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Sailing Tanager

Casa
Dominican Republic
Luperón
Sailing Tanager

We're refitting and sailing from Maryland to the Caribbean and beyond! s/v Tanager is a 1978 Bristol 29.9 sailboat.

She is sloop - rigged with a 10' beam, a tiny Yanmar diesel engine, and room for three to sleep comfortably.

07/04/2023

Rigging our solent stay in prep for a passage to Panama...

January, 2022

Tanager is a masthead sloop, meaing she typically flies two sails from the single mast: a mainsail aft with boom and a headsail forward on a roller furler. Roller furlers are a wonderful way to manage the size of the headsail for short-handed cruising, but not without their challenges. Notably, when furled deeply the sail loses shape and moves up and away from the center of effort on the boat, making it very inefficient and causes the boat to heel alarmingly when trying to sail close to the wind.

In an emergency situation where we may need to beat upwind to escape a hazard in storm conditions, or if our roller furler were to fail, or if we want to run two headsails wind-and-wing for faster more stable downwind sailing, we installed a removable . The solent is a temporary, dyneema cord that tensions off the mast winches and allows us to fly traditional hanked-on sails. We leave the solent stowed away from damaging UV for most casual cruising and hang it for passages, which requires a quick trip up the mast!

05/04/2023

Varnishing...

December, 2022

The tropical sun is relentless, and while we oil most of the exterior woodwork on Tanager in lieu of , there are a few pieces of that require constant touchups.

04/04/2023

It's the little things...

2022

When we lived aboard seasonally, we were able to let little annoyances go unresolved. "It's like camping, but more comfy!" However, when we moved aboard full time, those little things started to feel intolerable. One example was a lack of mirrors in the head. We'd hung a small portable mirror on the wall but it was impossible to use for shaving. I found these stick-on acrylic mirrors when we were still in Florida and fixed the issue, but didn't get around to sharing a photo until now.

03/04/2023

Fixing our Cape Horn Windvane

December, 2022

A windvane self-steering system is an absolutely essential piece of equipment on any long distance cruising yacht, akin to having a third crew member who requires no sleep, no rations, and no living space. Unfortunately, our had been malfunctioning ever since we installed it. I'd emailed back and forth with the designer for years to no avail. Since we had our biggest passage coming up, I decided once and for all to fix the issue.

The problem was that our steering oar, the part that sticks down into the water, kept popping loose. This is a "feature" designed to prevent damage to the system if the oar snags a line, but it was coming loose every time we went over a big wave or caught some sargasso. The one time we did snag a line with it in Belize, the oar failed to release! I tried multiple combinations of different shock cord, tied with different knots, different amount of wraps, and even deepened the notches slightly.

This time I was hell-bent to fix the issue. I took 's suggestion and replaced the tied shock cord with custom fixed loops made with stainless steel hog rings. This would eliminate the tendency of the knot(s) to loosen and give room for more wraps without a bulky knot in the way. I deepened the notches pretty significantly and shaved down the wooden block inside just a little bit to give clearance for the connection. Finally, I drilled a 1/8" hole straight through the fl**ge on the steering oar and the 1" stainless steel mounting rod and placed a stainless steel clevis pin through the hole. I figured the clevis pin would fail before any other aspect of the system in an emergency, and wouldn't be necessary except in extreme conditions or on long passages.

These modifications proved to work flawlessly on our ten day passage to Panama.

01/04/2023

Building a spear rack...

December, 2022

We took advantage of the flat calm harbor and easy access to freight forwarding from the US to finish a few boat projects in Luperon. I built this storage rack for the so it wouldn't be laying around the cabin between outings.

04/03/2023

First impressions of Luperon...

October 31, 2022

We arrived just before Halloween in the strange little town of Luperon. They say that folks either love or hate the place, and we were certainly hoping to fall in love. Who knows, maybe even buy some land and settle down.

Despite a warm welcome from the tightly knit cruising community, we didn't fall in love with Luperon. Everything is a little "flojo" in the DR and it didn't feel great. Though we've both spent a lot of time in and enjoyed visiting lesser developed countries, we never felt at home in the Dominican Republic.

There are some pros. Luperon harbor is a safe spot well protected from storms with plenty of amenities and services for cruisers. Cost of living is far lower than in the USA. As mentioned, things are loose enough that there are few regulations about how long you can stay, and a simple overstay fee takes care of the typical visa/cruising permit issues that cruisers often face.

Regardless, we both had a difficult time reconciling the poverty, lack of basic sanitation and disrespect for the environment (such as massive diesel spills into the harbor, trash in the streets, and burning garbage piles on the dock), pervasive anti-Haitian/anti-immigrant rhetoric, and highest per capita rate of traffic fatalities in the world. Provisioning is far better than most places in the Bahamas, but still very limited compared to Mexico or Rio Dulce. And rapid-fire Dominican Spanish with it's contractions and slurred words made basic communication a challenge.

Regardless, Luperon would be a good base to fix some of the things that broke while we were in the Bahamas. And we resolved to explore the country to try and find the beauty and adventure we'd hoped for.

31/12/2022

Dominican Republic landfall...

October 29, 2022

30/12/2022

Four months and a thousand miles...

October 26, 2022

The easternmost red squiggle shows our route through the Bahamas in 2022 as tracked on No Foreign Land. The second slide is the path for our slow and mellow 72 hour passage from Mayaguana, Bahamas to Luperon, Dominican Republic. We had a window with very light west winds that allowed us to make the passage straight through rather than cruising Turks and Caicos en route. Stay tuned for a new reel showing the glassy ocean and our arrival.

28/12/2022

After hurricane season in the , our courtesy flag...

October 26, 2022
..reflected our own feelings at the end of our Bahamian cruise. It had been almost four months since we cleared in to West End. We'd sailed almost a thousand nautical miles since leaving the USA. Since leaving the Abaco Islands, we had only seen a dozen or so other cruising boats and interacted with just three. We'd spent much of our last two months taking it really easy aboard Tanager and measured our time ashore in hours per month, not days. We had eaten every meal aboard Tanager with the exception of one dinner with friends on their boat. We showered with a water bottle after swimming naked at sunset and washed our clothes in buckets of saltwater with a sparing freshwater rinse. We ate beans and rice and fish speared from nearby coral heads. It had been beautiful and solitary and lonely. It put a lot of pressure on us to be everything to each other: captain and crew, partners, friends, which even in a strong relationship, is a lot to ask of another person. And as much as I love spearfishing and freediving and sailing in tropical paradise, even the most fun activities lose their shine absent some variety. Moreover, we'd dodged a number of hurricanes and had been unable to leave Tanager unattended for more than a day trip ashore. For all the freedom that life aboard brings, a sailboat can also be an anchor with a heavy chain.

We were both eager to meet other cruisers and make friends in the Dominican Republic, do laundry, walk, maybe go for runs, buy fresh produce and eat in restaurants. And leave the boat, travel ashore, visit family, and explore. Dry our feet a bit. It was time to seek the next adventure.

24/12/2022

The town of Abraham's Bay...

October 20, 2022
..was a little more upbeat than Crooked and Acklins. Still tiny, but with trimmed lawns and largely free of plastic waste. This town was once a port of entry into the Bahamas and is the closest spot to Turks and Caicos, but the immigration office has closed and with it went much of the cruising visitation. We were outbound, however, and didn't need clearance to leave. We would spend a week here waiting for the next weather window, diving in the clear water every day.

Dirección

Luperón

Página web

https://linktr.ee/svtanager

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