Yesterday we left St Pierre early, to head northwards for Dominica - the first of the Leeward Islands. With the wind somewhat to the east, at last we didn't have a hard beat to windward, but once in the open sea there were several big squalls with 35 knot gusts so ended up galloping along with double reefed main and jib, wearing our pac-a-macs under our life jackets. The wind died almost completely once in the lee of Dominica, with just ferocious gusts coming down the valleys we passed. We'd planned to go to Roseau, the capital, and did manage to find out that there were operational mooring buoys and good security there, but it had a complete dearth of yachts there so we pressed on the extra 20 miles up to Portsmouth, in Prince Rupert Bay.

Dominica looked just beautiful: wonderful green hills and cave-drilled cliffs, and constant rainbows breaking through the clouds that cover the rainforest. But looking closer you can see whole hillsides with trunks of trees stripped bare of leaves and branches by last year's hurricane, and the pretty pastel coloured villages by the sea have no roofs to the houses.

Just before Prince Rupert Bay, we were met by Lawrence of Arabia in his red and yellow boat - he's one of the local guide/fishermen/boat boys who is part of the PAYS network. PAYS stands for Portsmouth Association of Yacht Services, and was set up by locals who want to ensure good security, sound moorings and pester-free services for yachties - to keep them coming to the island. Then on entering the harbour we were greeted by Avin, another of the PAYS guys, who found us a mooring, and also by the crews of two UK yachts, who had been relaying messages between Avin and ourselves, and who immediately invited us to join them for sundowners ashore at the Purple Turtle.

Well, it is lovely here - but there's so much hurricane damage still to be put right, and so much work already under way putting it right. This is a busy place. A priority was to get income coming back into the economy - so the anchorage has been largely cleared of debris, some of the mooring buoys reinstated, and although some of the dinghy docks are now just lines of spikes, a couple of good solid new ones have been built to help people ashore.

We were trying to find out what we could bring that would be of use, but the PAYS office is not functioning due to damage, and the land-lines are out, and they can't update their website.... Avin tells us though that right now they would really like seeds and seedlings - people, especially in the villages, need to grow their own food, not rely on gifts, to get life together again. Tomatoes, squashes - anything that grows in the region, really. They also need roofing supplies - roofing nails and screws, etc, as the zinc roofing sheets are still on the island, just several kilometres away where they were blown. Hand-tools, especially rechargeable ones; and school supplies such as exercise books, paper, pencils, crayons, story-books etc. So, for anyone reading this who is coming this way, I hope this is useful.

Today's photo was taken in St Pierre during sundowners.