Dominica
20 January 2018
We were underway again on Wednesday 10th January with a fast sail to the west coast of Martinique in 25-30kts easterly wind. We stopped the one night in St. Pierre and then had a cracking sail to Dominica in 25kts easterly wind, anchoring at Portsmouth in Prince Rupert Bay.
On the night of 18th September 2017, Category 5 Hurricane Maria with sustained winds of 175 mph hit Dominica (population 70,000) stripping the trees of all their leaves and creating a brown and bare landscape. Hardly a building escaped damage and 31 people died with another 34 missing.
We had brought some supplies of clothes, paper, pens, pencils, hammers and nails, and lots of rope for the fishing boats. We took a taxi tour and were shocked by the scale of devastation, with the south being harder hit than the north. The facility of changing rooms, dive shop, café and walkway for visiting Champagne reef had been swept away by mud, water and storm surge. The restaurant where we lunched at Scott’s Head had been taken by the sea. Trafalgar Falls previously only visible close up could be seen from 2-3 miles away as the forest had been destroyed.
However, the trees are sprouting new leaves but look very odd as branches and twigs were stripped away; houses have blue tarpaulins on roofs; people in two storey buildings are living only on the ground floor; mains electricity is only available in Portsmouth and Roseau, the capital; water is largely provided in the street by stand pipe but people also collect rain water into barrels and cisterns. Work is under way to restore buildings and tourist facilities – the latter are vital for the country as it had a high dependency on tourism.
The emergency period is ending, as solar lights and portable generators have been widely distributed. Food is in the shops and the Portsmouth Saturday market has vegetables but little fruit.
The people are remarkably resilient and upbeat, wanting to get back to work and to run their businesses. Yet estimates are that it will take 20 hurricane-free years to get back to where the island was before Maria – and even then they were recovering from Tropical Storm Erica which dumped so much water in 2015 that bridges and roads were swept away and mudslides ruined houses.
We have been encouraging cruisers to go and support the local businesses as much as they can.