The two islands in the East Caribbean that always make us feel at home are Grenada and Dominica. On both islands we know people who greet us, visit us during our stay and treat us like friends although it started out as a professional relationship. On Dominica this is Albert. Albert runs a tour and boat service operation in Rupert Bay and is member of PAYS, Portsmouth Association of Yacht Security. PAYS installed and maintains 30 mooring buoys in the bay and as soon you enter the bay one of their members approaches your boat to guide you to a buoy if you wish and offer you the services of their organization or you call the operator you know from your past experience. So while we sailed into Rupert Bay we called Albert on the VHF and within minutes he was next to the boat with his typical friendly greeting, helped us connect to a mooring buoy and informed us about his family and the slow business during the month of April.

Yes indeed business is slow in Rupert Bay with a very limited amount of boats. Business was even that slow that the traditional PAYS Sunday evening BBQ was canceled. April is of course the month of the most sailing activities in Antigua with the Classic Regatta and the Antigua Sailing Week. It is also said that April has the most swell into Rupert Bay. We cannot remember this fact from our previous visits, but indeed the swell is bad. Except when the wind is blowing hard from the mountains a south/west swell is rolling into the bay. Rupert Bay is large being over 2 miles wide and 1 mile deep, so a good solution to be out of the swell would be to anchor on the south side of the bay. However, the disadvantage is that PAYS is not patrolling that side of the bay and you are relatively far away from town and there is no internet access. In Rupert Bay the “Purple Turtle” Restaurant offers an internet hotspot from the “HotHotHotSpot” internet service that services many locations on the east Caribbean Islands the service is payable from daily up to 6 months and it works very well. Thus the choices are being uncomfortable with internet, security and easy access to town or more comfortable without any service. So every night we put our matrass on the floor and still had a good night’s rest except when you need to visit the bathroom and you are not completely awake. The other big problem with the rolling is the entry to and exit from the boat from the side from your dinghy or other service vessels. A fellow cruiser who put his foot too low on the boarding ladder had his foot caught in-between the ladder and the wooden service vessel sustaining a very bloody and painful injury.

For people who do not remember our brief description of the beauty of Dominica following is a summary from one of our previous blogs. If you do not like the color of green in all different shades you will not like Dominica. Dominica is green and not just green it is beautiful green. The very rugged mountains are covered with dense jungle type of vegetation with every type of plant and fruit you can imagine. During our tours over the island the tour guide stopped the bus at many places that had a specific type of plant, tree, brush or fruit and we recognized it from any of the other countries Dorothy and I have lived in or visited. Dominica has 7 volcanos and although there is currently no threat of a major eruption they are active which is evident from the hot water springs, hot mud and the release of hot gas. Dominica is also the land of rivers (365 of them); although in most cases these are mountain creeks that flow into the Caribbean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. Only one of them, the Indian River is accessible by boat. The Atlantic wet weather is pushed up by the Dominican mountains thus giving an abundance of rain on the east side of the island but also the west side, although drier has a lot of rain.

Although Roseau in Dominica has a cruise ship terminal, the island is not the typical large cruise ship destination. Dominica supports much more eco-tourism and due to that the island has the least impact of all the Caribbean islands of modern development. On the south side in Portsmouth is a Medical Schools called the “Ross University” and it has some nice modern buildings for both the university and dormitories. This area has a modern supermarket and a few smaller malls. Due to this one of our fellow cruisers calls this area the most “un-Dominican” part of the island, but still enjoyed together with the rest of our group the frozen yoghurt that you can buy here and the groceries we bought. The main roads in Dominica have two way lanes, but all the others are narrow and steep; these are the improved trails built hundreds of years ago. So Dominica is the only island where I chose not to rent a car and only used busses or go on guided tours. The best way to see Dominica is to hike on their wide trails that are the best you have ever seen. You can cross Dominica from south to north and east to west on trails over steep mountainous terrain and visit all the volcanos, waterfalls and parks. Although Dorothy does not like to hike due to her knee problems, I can convince her once in a while to go with me on an easy trail like we did this time and it was great.

Together with 7 other cruisers and our tour guide and driver Martin Carriere we made a bus tour in the north part of Dominica. We drove over the mountains with beautiful scenic views to the east side of the island. We visited a few beaches, a small chocolate manufactory, the Red Rock eroded formation, a historic sugar mill, volcanic area and we swam in a cold mountain creek and we realized again that Dominica is a place to visit and enjoy an unspoiled island. To fill our (cooking) gas bottle we decided to go to Roseau. The bus driver and our fellow passengers had no problem that we took our propane bottle on board and helped us find the filling station. With two small propane bottles on board we normally have some spare, but since you cannot fill propane bottles on the French Islands we always make sure to have full bottles before we sail to a French island. The filling was easy and we could wait for it. On some islands it takes at least a day and sometimes even longer before you get the bottle back. On Saturday after visiting the local market and eating a real local breakfast in Portsmouth we took the bus again to Roseau to visit the market there. On every island the Saturday market is always big and a lot of fun to visit. It gives a real good feeling to see all the local fruits and vegetables that are available offered in most cases by women and quite a few of them wearing traditional clothing. It was also time for me to get a haircut that is cheap and fast to have it done in a local barbershop. Most of the time these barbershops have a TV with always with a sport channel on. It is fun to hear all the fanaticism of the barbershop visitors, but since most of the people speak creole we cannot understand the conversation. On the English Islands people speak English and on the French Islands of course French, but normal conversation is done in Creole and this language is spoken on every island except on the former Dutch Islands where Dutch, English and Papiamento is spoken.

Since I learned to dive, it is my intention to dive on each island we visit. So I took 2 dives in Rupert Bay from the shore to the poles of the cruise ship dock. This is not a dock for large cruise ships but more for large charter sailing vessels. These were not spectacular but very relaxed dives which is good for me to build my experience and we saw seahorses, an octopus and a large eel. The eel was completely buried in the sand, but the dive master recognized the shape and dug his hand in the sand to disturb the eel and the animal came out of the sand, swam away from us and a little further immediately started wiggling with its tail in the sea bottom and within seconds disappeared again under the sand.

Since there was again no Sunday BBQ we decided to leave Dominica and sail directly from Portsmouth to St. Pierre in Martinique. This is a 10 hour sail, so we left Rupert Bay at first light at 5:15 in the morning. It was a rough sail with an average of 25 kn. wind on the nose and a rough sea, but most of the time we sailed with the current and arrived at 3:15 in the afternoon in Martinique. We are planning to visit several anchorages in Martinique and will report about these visits in our next blog.