Our Grand Adventure

23rd February 2026 | Odometer: 1310nm | Puerto Rico & Dominican Republic

We had a few days before an awesome weather window to make the dreaded Mona Passage to the Dominican Republic. We had been warned about this passage – even in great conditions it was known for enormous waves, unpredictable seas and sudden intensity. Other cruisers seemed to feel the need to give us dire warnings and relate tales of terror when they found out we were making this passage.

Anyway, we were going to do the Mona Passage and it was forecast to be super calm with no wind and minimal swells. Perfect. Navionics was predicting a crossing time of 24 hours to get to Samana on the north coast of the Dominican Republic.

We bumped around to Puerto Real to prepare and catch up on some life basics like laundry and groceries. Puerto Real is very well protected and looks like it should be a nice bay but we had such a hard time anchoring here! We were glad to have read quite a few reviews mentioning it was quite difficult due to the soft, floaty muddy layer on the bottom, so we were prepared for it to be hard. But still, FOUR goes later, after repeatedly dragging and even picking up an old anchor off the bottom, we were finally anchored.

We spent a couple of nights here waiting for the perfect weather window to arrive for our overnight trip to Samana in the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, I was still sick and spent most of this time being a bit useless and slowly recovering so Ryan took care of most of the land activities and chores! He also installed some awesome clip holders for our boat hooks and we enjoyed the gorgeous sunsets here.

I did make it off the boat for a few walks here and there – to the grocery store and a local bakery. This side of Puerto Rico has a very different vibe to the eastern end – much smaller, more rundown and much less available in the grocery stores. We walked all the way to the next little town over to try and get some bananas! (Success!)

Departing Puerto Rico

We had really enjoyed our time in Puerto Rico, but we were also looking ahead to the Dominican Republic and also excited to be getting further north and closer to the Bahamas!

I was still a little sick, but feeling good enough to undertake the passage. We waited til late morning to start, so that we would arrive in day time on the Dominican Republic side – pulling up the anchor was ridiculous it was so covered in mud which went all over the deck as I sprayed it and the chain off! Thankfully, we were able to pull in at the local fuel dock for cheap diesel and water, and took our time to clean off the whole boat while we were at it! This was such a friendly marina and the fuel dock staff were great too! Ryan circled the bay for a few minutes while I packed up all the lines and fenders and then we headed out!

Heading North

First, we headed north up the coastline of PR, then veered out to the west to start the crossing. We had amazing conditions – very calm with only 5-10 knots of wind.

We started into our three-hour watches; and took turns driving and resting. Not a lot to see or do – but we appreciated watching boobies chasing flying fish off our bow, and seeing various tankers pass us by. We had one funny moment with a fishing speedboat that ripped past us, then came back and stopped directly in our path, less than 50m away… ummm what the? Then, realising he (and all his trolling lines behind him) were directly in our route, he then took off at extremely highspeed. Not entirely sure what that thought process was! Nothing worse than erratic behaviour combined with high speed, it makes it crazy hard to know how to react!

Nightfall

The sun was setting just as we found ourselves out of sight of land in every direction. I had myself a little mini flip out of excitement – no land, anywhere! Gradually, night fully descended, and we switched all our navigation instruments to night mode. I settled in for the first night watch.

I was having a really relaxing watch – texting folks in Aus, listening to some podcasts and just chilling, when I suddenly saw an enormous bouy? fishing pot? thing!? come past on the starboard side. A huge foam rectangle floated by, with other pieces attached to it. Sheesh! What a fluke we hadn’t hit that! Even though we had just rounded the eastern end of DR, we were well offshore and in very deep water, I definitely hadn’t been expecting fishing pots.

I started to relax again, only to see another one pass by on the port side far too close for comfort. Eep! So, I spent the rest of my watch with a torch handy and hanging out the door being far more vigilant. Of course, I didn’t see another after this and Ryan didn’t see any at all on his shift!

We were heading north-west up the coastline, and realised that we were absolutely ripping up at a crazy pace – 9-10knots! I tried to slow us down a bit but had little effect. Ryan surfaced, and I went down and took a shower, and headed to bed. When I resurfaced around 3, Ryan reported that absolutely nothing at all had happened haha. He had spent his time reading and listening to podcasts.

Unfortunately, he also hadn’t twigged why I was freaking out about going so fast up the coastline and hadn’t clicked that I had said we needed to slow down! So he hadn’t slowed the boat down at all and had actually increased our speed – now we were predicted to arrive into the shallow waters of the Samana Bay entry well before sunrise! D’oh. Communication failure!

Fevers and Freezing

Unfortunately, it turned out I really wasn’t over my cold completely, and I hadn’t slept much at all in my off time. I was thinking it would be OK as all we had to do was let the autopilot drive so Ryan headed back to bed… I culled the speed back as much as possible, and zigged out way wider than some other boats doing the passage to try and take as long as possible before we arrived on the shallow shelf in the dark. We really didn’t want to arrive in the dark as the depth got super shallow, there might be reefs around and shallow waters usually means fishing pots galore.

Despite my efforts, we were now heading right into the shallow waters in the pitch black night. It was dark and each time I tried to turn the boat around in the bay the roll was getting intense. It was so scary in the dark not being able to see the waves but feeling the boat lurching around. I was also really starting to go downhill physically – hot flushes, extreme chills, and waves of nausea. I had a pounding headache which didn’t seem to be relenting and was building and building.

I absolutely froze. I couldn’t think what to do, I was starting to feel completely panicked and I couldn’t snap out of it either. So, I did the next best thing – I woke Ryan up and let him know I was a mess! He woke up and took over and sent me to bed. Bleurgh! I was such a feverish blob by this point.

Ryan took a hilarious course zig zagging the boat into the entrance of the bay so that we would finally have some light to enter with.

When the sun finally started coming up we headed into Samana Bay and the last couple hours of our journey.

It was such a relief to pull into the anchorage outside the town of Samana, and after anchoring I promptly passed out.

Customs Endurance Challenge

I can’t say customs and immigration is ever really a fun experience, but this one felt like hardcore challenge mode customs. Dominican Republic (DR) has four steps – immigration, customs, port authority and the armada, their navy. The immigration office had no power when we arrived and another family had been there for four hours trying to leave. No movement at all, and no idea what was happening. No English is spoken so my poor Spanish was all that was getting us through. Meanwhile, I was having cold sweats and shivering and pretending to be totally fine while trying not to faint. 🤌

Eventually we left and went to the armada. Ah, more fees. Right, so back to an ATM we found where we lined up for at least half an hour in the baking sun. Then back to the armada for our paperwork to anchor. Bracing ourselves for a long wait we made our way back to immigration – success! They were now phoning another immigration office and getting an officer there to process our passports over the phone then the local guys were stamping it. The other offices went smoothly enough after that first one. A sweet three and a half hours later I was dead on my legs but we were CHECKED IN !!!!

So the Mona Passage itself, really wasn’t too bad at all because we picked a fantastic weather window. Honestly, if I hadn’t been so sick this would have been an incredible journey. We were so happy to be across and safe – as soon as I was better we would be out and about exploring!