displaying no digits where it says speed, Ray has still to figure out how make that work, but he can get that from the GPS if he needs to. Cool, and those other three instruments that don't seem to be moving, oh that's the wind speed, but it's broken, the wind direction, is also not working plus another dial that stayed static. This made up the electronics of the Odyssey, although we did have a VHF radio that now and then would crackle into life, but only when someone in Luperon bay was organizing another sailors party so we paid it no attention. The seas off the North coast of DR are often rough but today is just a pleasent 3 to 4ft swell and a good stiff inshore breeze. Lets go sailing.

Encounters of the Luperon kind

We're holed up in our apartment just east of caberete on the North coast of Dom. Republica. We arrived late Sat, and after a get over it day on Sunday we decided last night, over a couple of margaritas that today would be a good day to visit Luperon. Like I said in the previous entry, we are hoping to connect with a guy called Ray whose offered to give us some lessons whilst we're out here on holiday for the next month.
Being from the Uk were about 4 hours ahead of the time here so we're always up very early, this morning we were up at about 4.30am. We figured it would take about two hours to drive to Luperon so we watched the dawn come up over our beautiful beach and after breakfast set off at about 8am.
We had a map, courtesy of the National geographic society, that we were hoping was going to guide us there, but by the time we left Puerta Plata we were starting to realise that this map wasn't exactly helpful. The main problem is that in Dom Rep you very rarely get signs that tell you where your going so at best it's aguess that your on the right road. Number two problem is that towns that appear on the map are not on the road that we're taking, and towns that are signed are'nt on our map. Anyway we found the Luperon turning and eventually Luperon itself. A quick enquiry as to where the Marina was, and we're told straight on. But staight on takes us 20 miles out of our way. We turned round and after backtracking to Luperon we eventually pull into the Luperon yacht club only to find out that it's open everyday except Monday. Today is Monday, doh.
The yacht club sounds very grand and although it's got a couple of infinity pools the size of a saucer I think it's seen better days, maybe when it's humming it's a different vibe but today it looked a little forlorn, and abandoned. We take one of the myriad of tracks to find ourselves at a keyside bar. At least we've found some water and some boats and best of all a bar where we can buy a cold cerveza. This place is also very quiet but there's someone to serve us a beer and that's enough. We ask about Gill, but recieve blank responses, we need to find Gill, who sells the boats to find Ray whose going to maybe take us sailing.
We run into a German lady in her mid 60s' who speaks English and knows Gill, but doesn't know how we get in touch with him even though she's had her boat on his books on and off for some time. She's been here for four years after sailing from Germany. She can't live on land she says, too many problems, and prefers to stay anchored here in Luperon bay. She gives us all sorts of negatives about buying boats here or even sailing here, it's all too difficult, but we take this with a pinch of briney, it's not what we want to hear and go off looking for Gill. After abortive sorties around the myriad of tracks we're back at the bar and run into a guy who says follow me I'm going to pass by Gills house. About a mile from the "marina/bar" we finally track down Gill, Luperon yacht sales man.
Gill lives in a building that is based around a container that he put on this piece of land some years back. It's hard to spot the container now but a part of it is still his office. The other 2/3rds has been converted to bedrooms. He's a conveinial grey haired, but wirery Canadian who seems easy to talk to. He says he'll call Ray who may come around, which he does a few minutes later. Rays wearing shades and reminds me of my friend Tony, who went of to live in Thiland. He's seventy but seems full of beans and is obviously enjoying his expat, ex-deceased wife life style in the wild west type of town that is Luperon. Ray is a Newcastle man and still has the jordy lilt to his tonuge, I feel very easy in his company' but I'm not sure if he's really a proper sailor at this point or just some one with a boat eager to make a few bob.
He takes us off to meet with a man he's going to buy a telly off, the telly is on a boat in the bay and we drive off to meet Jerome. Jerome has a 38ft boat moored out in the bay, and we meet him on the ramshakle pier just on the edge of town. How we missed this bit of Luperon I don't know, but soon were in a dingy bobbing out to Geromes boat. My boats for sale, he says , what you looking for. That's exactly what the German lady said. Everybody here seems is stuck here trying to sell their boat. Anyway we get on board Jeromes boat, have a beer and he demos his TV to Ray.
Afterwards we motor back to the keyside in the punt and Jerome takes Rays car, which he's hired for a few hours to go pick somebody up from the airport. We chat to Ray about sailing and got into town to conclude our intro in a humble small cafe that Ray recommends. Here we here a little more of Rays adventures at sea, that are very entertaining, and give me more cofidence that we may just be able to learn a little more about the dark art of reefing and rigging, especially on the North coast of Dom. Rep.
He insists we come and visit his dominican domain, where lemon trees and Mango grow in his Garden. But the house is a bit of a dissapointment, a little spartan, and a lot unkempt. The garden is also a wasteland of scrub stretching for all but 10 yards. But to give the man his dues it did have mango and lemon trees in it, I think.
We've taken Rays number and have said we're up for a voyage round the headland where we'll stop for the night before coming back to Luperon. There's a nice little fish resteraunt he knows in El castillo which sounds good to me, we'll stay overnight and sailback the next day. We can't get a price out of him but it will be less than Sunsail in the BVI, he says. I thinke he's a bit embarassed about money so we don't press that one, and just agree that sometime in the next week I'll call him and we'll arrange a time and a place. It's not exactly RYA but it's sailing in the Dominican Republic, and that;s enough for me, and it's enough for Jackie. We leave at about four and head back to Orilla Del Mar, a two hour drive at prime chaos time on the road through peuta plata, but arrive before dark, infact with just enough light left for a dip in the pool, and a debrief of the day to Louise and David' who have done Luperon. They liked it, but not for the same resons we did, we we're there for the boats, we had seen these boats on the internet and now here we were, and just a jot away from building on our start yachting course, but here in the caribbean, just down the road from our apartment, this was going to be a new adventure in Dom Rep and a little off beam, shall we say, but it fits in perfectly with our plan, so all we got to do now is call Ray, arrange a date, and we'll be sailing in the Caribbean.. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

