AltaVista Translation Service

	Enter your search terms   Submit search form
	Web Luperon Yachts Value Yachts Caribbean Yachts

Julia has been published! As many of you readers out there know already, Julia Bartlett is a long time friend of the boating community here in Luperon on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. She has contributed a great deal to the growth of the community and the steady increase of boat traffic in and out of Luperon Bay has a direct relationship to her personal efforts. You will find several of her short articles right here on this website and we are super happy to hear that she has now been published. Her skills and hard work has paid off and we urge each and every one of you to purchase her new book and keep Julia writing! Her brand new book entitled "Just Another Day in Paradise" is available through the Amazon books website. Great reviews below!

Julia has been published! As many of you readers out there know already, Julia Bartlett is a long time friend of the boating community here in Luperon on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. She has contributed a great deal to the growth of the community and the steady increase of boat traffic in and out of Luperon Bay has a direct relationship to her personal efforts. You will find several of her short articles right here on this website and we are super happy to hear that she has now been published. Her skills and hard work has paid off and we urge each and every one of you to purchase her new book and keep Julia writing! Her brand new book entitled "Just Another Day in Paradise" is available through the Amazon books website. Great reviews below!

Tearing down Luperon Bay... Here is a sun tanned Julia roaring down Luperon Bay on one of her many visits. Nothing in Julia's life is in slow motion! Even the dinghy has to move fast to keep her happy! In one of her many great articles she wrote about Luperon Bay and the tremendous protection provided there from all kinds of weather. This just happens to be one of the very best Hurricane Protection Holes in the Caribbean! Here is a link to that article and what Julia Bartlett had to say about our  Natural Hurricane Shelter  right here in Luperon Bay.

Tearing down Luperon Bay... Here is a sun tanned Julia roaring down Luperon Bay on one of her many visits. Nothing in Julia's life is in slow motion! Even the dinghy has to move fast to keep her happy! In one of her great articles she wrote about Luperon Bay and the tremendous protection provided here from all kinds of weather. This just happens to be one of the very best Hurricane Holes in the Caribbean! Here is what Julia Bartlett had to say about our Natural Hurricane Shelter right here in Luperon Bay.

Here is Julia at the helm... At the moment her yacht, a Catalina 30 tall rig, is in need of a few months work and for that reason she ~ and Julia ~ are in the Rio Dulce, Guatemala. The marina where "they" are moored is set in a fresh water lagoon surrounded by jungle. In the mornings, Julia tells me, she is woken by howler monkeys, the screeches of parrots and the bubbling of a huge coffee machine which the marina owner keeps going day and night. “He thinks that the key to running a successful marina is a free supply of intravenous caffeine. He could be right,” she says.

Read what Julia Bartlett had to say about our  Natural Hurricane Shelter  right here in Luperon Bay.

Great Book Review from ... David Stacey of the Burton Daily Mail.

The fear and horror as Hurricane Marsha sweeps through the Caribbean, killing and maiming local people and boat bums alike, smashing homes and devastating all in its path, are grippingly described in Julia Bartlett’s novel, Just Another Day in Paradise.

This is her first book though she is an experienced writer in newspapers and magazines. It is to be published on New Year’s Day, 2008, and is likely to be available in bookshops and through the Internet.

At the moment her yacht, a Catalina 30 tall rig, is in need of a few months work and for that reason she ~ and Julia ~ are in the Rio Dulce, Guatemala. The marina where "they" are moored is set in a fresh water lagoon surrounded by jungle. In the mornings, Julia tells me, she is woken by howler monkeys, the screeches of parrots and the bubbling of a huge coffee machine which the marina owner keeps going day and night. “He thinks that the key to running a successful marina is a free supply of intravenous caffeine. He could be right,” she says.

While waiting for the work on her boat to be completed she is planning to travel overland visiting the Mayan ruins in the mountains. This is partly research for her next book which will be set in Guatemala.

That drawing from life in Just Another Day in Paradise makes me think that there is also something of Julia in one of the main characters of the story, Morgane, a tough, adventurous young woman with the sea in her blood. Certainly Julia has the sea in her blood. Her late father gave up a safe job in insurance when he volunteered to serve on a sailing ship on a round-the –world voyage.

