Portsmouth,
Dominica
15.34.872N
61.27.829W

What a long day. A great day but long nevertheless.

It began at 7 am when Dale started the genset so that it could run its full course before we headed out for an island tour. We had not toured Dominica on our first trip down, so we were anxious to see what we had missed.

Jeffrey, our boat boy, had arranged for Andrew to pick us up at 8 am but when we arrived at the docks, he made his apologies and said that he had hired Michael “Budda” to be our guide for the day. This turned out to be to our advantage as Budda is a botonist and was very knowledgeable about the plants and flowers that Nicky and I were interested in.

We headed north around the island and Budda would stop periodically to pick a few leaves of bay, lemon grass, citronella, anise or point to custard apples, bread fruit, bread nuts, nutmeg, cocoa, apricots, bananas, red bananas, grapefruit, pineapple and a host of various trees or flowers. I think I snapped 200 photos today.

We toured a Caribe Indian village, an emerald pool at the base of a waterfall and had a lunch of local cuisine. We walked through rainforests where we saw and heard various birds and Budda would tell us stories of various politicians that had run amok or tales his grandmother had told him when he was a child.

He spoke highly of a woman who had lived to be 120+ years old and said that it was the government that had killed her. His reasoning was stretched but we got the drift. Due to her age, she came to the attention of the government. They wanted to take care of their “national treasure.” Budda never said that she was a Rasta but he said that she believed in the natural way of life and never ate anything that had chemicals added to it. At some point, medical workers trimmed her long toenails and trimmed them too short. This caused an infection that led to her loosing her feet, then her legs and eventually her life.

We felt that Budda was an excellent guide. At one point a man was walking along the path with a lighted cigarette. Budda was very polite when he told the man that smoking was not allowed in the rainforest as the trees were volatile (there were large no smoking signs everywhere). The man seemed extremely put out but did douse his cigarette until we were out of sight. Budda scooped up a small bit of sap from the tree we were standing next to and told me to smell it. It smelled almost like kerosene. He took a lighter and touched the sap, it ignited immediately and burned like a candle before he snuffed it out.

Budda also told us of his own personal experiences where his father is a black man and his mother is a Caribe Indian. Of the four children from this union, one looks Indian, the other three are black; Budda being one of them. He told us that the Caribes have a long standing hatred of blacks and that his father was not allowed to live with his mother in the Caribe village. Once the children were out of school, the 3 blacks were no longer welcome in their own village. It’s obvious that he is very hurt, to the point of being bitter, over this situation.

I was extremely impressed with our island tour and commented to Dale on a couple of occasions that once you get out of the main villages, the island was cleaner than most of them down here.
Budda dropped us off at the bank (per our request) and Andrew picked us up once again to take us back to our respective boats. As it was almost 6 pm, we made a mad dash to “Big Papa’s” to retrieve our laundry and have dinner. It has been a very long day, but not one I would have wanted to miss.

Tomorrow, we’ll hoist our anchors and point our bows south again towards Martinique.

Portsmouth,

Dominica
15.34.872N
61.27.829W

Dale & Gerry made their way into the customs dock this morning about 8, while Nicky and I stayed on our respective boats and blogged it. They came back a bit later and said that the immigration official wasn’t in and they had to return to the offices after lunch when he came back.

Until then, Gerry & Nicky went in to check out the laundry facilities and the possibility of an internet connection. As luck would have it, right about the time that they returned with news of a WiFi connection, my computer picked up the signal. Apparently, the electricity was down in town earlier in the morning and when it came back on, so did the internet possibilities.

In the meantime, Dale tried to track down a leak in our water system. When the pump is on, it cycles about once every minute. We’ve also noticed that our bilge pump cycles more often. The only problem, the water system is fresh but the bilge water seems to be salt. He’s working on the problem.

I continued to blog it. For some crazy reason, I take an inordinate amount of time to create these posts. Then I have to edit, then re-edit when the spell check uses the wrong word, and choose pictures and then wait forever and a day to upload them. Once I found out that I could upload pictures from this connection, I went back to my last posts and added the photos that I had wanted to originally. That is, after I read and answered all of our e-mail. Can I help it if it takes me all day?

