After 2 weeks of loading in the port of Andres, Boca Chica Dominican Republic it’s time to sail out again. Exactly 2 weeks ago we sailed into the harbour with sail and hand power only, A perfect manoeuvre around the reefs, into the sheltered old harbour, throwing mooring lines to the harbour workers and stop the ship just in time.

We loaded many tons of Cacao for Amsterdam all by hand, it has been long days!  Around 150 bags of 70 kgs each were stacked on top of the sixteen barrels of rum we loaded earlier that day. It sounds like this is all doable in one day but the Dominican Republic is a place where nothing happens in a fast way. You need to talk to a lot of officials and see a lot of nice offices from the inside to get the cargo on board.

The cargo hold is completely filled up, we filled up the aft compartment and even built an additional floor over the bags of cacao. It’s a very big operation to get everything in a good place and use every space we could. Thanks for the team for working together these long days in the warmth of Dominican Republic.

During the loading process and the process of getting the ship ready to cross the ocean again, more and more information about some virus in Europe was coming to us. After getting all the information about closed harbours, borders etc. I made the final decision: we can’t wait here, we have to sail, we have to bring the ship back to Europe.

So tomorrow we will sail out of the harbour of Boca Chica with the early morning winds. From then on we don’t have internet, no phones etc. We are living in our own world, a world without rumours about viruses etc.  I think the ocean is for my crew and our ship the best place to go to at this moment.
Our office onshore will send us updates about where we can and where we can’t go. In the logbook, we will write down Horta as our destination. We will see in a few weeks if we can go in there or not. Till that time it’s us and the sea and I wish you all the best on the land!

Captain Wiebe Radstake