Did we say PR? We meant DR...

So...we are less than 5 hours from arriving in the Dominican Republic (DR). "But wait," you ask, "weren't you going to Puerto Rico (PR)?" Yes, astute reader, we were.

On day 2 of following our route, the winds and sea state didn't even remotely match the forecast from our weather planning service (Weather Routing, Inc). It was uncomfortable and painfully slow, burning a lot of fuel in the process.

So we had them do another forecast and weather route for us. They said it would be better to take a more northerly route due to severe weather along the north coast of the DR.

This had us going farther away from PR and DR, out into the Atlantic. Ummm...oookaaayyy. We spent the next day going this way, waiting for the weather to match the new forecast.

This took us into more winds and worse seas. We were sailing, but not really on course, so we had to tack a lot. I had them create another forecast. They said we were still on the best route.

By late yesterday evening, the winds still hadn't shifted to match the forecast. It was going to take us at least 3 more days to get to PR, and a fair bit of it would be motoring.

Since the severe weather north of DR didn't materialize, we decided to turn south and head to an area called Puerto Plata in the DR. It's a little over 100 nautical miles from where we changed course, but as of right now we are currently less than 4.5 hours away. We covered a lot of ground by not beating into the wind and waves.

At this point, I think the plan is to stay in the DR for a couple of weeks and explore (sadly, saying goodbye to our lovely crew), then look for a good weather window to continue on toward PR.

And maybe find a better weather routing service. These guys did a terrible job this time...