“Let’s get this place cleaned up,” Dorin says as they come back aboard. We race through the boat, straightening up the mess. I fold and stack the blankets and pillows in the fo’c’sle and stash today’s laundry. Cory neatens his bunk, puts away the books, and sweeps the floor. Dorin washes the pans and dishes and wipes the counter top while I get out the documentation we will need for the aduaneros.
We are about to sit when Dorin notices the broom standing against the wall. Grabbing it, he looks around frantically for a place to stow it and finally slips it under the thin mattress on Cory’s bunk.
The three of us sweat in the sweltering cabin, looking out of the companionway, watching the activity on the dock. We wonder if our helper really contacted Customs, or has he abandoned us?
Twenty minutes later, two dark-skinned Customs and Immigration men, dressed in sharply pressed khaki uniforms, arrive on the dock.
Dorin goes up two steps in the companionway.
“¿Permiso?” asks one of the men.
“Yes, yes. Come aboard,” Dorin says. The dock is a little higher than our deck so they easily step, one at a time, over the stern pulpit and onto the rear of the Fandango.
“Do you speak English?” Dorin asks.
One man quickly shakes his head no.
“A little.” The other guy smiles tentatively.
Then he demonstrates his bilingual ability. “Whew, hot!” he says as he wipes his forehead with a handkerchief and starts down the galley stairs. Both government men appear a little uncertain as they look around our tiny cabin.
“Yeah,” says Dorin. “Is this seasonally normal, or is it particularly hot today? Have a seat.”
I wince, wondering how these words sound to someone with a tenuous grasp of English. In the past, I have teased Dorin about his complex syntax and vocabulary, which becomes increasingly complicated when he is tense.
“I’m not that bad,” he’d said. “Right, Cor?”
Cory smiled and shrugged. “Well, let’s just say your verbosity really blossoms when you are nervous.”
“When you talk to anyone who doesn’t know English well, just use simple sentences and small words,” I had suggested.
“I know, I know,” he’d snapped. “I remember when I was learning Dutch. Don’t you guys think I know how to keep it simple?”
Seasonally normal? Simple?
The English-speaking official clears his throat and says, “ Sí, Yes…uh…hot. Today.” He slides behind the dinette table and sits down. The other official sits beside me on Cory’s bunk. Dorin hoists himself up on the icebox.
The man sitting at the table folds his hands and smiles nervously at each of us. He seems to be waiting.
We all glance around at each other. The officials nod and smile again; we smile back.
I take a deep breath. “You, ah, want to see our papers?” I finally ask.
“Papers! Sí, papers,” he says, looking relieved.
I open the plastic packet on the table and hand him our passports and ship’s papers.
“Ah, gracias. Pasaportes. Thank you.”
He pulls a used envelope out of his shirt pocket and with a stubby pencil carefully copies down our names on the back of it. When he’s done, he smiles up at Dorin and asks, “Where you come from?”
“Well,” says Dorin, nervously clearing his throat, “we started out from Maine, actually. Boothbay Harbor. Pardon me, East Boothbay….”
I stare at Dorin. Has he forgotten, from our experience in Bermuda, the man simply wants to know our last port of departure?
“…unless, of course, you want our residential addresses…we live in Waterville, at least I do. The crew comes from Fairfield, Maine. But we actually left from East Boothbay. Then we sailed off-shore….”
The man’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm. He knows he’s in trouble. “Puerto Plata?” he breaks in. Beside me, his fellow officer nods his head vigorously, as if Puerto Plata in the D.R. is a good answer.
“Well, no, we had considered going to Puerto Plata, but we weren’t able to obtain any appropriate approach charts for that particular city.”
Sitting on the companionway stairs, Cory leans his mouth into his fist to hide a smile.
“Santo Domingo?” the official tries hopefully. Santo Domingo is, as Cory has told us, the capital, located on the southern shore of the DR.
“St. George, Bermuda,” I say.
“Ah. Sí. Bermuda. Gracias.” He smiles gratefully and writes on the envelope.
“¿Documento?”
“Document? Clearance papers?” I ask.
“Sí, yes. Papers, please.”
I get out the clearance paper from Bermuda.
“Where you go from here?” he asks as he looks over the paper.
