Today, Thursday 17 March, we arrived in Portsmouth in Dominica, not the Dominican Republic, but an island between Martinique in the south and Guadeloupe in the north. We left Wednesday evening for the 100M sail, with a reef 2 in the main, full stay sail and reef 2 in the yankee and we blasting along at 9 & 10kts in 18kts of wind. The boat is so powerful on the wind as we pushed 30kts over the deck we wished we had put in a third reef in, it was again very boisterous especially in the acceleration zones at the ends of the islands and then with large wind shadows with less than 5kts of wind as we sailed by the larger peaks at around 1,200mtrs high.

 

We arrived at first light, motoring the last few in the wind shadow, to a fleet of race yachts all with Russian crew about to blast of somewhere â even 3 Oysters with GBR race numbers â odd, but true.

We will catch up on sleep today and finally relax a little before we tackle the mountainous rainforest and the Indian River canoe trip. I promise some photos this time