Somewhere in the Far East the organisers ran out of money so Dennis threw in his own savings to enable the voyage to continue. The ship, on reaching Malta on the return half of the voyage was too battered for the final part of the route back to Britain so Dennis – joined by Julia – manned it on short trips around Malta. In the book Morgane’s dash to beat the threatened hurricane and her ordeal when trapped in a building under a massive mudslide will set the readers’ pulses racing.

Throughout its pages we feel that we are in the presence of real people – tough men and women fighting the raging winds and sea, risking their lives to save others, eating and drinking when they can and starving when they can’t; sometimes holding back the tears and sometimes not, making friends and enemies with people all over the world.

Enemies? Yes, there are baddies as well as good-hearted, heroic and occasionally silly people in this action packed story. The special camaraderie of the boat people and the way they think and share their troubles and joys provide as much compelling reading as the dangers they face day in and day out.

And yes, when the storm dies down, it really does seem like paradise.

Read what Julia Bartlett had to say about our Natural Hurricane Shelter right here in Luperon Bay.

Another great review... by Bob Berlinghof who calls the book "Close to a Classic" and judging by her other writings this one will be good. Available through Amazon Books and worth buying. Support Julia and keep her writing! By the way, this is a view of our beautiful Hurricane protected bay here in Luperon. Cruise on in and make yourself at home! You might be some of the rest of us and never leave!

Another great book review... by Bob Berlinghof from the Caribbean Compass Online which is a web site that you should not miss.

Close to a Classic ~ Just Another Day in Paradise, by Julia Bartlett, ©2004, 257 pages. ISBN 978-1-4303-2709-7

This tale of a plucky solo sailor, Morgane, and her travels between islands in the Caribbean contains something I have never before come across in sailing literature &$126; a realistic, harrowing account of the aftermath of a tragic hurricane. The island on which she survives, wisely called St. Bertha, was modeled on St. Martin and the damage done to it by Hurricane Luis over a decade ago. At the time, the dimensions of the tragedy were largely glossed over by the news media. Bartlett’s account of countless lives lost, both at sea and on land (a mudslide killed uncounted illegal immigrants when the hill they lived on collapsed), shows a country in chaos and distress. It is not pretty, but it is one of the best features of this novel.

The supporting characters are generally well-drawn. Morgane’s boyfriend, Jimbo, and their sidekick, Terry, who each have their own boats, are particularly vivid. The dialogue between these three sparkles with wit and authenticity. This reader feels like he has tipped a few beers with them. Morgane’s cat, Nelson, is also featured with internal monologues, which should please cat lovers, but I found this a little too cute. Of her local characters, Ronnie, the bartender, Yves, the escaped convict, and Isabel, a woman crushed by the death of her friend, were well-portrayed. For comic relief there was a nutty taxi driver and an eccentric self-taught chiropractor. This book is chiefly about surviving a hurricane, but there is quite a bit of humour stuffed in between the devastations.

There is also a parallel story to Morgane’s, concerning her English friend Victoria. We are told in the first chapter that Morgane fled “a whining husband and whining kids” to become a self-reliant sailor. Victoria, a cog in the wheel of the English penal system, is seeking to escape a mundane job, and a family that doesn’t appreciate her, by visiting Morgane. The hurricane alters her travel plans and causes her to have the adventure of her life by forcing her to “wing it.”

The hurricane description is quite good, but its aftermath is even better, told from the points of view of Morgane, who manages to get ashore only to be buried under the mud, and Yves, an escaped prisoner who is searching for the remnants of his family while dodging the soldiers and police who are shooting at looters. Unfortunately, the realistic and bleak tone of this novel is upstaged by a jarring Hollywood ending. There are three or four miracles towards the end of this book which indicate that Ms. Bartlett was hoping to please everybody with an “all’s well that ends well” smiley-face attitude. This somewhat trivializes the horror of what has come before by undercutting the novel’s serious tone. The side story of Faye, an albino who feels victimized by local prejudice, is not enough to balance the contrived happy ending of all the characters. Morgane's brush with a drug baron is particularly weak. Some of the local dialect fails to ring true, but that is a minor complaint.

Although uneven in tone, I would still recommend this book, although I can’t help but wonder what a classic it could have been had the author set out to write a funny and bleak Caribbean novel without the miraculous ending.

Read here what Julia Bartlett had to say about our own Natural Hurricane Shelter right here in Luperon Bay.