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.

Barcelona and Windermere

I can't believe it's been almost four weeks since we went on our start yachting course in Largs, but I suppose we've been busy at Ford Park with events every weekend to organise. Not that we've put our cruising life on the back burner, it's still with us every day, reading Ellen Macathur, taking on the world, again, and reading sailing blogs along with other books about sailing.
We have been also trying to decide where we go next with our sailing courses. We've found a company that runs RYA courses on Lake Windermere, which is only twenty minutes away and although it's not ocean sailing we could at least learn the basics with them. We have also been looking at doing courses in Gibralter and the Canaries, they're all about the same prices except for the air fares to get there, but at least it would be a bit warmer, well a whole lot warmer that here in England.
In the meantime we've been down to Barcelona for four days, mainly to see Leonard Cohen, but also as a bit of a mini holiday. We stayed in a hostal near to the port, and more importantly near to the Marina. Barcelona is a great city with lots of sights to see, but we soon made a bee line down to the marina to check out the boats. The place is absolutely crammed with yachts, so we were in our element, browsing these beautiful crafts, mostly way beyond our wildest dreams, but heck, this is some perverse heaven. We picked out the ones we would like, which usually were the more quirky and homely looking, if it had wooden grab rails and a bit of a teak deck that would be ours. We spent half the first day at the Marina, it seemed the natural way to start in Barcelona, maybe we're a bit obsessed. We even booked onto a jazz cruise on a giant catamaran, although that turned out to be a bit of a swizz as although they raised the sail once out beyond the harbour there was no wind and they kept the engine ticking over whilst we listened to a lone sax player busking along to backing tracks, very unsatisfying.

Back to Cumbria, and we finally connected with Neil, who runs OB Sailing, at Ferry Nab, on Windermere. He's got Four boats, Benetau and Janeaux's 34, 36, 38 footers and he seems like a good place to go next with our mission. We spent about half an hour chatting and it looks like this will be our next step to at least get the basics, he reckons about five days sailing will give us enough skills to sail by ourselves, at least up the lake, anchor up, and back to Bowness. That will cost us about one thousand pounds, then we could maybe go back to Largs to do our Dayskipper. We'll need to do that to get the hang of navigation which we won't get on the lake. Neils going on Holiday for a couple of weeks so we'll have to book something when he gets back.