At 4 pm, Andrew, one of Jeffrey’s guides, came by to pick us up from our boat. The waves coming into the harbor made it pretty confusing to say the least. I dang near went in the drink just getting into his boat. Then we went over to Orpailleur where I threatened to take their picture if they fell in, knowing full well that Nicky’s camera was poised on me during my less than graceful crossing. Once we were all aboard, off we went to the opposite side of the harbor where we were deposited for the guys to go buy our tickets at the gas station across the street for the Indian River Tour. Nicky and I checked out the local crafts. When they returned, we all crawled back into the boat and made our way up the river.

Talk about a trip back in time. I think I mentioned last year that a curve in this river was used in the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Where the witch’s cabin was. In any event. It’s a pretty cool ride. Andrew told us that although Dominica has boa constrictors, they usually don’t attack humans but prey on the local iguanas instead. There’s no doubt in my mind that a boa constrictor would find this area a nice hunting ground. As it was, Andrew pointed out the iguanas in the trees, the various birds and bird nests, the land crabs watching us glide by, as well as the various trees, bushes and flowers.

Dale and Gerry took turns remembering the Disney ride through the jungle and kept saying that around the next corner was where the elephants would squirt us or the hippo would appear from under the water.

One thing that was different from last year, was the end of the ride where a tall, thatched roof building once stood. Inside you could buy extraordinarily strong (rum) Dynamite Punch. Seems the owners either didn’t pay their taxes or didn’t pay their rent and their building was torn down. Looks like someone else is now trying to build on their property and has started with the thatched roof and a little stand selling, you guessed it, Dynamite Punch.

Portsmouth,

Dominica
15.34.872N
61.27.829W

With clocks properly set, we all got up and lifted our anchors at 6:45 am this morning. Normally we like to leave at 7 but since we were dodging a couple of rain showers, it seemed to be in our best interests to leave when we could see. However, as sometimes is the case, there was no wind beneath the clouds. We ended up motoring off and on to the end of the island which was clouded in a fine mist that lasted until the island was out of sight.

Once we passed the southern tip of Guadeloupe, the trades filled in and we started to sail. It was a decent little romp until again, we saw a black cloud looming ahead of us. We brought in our jib to be on the safe side, turned on the radar and plunged into it. Luckily, what little winds were associated with the shower were hardly over 20 kts and soon we exited out the other side and continued to motor the last hour into Dominica.

Well before the harbor entrance and in the pouring rain, Albert, one of the many “boat boys” came roaring up to us in his boat to welcome us to Dominica. We thanked him for his greeting and told him that we had used Jeffrey on Sea Bird last year and would be using him again this year. Orpailleur got the same greeting and unfortunately for Albert, he had the same reply from them as well.

We rounded the headland that protects the northern side of the bay and entered into Portsmouth. There were certainly a lot more boats in this year than there were last but there was room for us in 20’ of water and close to where we wanted to be. I’m sure that Albert had telephoned Jeffrey because we had just dropped our anchor when he pulled up in his colorful boat to welcome us back and ask what he could do for us. We told him that we were interested in the Indian River Tour and possibly one of the tours to the rainforest. No problem mon, 4 o’clock tomorrow, he’d send a boat to pick us up for the Indian River Tour.

Since it was my turn to cook dinner, I went below to start on my lasagna when Dale called me back up. He had found a flying fish plastered to the side of the boat. Quite possibly the smallest one I’ve ever seen. I had been telling Nicky just the other day that we had seen a squadron of small ones that looked like fairies on the water with their wings glistening in the sunlight. This one was much smaller than those. When Gerry came over later, we sent the little guy’s body home with him.

At dinner later, I did my best to fill them up and I guess I must have succeeded since both Gerry & Nicky went home with left over lasagna. Either that or it wasn’t very good and they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Nah! Nicky would tell me in a most definitive manner that it was not fit for human consumption. And she didn’t, so it must have been edible.