Graham Hoyland's Seven Seas, Seven Summits

Weighing anchor is when you pull the muddy, shell-encrusted bit of rusty iron out of the mud and set off for a new port. But it also means borrowing a set of scales from the marina gym and seeing how much your anchors weigh, which I did the other day.

Curlew has a bright, stainless-steel main anchor which doesn’t seem to hold her 16 tons very well on its own, so I have three more anchors to hold her in position in a blow. The medallion-man trinklet weighs 60 pounds, as does its rusty-steel sister. Then there is a CQR (say it aloud) of 40 pounds, and an old Fisherman anchor (of the traditional style) of the same weight, which works well in kelp. So we have 200 pounds of anchors, which is still not enough.

Frankly anything would hold well in sand, even an old bicycle, but different anchors come into their own in difficult rocky or weedy bottoms. You have to make a judgement, and the other night in a wildly-rolling anchorage at Escondito, with a lee-shore 100 yards from our stern and half a gale blowing, I was very glad that I had put down the CQR and the main anchor in tandem, on the same heavy chain (we have 60 metres/200 feet). The Fisherman was standing by to be laid in case of dragging, which one of our companion boats proceeded to do towards the end of the night.

We stayed put, but for true peace of mind I want to find a Rocna anchor of around 100 pounds. This cunningly-shaped device flips over and digs in immediately, or so they say.

Our Suncoast 42 is something like a nautical camper van but she now has a racing pedigree, as the only other Suncoast in the internet race records Did Not Finish. That’s because they are so slow its still out there. We did this by lumbering round the regatta course here at Puerta Bahia in Samana, propelled by Tibetan Buddhist flags borrowed from our Mount Everest camp. Their wild flapping failed to dispel a faint whiff of diesel smoke on the upwind legs. The second course marker buoy started dragging downwind into the shallows, pursued by a fleet of twenty other yachts, but we grimly followed the position of the buoy marked on our Garmin chartplotter and wallowed round an imaginary point in the sea. Therefore, as we were the only boat to go round the proper course, we won.
No-one else agreed about this as we came in nearly last but they have very odd racing rules here in the Dominican Republic. The dreaded Mona Passage is next.

“Curlew” arrived in Luperon, Dominican Republic, after sailing all night. We could smell green grass and cattle 30 miles out to sea. Tried to sleep in the forward cabin while Gina kept watch, but it was like being inside a washing machine on slow tumble.
Next day, up at 8 and off to slide down 3 miles of waterfalls. After months of white sands and arid, turquoise seas it was wonderful to immerse ourselves in a fresh-water river draining the beautiful mountains. This is heaven.

We swam into the world’s deepest blue hole a couple of days ago. Dean’s Blue Hole, near Clarence Town, is 202 metres (663 feet) deep, and when you snorkel across the surface and look down, you first see a vast sandy funnel, then an astonishing dark hole disappearing beneath you. There are lots of tropical fish. It is rather like looking down a factory chimney, and there is a uneasy feeling of vertigo.
There were some free-divers there, too, sitting on a raft in the centre. In April 2010, William Trubridge broke a free-diving world record in this hole, reaching a depth of 92 metres (302 ft) without the use of fins. Later that year, he swam to a depth of 101 metres on a single breath using only his hands and feet for propulsion.
Today I hope to fit a new Garmin GHP 12 autopilot, to replace the old Simrad one that self-destructed here three weeks ago. We would then be ready to move on to the Turks and Caicos islands, then the Dominican Republic, but the eternal east winds never seem to stop blowing. Every time I see a shooting star in these incredible tropical star-bright skies I wish for one thing: a west wind.

Tomorrow we are trying to get further south against the ever-present Trade Winds. So we sail through a “cut”, which is a scary exit through coral reefs out into the ocean. Once through you are committed, and have to keep going to the next island. If anythings breaks you are on your own: you have to fix it. More when we get to the Turks and Caicos Islands.