Unless she grew up/lives near a port or marina, chances are high a person could live without ever seeing a boat. This is more so inland, since many people have never been to the coast. Believe it or not, it isn't shocking to find people that has lived in the Cibao Valley and have never been to Santo Domingo and others who can count the times they have been to Santo Domingo on the fingers of one hand. It's also common to meet people that have never been to the South or the East regions.
Perhaps a little shocking are people from Santo Domingo that have never been to another public access area of the city. In this case it isn't a place on the other side of the city, but rather "right there" and they never been there.
I suspect many Dominicans die with never visiting once many areas of the DR. In the past the DR was a very land tied country where most people lived their entire lives in a radius of perhaps 15 kilometers and never left that area. Even today, despite that after Trujillo the country has seen greater mobility after centuries of being very land tied, you can guess with good accuracy the geographic area where such-and-such extended family and/or ancestors lived by simply noticing their last names.
There are also other signs not just of how land tied the DR was until recently, but also that most of the population lived inland for centuries rather than the coasts which for all practical purposes were deserted. Unlike islands in the Lesser Antilles, you will notice that seafood isn't as prevalent in Dominican cuisine as they are in the cousine of most islands. Even plates that have their origin with much seafood in Spain, all the seafood part is replaced by land animal meat in the DR. Take as example the arroz caldoso which is native of southern Spain. This is very soupy rice full of seafood. That made it to the DR and became the asopao and guess what? There is no seafood in the asopao since they are replaced by land animal meats. The reason for that is rather simple. Since most of the population lived inland where it is less humid and less hot than on the coast, plus better land for farming; it was impossible to take seafood from the coast into inland without having it spoil along the way. Reaching Puerto Plata from Santiago was a several days journey.
The same happened in other places such as Puerto Rico despite it's smaller.
To this day there isn't a fishing industry in the DR like in other countries where they have fish farms on the coast and/or go fishing in open waters with big nets. Whenever fish is presented, usually it was captured earlier that day (minus what is found in supermarkets such as Nacional and often times that is imported seafood).
