Luperon, Dominican Republic

Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Fri 23 May 2014 17:37
Luperon is a very sheltered harbour, completely surrounded by hills, but even so you get a nice cooling breeze during the day.  It is well protected from hurricanes and some people keep their boats here all year round.  A retirement community for people whose pension cheques aren’t as fat as they would like.  It is a friendly place, both cruisers and locals.  The officials are also friendly, provided that they get their “propinas”.  It is hard to call it extortion when they are happy to get a $10 “tip”.  The way I see it, in the Dominican Republic I paid $73 in official fees for checking in an out, plus about $60 total in propinas at both Luperon and Samana.  How is that more extortionate that the $300 you pay for checking in to the Bahamas?
 
The household income in the Dominican Republic is extremely low, which means it is a good place to get any laborious work done.  We weren’t planning to spend much time in Luperon, but we had to wait a few days for a lull in the trade winds to let us continue our upwind passages.  We had bought some canvas in Fort Pierce to make a cover for the outdoor table, but we decided that the dinghy cover was in such bad condition that patching it up would be a better use of the canvas.  If we had thought, we would have bought enough canvas for a new cover to be made in Luperon.
 
I took a series of photos and used Google translate to write a description of the work I wanted doing in Spanish.  Andrea proof read it and pointed out that I probably wanted to use “hilo” (thread on a needle) rather than “rosca” (thread on a screw).  The work included replacing the tube around the entire border of the cover, probably a full days work to repair everything.  Anywhere else and it would just not have been worth the effort, but in Luperon we got all the repairs done for $60.  It is obviously not pristine, given the starting point, but probably got another couple of years of life in it.
 
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The entrance to Luperon harbour is completely occluded by hills
 
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Moored at the town pier is an eclectic mix of work and pleasure boats
 
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After three years of tropical sun the dinghy cover is literally falling apart at the seams
 
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And worn around the edges
 
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The stitching is so rotten the letters are falling off
 
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But now it is all patched up
 
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With a brand new border and bright new stitching down every seam