Ocean World Marina, Puerto Plata
Sunday 9th - Tuesday 11th March 2025
The overnight passage from Samana round to the north coast of the Dominican Republic was pretty mellow, but not without drama. The winds were really light, so we ended up motor sailing the whole way. There were clear skies and the moon was bright for most of the night. Dave, Gloria and I decided to alternate watches, with 2 hours on and 4 hours off throughout the night. Just before midnight, Gloria was on-watch and I was dozing in the cockpit when I heard a faint beeping sound. Gloria told me the electronic navigation system had lost the GPS position. It quickly became evident that all the instruments were down - wind, speed, depth, heading, course over ground, AIS … and most critically our position. I went below to try and figure out what was going on, but couldn’t identify the problem. We switched on the iPAD which has its own GPS sensor and Navionics charts loaded. We also got out handheld GPS devices (one of which was brand new and needed charging) and we started plotting our position on paper maps. Fortunately, the autopilot gets its heading direct from the rate-compass, and although we couldn’t see the heading on our instruments, the autopilot kept steering true. We adjusted our approach to using these alternate navigational tools and continued through the night. In the morning, based on a suggestion from Dave, I started pulling apart and re-attaching connections in the cable network for the instruments. Somehow, I was able to get the system started again. We are putting it down to a poor connection, but we aren’t really satisfied as we don’t feel we have fully identified the problem. There are a few lessons we can learn from this experience: firstly, we are very reliant on our electronic systems; secondly, it’s good that we have independent back-up systems; thirdly, it would have been better if we had been prepared to use those back-up systems (ready and available, fully charged, waypoints pre-entered etc).
We arrived at Ocean World Marina around noon and were soon tied up on the dock. Thankfully, no docking nightmares this time! We were shepherded along to the office to clear in with the marina and navy personnel. We didn’t get much done the rest of the day because we were all exhausted.
The marina is interesting - we chose to come here because it’s close to where Dave needs to go and it has customs and immigration on site, which will help our departure. There is a mixture of cruising boats and what appears to be longer term storage boats. We were shocked to see a power boat sunk at the dock. This was not some old junker but a large Sabre cruising yacht. It looked like it had only just sank and this morning we saw a team of divers and marina staff hard at work to re-float her and pump her out, which they were able to do in a couple of hours. I heard two different versions of what had happened; the first was that an engine or prop shaft leak had caused it to sink; the second, which I heard direct from one of the divers, is that the rudder shaft had snapped and the rudder fallen off, leaving a whole in the hull. To me it seems shocking that you might leave your boat in the safety of a marina only to have it sink! I have no idea what might be entailed in bringing the boat back to serviceable condition.
Dave departed shortly before lunchtime to spend a couple of days in Cabarete exploring the foil boarding scene. He is an avid windsurfer turned foil boarder and is keen to return to Cabarete in the future on a longer boarding trip. We are sad to see Dave go - we’ve had a fabulous time with him on board this past week. He has promised to send us his guest blog tomorrow!
Mike
19 49.652 N, 70 43.814 W
A beautiful Sabre power boat - sunk in the marina
Divers were able to get her floated using airbags and then pumped out
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