The Lechler Crew

We are back after 171 days on Wolf Pack! This trip was amazing, an entire different vibe than the first time we left. The first time was “real life” we thought we’d be gone for a few years so everything was stressful, how are we going to make it financially, how will our kids do with boat school, and on and on. Questioning everything. This year we knew we would be back before school started, so 7 months of FUN! It was a great time. We didn’t feel the guilt and stress that we felt the first time. We met some awesome people and really tried to enjoy each day.

Derek left Kemah for Key West on January 8th with two buddies. They had a tough time and pulled into Grand Isle, LA for two nights. Between the oil rigs, dredging pipes and cold weather it was a tough trip. They arrived in Key West on January 15th to our family and some good friends whose dad was also on the boat. We explored Key West with our friends and kids (6 of them!) a few days and they were back to Texas. We had the boat worked on a stayed at the Galleon Marina in downtown Key West for a week. We love Key West and with the boat being right downtown we got to explore a lot and enjoyed renting bikes to check out the area. We had a lot of boat work to wrap up but I had fully provisioned the boat in Texas so that wasn’t a big concern, of course we needed produce. We checked out the Farmers Market, Hemmingway’s House and lots of happy hours!

January 22nd..Bimini Bound!

Arriving back in the Bimini channel felt heavenly! We felt a rush of excitement and contentment that we were BACK! We had our good friends on La Bella Vida that had arrived less than 24 hours before us and were so excited to see them after we checked in…party time! After Bimini we went to Chub Cay, what a gorgeous place. We had a blast here at the Naughty Rooster…love the karaoke and met lots of new friends. We got our 5 day covid test here, waited out some weather (this time of year its a LOT of waiting out blows, patience is key). We arrived in Nassau at the Palm Cay Marina on January 31. We were here too long…weather. The marina was expensive, the tide was crazy, we were docked at a fixed dock so getting off and on the boat was hard and the pool was still a bit too chilly to enjoy, I was ready to go! February 3rd we arrived at Big Major, more commonly known as Pig Beach, we played with the pigs, dove in Thunderball Grotto and then headed South. This trip we had our best fishing day of the trip! We hooked three mahi mahi at once and got them all in. A few minutes later we had a tuna on, we only got half of the tuna in but still got lots of good meat, a shark got the other half! February 8th we arrived HOME (haha) to Chat N Chill. So excited! Julia described it as the best place on earth. We met our good friends on Ptarmigan while here. Watched the Super bowl in town at the fish fry, Jett surfed a lot, we enjoyed many rum punches and it was time to move on . We left George Town February 11th. We hosted a fabulous Valentine’s brunch on the boat complete with lobster cakes hollandaise and then were off to explore Long Island. We rented one pickup truck and 6 adults rode inside and 7 kids rode in the back of the truck for over two hours! On February 16th we left for San Salvador, eww it was the roughest sail we’ve ever had. We had a BLAST in San Salvador. Its a different spot, the waters stunning but there isn’t much to do on land. There was a Club Med resort but because of covid it is closed. We traveled to San Salvador in 2016 and hired Patterson to be a fishing guide for the day, Derek and him have stayed in touch so we had our own welcome party and tour guide on the island. Due to a big blow we were here much longer than we’d expected. We left San Sal for the Crooked Islands February 24th around 9pm, it wasn’t planned but the weather was good and the bugs were kicking our boat so it was GO TIME! Man Crooked Island is stunning…we had a great time, my kids snagged tons of lobsters and life was good. We had nightly fires and just chilled. On March 3rd we left Crooked Island for the….

