Punta Cana Day 8: Delay for Catamaran

I decided not to wake up for the sunrise this morning as it was raining and I had got up the two mornings before. I was not happy to learn afterward that the sun did actually appear over the horizon this morning for a glorious sunrise! Bah!

 

Well, I did get up in time for wind surfing lessons at 0930 but the winds were too calm for any lessons and I was told to check back an hour later. Our checkout time was 1100 so it was cutting it quite close. I was told however that the winds were good enough for Catamaran lessons so I grabbed Hwan and headed out to the boat.

 

The lesson was pretty straightforward. We were given a few rules to follow by:

1) keep your back to the wind.
2) do not turn into the wind. i.e. when turning turn away from the wind
3) switch seats to the other side of the boat when changing tack. i.e. to keep the weight on the side facing the wind.
4) when there are two people on the catamaran then both people must stay on the same side and must switch sides when changing tack.
5) when there are three people then the two front seats are filled and the pilot will sit in the back and switch sides when changing tack.
6) even though there are four seats, there should be no more than three people on the catamaran.

 

The lesson only took fifteen minutes, and by the end we felt like we had a fairly good grasp of the concept, but did not have a lot of practice. Unfortunately when I inquired about wind surfing lessons I was told to check back at 1130. Much too late.

 

I checked out and got to the main lobby to find out that our flight was delayed by four hours! What?!?

 

Well, Hwan and I had checked the binder in the morning but did not take notice of the extra sheet that was inserted into the binder indicating the switch in time.

 

Crap! We had an extra four hours to spend in the resort! We ended up wasting a couple of hours getting ourselves organized, but Hwan and I were able to book one of the catamarans and get some much needed practice. It was too bad that if we had known about the delay we could've also got some wind surfing lessons (and practice) as well!

 

There was an interesting experience with a few of the girls who rented the catamaran. Normally they do not rent out the catamaran to neophytes but the girls had lied about their experience..

 

It was interesting to watch them flounder, and very lucky that nobody got hurt! Hwan grabbed one of the kayaks and was able to coach them enough to get them back onto shore (far from their starting point) without any loss of life. One of the employees had to run down shore to pilot the catamaran back to the docking area.

 

We grabbed a last bite of food before heading out. The flight was fairly uneventful. I actually fell asleep on the plane even though it did not feel as if I got any sleep at all.