15:34.7N 61:27.74W

Wed 11th & Thursday 12^th Jan.

Once again we woke to a pretty empty bay. The reason is that the destination for most of us heading north is Portsmouth on the island of Dominique and this is some 56 miles, mostly in the lee of the island and therefore quite slow sailing.

Very still, hot day with a flat sea. We went ashore to do our customs clearance for our departure the following morning and to get some essential shopping done. The internet café was closed and we had to return later to undertake sending and receiving our emails etc.

In the afternoon Sarah felt that we ought to be checking and rinsing our anchor warp and so we went to all the trouble of lowering all of this rope into the sea and then cleaning it as we replaced into the much cleaner anchor locker. This did cause one of our neighbours (Spanish) to come by in their dinghy to see if we were OK as they had watched us labouring away from the comfort of their restaurant table on the sea front!

We spoke to our son Ewan on the phone to wish him luck in a big interview that he has on Friday for a new job down in London. He seems to have prepared well for this with help from his Godfather so fingers and toes crossed.

On Thursday we were up at 6.00am and were under way by 6.30am heading north to Dominique.

By the time we reached the open Atlantic gap between the two islands, the wind was blowing a healthy 25 to m30 knots across the deck and there was a fair sea running, but the biggest issue was the torrential rain!

It was only after an hour or so that the skies cleared and we enjoyed a superb sail across  the 25 miles to the southern end of Dominique. We then still had 30 plus miles to sail up the west coast of the high and forbidding island. We decided to press Henry into service (Henry is our Hydrovane wind vane steering system and the slight changes we had just made proved to be wonderful and so despite the constant wind changes and downdrafts, we had a great sail up to Prince Rupert Bay and we dropped anchor just off Portsmouth, close to Halsway Grace who were spending a second night here.

However on the way up, we heard our name being called on the VHF and found ourselves talking to David and Lyn on Moonbeam. We were desperate to meet up with them again as they have just spent the summer sailing up the east coast of the USA and so were brimming with tips and advice for us. They were calling us because they had just changed their plan to stay in the Saintes another night and were sailing south to Prince Rupert bay as well. So we invited them for drinks and dinner and interrogated them pretty thoroughly!

Lots of rain today all the way up the island, although we seemed to be lucky most of the time, however it poured down in the evening and we ended up eating inside.

The wind came up in the night as forecast and we spent a few anxious hours checking our position, but an earlier dive to check the anchor had shown it to be well dug in and so we had not real need to be concerned. But we were still cautious as we had watched a 60ft yacht drag earlier (crew were away ashore) and it had been rescued by the boat boys just before it hit a large rusting hulk anchored in the bay.