Dominican Republic

We arrived before sunrise on March 6th and were ecstatic at the views! Huge mountains, tons of palm trees, WHALES! It was just amazing, the kids all slowly woke up and took in the views the excitement on the boat on arriving in a new country was contagious. We got in and docked at Puerto Bahia Marina in Samana. Docking was a wake up call as no one spoke English. This is still my favorite marina ever! The infinity pool was so great and you could chill in it and watch whales swim in the bay. After being in the Bahamas the food and drinks prices were steal, we really feasted! We met a ton of the coolest sailors here and really had a great time. The resort hosted a sailors cocktail party, I think there were around 18 sailing kids! We loved making friends from all of the US, Switzerland, UK, and Australia. While here we sailed over to Los Haitises National Park. This place is stunning, we somehow found Paraiso Caño Hondo eco-lodge  and man was it cool! It was $5 a person to get in and we got to enjoy the pools, lounge around and feel like we were on vacation. We also explored by propane rental car (what?!) many of the area North, like El Valle, Las Terrenas, Las Galeras, and La Bonita. We anchored one night at Cayo Levantado island, also known as Bacardi island. All the books say anchoring there is not allowed but no one ever said anything to us. I hated the anchorage, the boats running the tourist came so close to the boat and the kids wanted to swim there. We stayed at the marina until March 19th when we left to Punta Cana. We were not fans of this area of the marina and were ready to move on. We did a bit of exploring, fished and prepared to sail to Puerto Rico.

We left DR for PR on March 23 for a overnight sail. We sailed into a rainy Puerto Real on March 24th. We stayed here a few days and started slowly (VERY) making our way around the South side of Puerto Rico heading to the East Coast to meet my parents. The wind would die down in the evenings and around 10am start kicking our butt. So we would try to wake up around 4am and sail until we couldn’t beat into it anymore, we usually were anchored by noon. This was a stressful time, we kept looking for Bahamas like water and were left disappointed. The hard winds kept the water stirred up and while we kept searching we had a hard time in this area. There were some cool anchorages but we were there the wrong time of year. Caja de Muertos also known as Coffin Island was our favorite anchorage this side on Puerto Rico, it was very pretty and had a nice light house we hiked up to. We finally made it to Vieques April 2nd for a few days, then had marina reservations at Palmas Marina. We loved exploring Puerto Rico from here and spent time in Rincon on the West Coast while Jagger did a freedive course. My parents arrived April 16th we explored Old Town San Juan and then we sailed to Culebrita, it was definitely our favorite anchorage since leaving the Bahamas. They flew out of Culebra and we went back to enjoy Culebrita a few nights. We were so close to the USVI’s but had been before and with covid protocols we decided to skip it and start making our way back to the Bahamas. We really like Puerto Rico, I have another post about traveling here I will publish soon. We left San Juan April 25th and due to “unreadable” covid test we decided to do an overnight sail to Puerto Plata, DR instead of the Bahamas.

Puerto Plata, DR

It’s always exciting and unnerving to arrive in a new country. Checking in with customs and then the fun covid protocols make it stressful and it can take a few hours. Since we didn’t make it to Puerto Plata on our first trip down we were excited to check out the area. We stayed at Ocean World Marina, not my favorite. There was no pool and it was hot. It was a good base to explore though. We loved Bobo’s Surf Shack beach area, lunch at El Encuentro Surf Lodge was delicious. We also rode the trolley, checked out downtown Puerto Plata and did the 27 Waterfall tour, it was amazing! So much fun..and the color of the water! Wow! We had a company come to the boat and do covid test, we had the results back in a few hours and prepared to leave the next day. Adios DR!

Bahamas! Our final destination…

We arrived back May 1st! We cleared in in Inagua at Matthew Town. We had the coolest experience swimming with wild dolphins here. We were SOOOOOOO excited to swim in that gorgeous water and eat some delicious fish. This part of the Bahamas was my all time favorite! From Matthew Town we stopped at Hogsty Reef on the way to Acklins. Its so secluded and stunning (duh). For mothers day we anchored in the Bight of Acklins. HEAVEN..seriously. The sand bars went on for miles and we never saw one other boat in three days. We had guest arriving May 14th so we slowly headed back to one of our favorite anchorages, Calabash Bay in Long Island. We had the greatest time with this group and sailed over to Conception Island for the night. After they left we had two more friend groups come. The last group flew out of Nassau June 22nd. It was getting really hot, summer storms were popping up frequently with lighting so it was time to head home. We found a marina in Cape Canaveral and then moved the boat to St. Augustine where out journey began. Oh the fun times we had that will live in our memories forever.

If any sailor see this and has any questions feel free to email me alexalechler@me.com. We used The Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South: The Thornless Path to Windward and I downloaded A Cruising Guide to Puerto Rico by Frank Virgintino I also downloaded his guide to the Dominican Republic. Both were super helpful.