“Well,” replies Dorin, “originally we intended to go through the Windward Passage and then on into the Panama Canal…”
The official looks worried until he recognizes Panama Canal.
“Sí, Panama Canal.” He puts his pencil to the envelope in front of him. I notice his knee jiggles nervously under the table.
“…then we changed our minds because of dodging the tropical depressions…”
The man glances furtively at the other official then frowns with concentration as Dorin continues.
“…so we thought we might try Hispaniola. Now, is the whole island called Hispaniola, and is it divided up into Haiti on the west and this country—the Dominican Republic, on the east?”
The man’s smile freezes. His eyes dart rapidly from face to face.
“Sí, Dominican Republic…” he says tentatively.
“…and anyways, we had thought we might try to sail into Puerto Plata…”
“Ah! Puerto Plata!” He starts to write.
“…but, as I said, we didn’t have the appropriate charts, so we decided to come here to reprovision.” Dorin’s speech is becoming increasingly manicky. He runs a hand down the back of his neck and wipes his palm on his thighs.
“From here we anticipate going to Puerto Rico for a few days and then probably head down the Mona Passage to Venezuela in the foreseeable future.”
Cory scrunches his smile closed with his hands, but his ribs are shaking.
There is a long silence. The man smiles thinly, but there is panic in his eyes.
“Where…?” A bead of sweat runs down his cheek. He catches it with his handkerchief before it reaches his chin.
“Where…you…go…from…here?”
“Puerto Rico,” I say.
“Ah, Puerto Rico!” He mops his brow and writes on the envelope.
“How long your boat?” His eyes flick hopefully to me, but perhaps he thinks it’s not appropriate to address me directly when the captain is sitting right there. So he looks at Dorin.
“Do you want the length on the waterline or the length overall?”
“Um…” The man’s eyes twitch from side to side.
“Thirty-two feet,” Cory jumps in. The official smiles warmly at Cory.
“Firearms?” He carefully looks past Dorin and directs the question at Cory.
“All we have on board is the flare gun,” says Dorin, “but that’s stowed away securely in the emergency pack in the sail locker. Do you want to see it?”
“Flare gun?”
“Yes.”
The official looks over at me and says slowly, “You…have firearms …on boat?’
“No,” I reply.
He starts to write on the envelope, but the man sitting beside me clears his throat and speaks to him in a low voice in rapid Spanish. He is kneading the thin mattress we are sitting on, and I remember we are sitting directly on the broomstick. Does he think it’s a rifle?
There is a brief, staccato exchange between the men. The one in charge appears to have the final word, shaking his head as he slides out of the dinette seat. He folds the envelope and tucks it into his shirt pocket.
“We finish,” he says with evident relief.
“What should we do when it is time for us to depart?” asks Dorin. “Do you suggest we find your office, or should we simply phone you on VHF?”
“¿Sí?” the gentleman says hopefully and glances rapidly from face to face to see if that response will fly.
“Don’t you want to search the boat?” asks Dorin.
“No search,” he says and shakes his head vigorously.
“What do I owe you?” Dorin asks.
The Official looks uncomfortable. He speaks to his companion in Spanish, and they shift from foot to foot as they look at each other.
“It is Sunday,” says the leader apologetically.
“Oh, absolutely. I have every intention of paying you for coming out on your day off. How much do I owe you?”
They look embarrassed. “What you think?” he asks the man who had been sitting beside me, and who I thought understood no English. He shrugs his shoulders. The leader shrugs.
“Um, what you think?” He looks at the floor self-consciously and glances at his colleague again. “…um, twenty?”
“Twenty sounds fine!’ says Dorin, relieved. He hands them two ten dollar bills in American money. They both look at the money and then at each other.
“Thank you, thank you!” says the customs official. He shakes Dorin’s hand and nods a small, formal bow to me. His colleague grabs Dorin’s hand and pumps it. “¡Gracias! ¡Gracias, Señor!”
Cory moves out of the way, and they rapidly climb the stairs, jump off the boat, and head down the dock, looking at the money and talking to each other with gestures. They look happy.
“Well, that went well, don’t you think?” asks Dorin.
We later discover the unofficial going rate for weekends is twenty pesos. The exchange rate is three-and-a-quarter pesos to a dollar. In this case, they deserved it in American dollars.