Dear Friends,
And so finally we had a sort of break.. in our favor the winds took a more ESE direction and we were actually able to sail (no engines)… The only thing that didn’t make this part of the crossing a pleasant one were the waves.. rather noisy and not comfortable.. but we did sail relatively fast… By the end of the next day, we had mainland Haiti on the horizon, and I had to alter course more to the south…. And on cue the wind direction also changed, now coming from ENE and that was just very helpful..
We slowly entered in the shelter (shadow) of the island and the seas became calm(er) and of course also the wind kind of died on us.. Engine time… and fingers crossed…. Now, I had noticed (gps) that we were going to pass some relatively shallow parts along the south coast of Haiti (instead of the 2500 m depth, we were going to pass over just 29 m depth)… Soon enough at 3 o clock in the morning, luckily no wind and no waves… we learned that we found ourselves in a sort of mine field… a huge amount of fish traps/pots (of course such shallow waters makes it for the local fishermen a kind of easy task).. and in Haiti this apparently meant: two or three transparent small PET bottles tied together to a nylon line.. in the dark almost undetectable… Of course my friends this resulted in those lines getting tangled up in either of the two props, as I hadn’t noticed those floating hazards… And so, at three in the morning, sharp knife in hand, and Dora assisting with a flash light, it took me almost 40 minutes to finally free us from the mess (note to oneself.. have to get a waterproof headlight torch thingy for those kind of things).. Oh, and yes this only happened two more times during the same night…. At daybreak we could see some fishermen canoes (with a sail) starting to check out their traps.. Our progress towards Ile a Vache was slow but at around 6 oclock in the evening, we managed to drop the hook in Port Morgan, and although already pitch dark.. surrounded by boys on various floating devices, offering their services (fruits, garbage…)… We were too tired and so had a nice quiet evening and revigorating nights rest. New adventures and discoveries a head of us…
Haiti SouthWest Coast at daybreak.. The catch of last night…
.. Approach to Ile a Vache Haiti …great anchorage at Port Morgan…
…. The boat boys…. Hotel Port Morgan (pricy dinner, “free”internet)
Have fun,
Pieter
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