Crimes and dinghies Lindsay McRory August 13, 1996 Things roll along in Luperon, but life is never uneventful. Crime is normally unheard of in these parts, but three boats have been robbed in the last week. It seems the burglars hide along the edges of the mangroves and watch the boats. When they see someone leaving their boat, they swim out and take what they want. Typically money and cameras. Then they put the booty in floating baskets and swim back into the mangroves and disappear. After the first two times it seemed the local officials cared little about it. Then the cruisers started getting paranoid that the local officials were involved. Last night the crew aboard Dream Walker dingyed back to their boat to witness a "guest" jumping off their boat and heading for the mangroves. The skipper quickly radioed every boat on the harbor and in minutes there were a dozen dinghys scouring the mangroves with flashlights. The police and the comandancia were called and came out in boats. We never found anyone, but that night police put up road blocks and arrested 20 people for various minor infractions and questioned them about the recent robberies as well. Today, four more people were arrested in the morning and another in the afternoon. It seams there are only so many bad actors in this small community so when something happens they just put all of them in jail. Odds are if one of them didn't do it, they know who did. The Dominican Republic is a poor country. They do not have the money to feed convicted or suspected criminals three square meals a day. So they don't. It's up to friends and family to feed the incarcerated. Because so many innocent people get put in jail, a crime in a small community is a crime against the community. They don't passively watch crime occur or pretend they didn't see it as with some of the big cities in North America. The guilty are ferreted out quickly, without intensive police investigations. Punishment is harsh. O.J. Simpson would of started 20 hard years of imprisonment a week after the murders. The trade winds blow strong, kicking up a good chop in the harbor. One of the major inconveniences of anchoring is the dingy rides back and forth, which can be incredibly wet, especially in a small dingy. Our two-year-old, nine-foot Zodiac is too small for the task. Every ride was like going for a swim. Size wasn't the Zodiac's only problem. Since the Bahamas it has literally melted before our eyes. Seams have popped, the outer skin has been rapidly delaminating. It seems to be common knowledge among veteran Caribbean cruisers that Zodiac makes the worst dingy for the tropics. Apparently if left in colder climes they can serve there purpose well for years. But get them in the hot Caribbean sun and they melt like ice cream, and nearly that fast. Statistically, since leaving Florida, we have not seen a single other Zodiac. We were fortunate to run into another sailboat coming from Trinidad, heading for Florida, in need of cash, who wanted to sell there 13-foot rigid-bottom dingy. It's an older AB, made in Venezuela. We bought it. It's huge, ugly, and cheap. But an ugly dingy has less of a chance of getting stolen, so it's perfect. We call it the school bus. It is a monster. We had five adults, two kids, and 200 pounds of supplies and there was still room left over. The Zodiac is ready for the dumpster. It won't be the first zodiac buried in a foreign port. We are considering various ritualistic sacrifices involving machetes and flare guns and maybe a little rum. I may call Zodiac first. It's out of warranty so I won't hold my breath. Given the amount of time I've spent patching it up in the last four months I would feel a lot better just cutting it to ribbons. We had a good dinner in a small outdoor restaurant. Our entertainment was provided by a pack of geckos eating flies and no-see-ums on the side of the walls. This seem perfectly natural here and the geckos were doing us a favor. But then we though if we were having dinner in New York we wouldn't be so inclined to share eating space with lizards. We may even catch a gecko or two and give them run of the boat. My favorite boat of all time pulled into Luperon for a couple of days, Steve and Linda Dashew's Sundeer. This is the original aluminum prototype boat for the Sundeer series, built in New Zealand. I like everything about the boat. If we had a million dollars to spend on a boat, it would be a toss-up between the Sundeer 64 and a Privilege 42. No tears. It's far better to go with what you have and can afford rather than waiting to make a million dollars to spend on a boat.