Portsmouth, Dominica
23 January 2017 | Prince Rupert Bay, Dominica
Virginia and Dennis Johns
We arrived here at 2:30pm in Portsmouth, Dominica in Prince Rupert Bay, having sailed for 2-3 hours on the crossing of the channel between Martinique and Dominica. Once in the lee of the island, we again had to supplement with the engine. They have a group called PAYS (Porstmouth Association of Yacht Services) which is an organization of boat handlers. As in other anchorages, they come out to greet you to help you moor or anchor and then offer all kinds of services, including tours. But they are organized here in a way that they take shifts at night too in order to provide security in the anchorage. The first to approach us was Providence (Martin). We signed up with him to do a tour of the Indian River the next afternoon. But he was busy with his young son that morning so we used another PAYS boatman named Lawrence of Arabia to arrange our morning hike through the Syndicate Nature Trail and to the Falls. Lawrence was also arranging the evening BBQ on the beach which was a fundraiser for PAYS.
We went to the BBQ that evening where we had grilled fish, grilled chicken, rice, salad, and lots of Rum Punch. We hooked up with two other english speaking couples, one from the UK on Explorer and Silke and Martin from Germany on Entropy. We had a great time visiting over dinner with island music playing in the background. Around 10pm they turned up the music, which ended our conversation, so we all headed back to our boats.
Tues, the 24th, we did our hike through the rainforest National Park and up to the falls. It was so fun. We were hiking under the canopy and so stayed relatively cool. And then we had to walk across the running, but shallow river a half dozen times. It was great. We asked our driver to take us to a place where the locals eat for lunch - delicious. We immediately were picked up for our afternoon adventure of a cruise on the Indian River, under a canopy of mango type trees. Lovely birds, cool shade, beautifully lush green rainforest all around. We stopped at the river bar and had a refreshing drink of passion fruit juice and some coconut. What a great day the three of us had.
In the evening we went ashore to get some wifi to check weather, email, and make this post.
Wed, the 25th we sail to Guadalupe and plan to anchor just for the night and move on to Antigua Thu the 26th. Greg will be flying home from Antigua and United only flies out of there on Sat and Sun, so we want to make sure he is there in time to get in his stand-by reservation.
All's well aboard.