(Blog No.61) Martinique - Dominica

Catou
Paul and Sylvie Tucker
Tue 12 Apr 2011 02:31
15:34.80N 61:27.71W
 
Just a reminder - to get to the blog - it's www.mailasail.com.  Then click on web diaries and blogs, then when you see the list of boat names, just click on Catou.  Up will come a position map.  No photos added yet though.  Hope to do so in next couple of days.
 
Monday 11th April 2011.  Yesterday was our first night at anchor on this trip.  As mentioned in yesterday's blog (No.60), it was in the St Pierre Bay, Martinique - and it was wonderful.  Not a mosquito in sight and a calm night with no wind OR rain so no getting up to close the windows and skylights. AND it was cool, so we slept very well.     During the last few months we have seen lots of marine life, but until we arrived in Martinique we hadn't seen a full sized turtle on our travels - that is until Sylvie spotted one slowly swimming by as we were about to anchor.  It was a memorable sight.
 
We weighed anchor at 7am and set the sails just outside the bay.  We were very sheltered by the northern hills of Martinique so didn't really pick up any wind for nearly 2 hours, so had to keep the engine running for a couple of hours.  Eventually we had a lovely reach sail across the channel between northern Martinique and southern Dominica.  We had a few tropical squalls and it was heavily overcast all day - it was just like sailing in the English Channel. And it was cool for a change - we loved it!
 
After we passed the southern tip of Dominica, we had to start the engine as the wind died on us.  We were several miles off-shore - to try and avoid the wind-shadow that Dominica has, but it seems that it is bigger than we thought!  Dominica is the most beautiful and green island.  It is quite unlike any other Caribbean island, with mountains reaching over 4500 ft.  It is most certainly one of my favorite islands in the region.  It's said that if Columbus came back today, it's the only island that he'd still recognise - it still has so much of it's natural beauty.
 
After a fairly uneventful trip we reached our intended destination in Prince Rupert Bay - where Dominica's second town of Portsmouth is situated at the north of the island.  Surprisingly it has a large American university here, which helps the local and island economy.  I regularly drive here on my Dominica visits, since we have an important customer in the town.  As we approached the anchoring area, a local boat came out to offer us a mooring - which we accepted and paid him the US$10 fee - it saves a lot of work and worry with anchoring.  This chap turned out to be very useful.  We were running a bit low in diesel fuel and I had 3 x 20 litre fuel cans on board, so I asked him if he would run me across to the local Texaco garage which I knew was close to the beach.  I asked him his fee, and he said $30 - so I offered him EC$50 if he helped me to carry the cans from the garage - I was very pleased for the assistance, and we sped across to the beach, filled the cans, and sped back.  While Sylvie prepared supper, I syphoned the fuel cans into the main fuel tank and that will help with our fuel reserves during the next few days.  So once the fuel was transferred and the meal cooked, we settled down to an aperitif and dinnerwith the smell of ganja wafting in our direction from somewhere close by! Yah Mon