Tuesday night Ken and I had a lovely dinner with Venetta and Ginette (two Dominican women I went to high school with in Canada). We went to the Westport Tavern, which is situated by the area where most cruisers anchor or get a mooring in Roseau. I once again had the lionfish (we've been there before) and it was fantastic. Of course, they have won a competition for their lionfish dishes. Remarkably, Ken's and my meals, with a couple of drinks, was about $30 USD... what a deal.

Wednesday we left Sea Cat's mooring and headed north, having procured our coastal cruising permit from Customs for that day on Monday. For most of the time, we averaged a happy 4 knots under jib alone. We weren't in a rush for the 20 nautical mile trip north, so full sails didn't feel like a necessity; I also suspected that there would be some decent gusts of wind coming off the mountains that would put us on our ear, so the main would have just added to the heel factor (I was right as we saw sustained gusts of close to 30 knots). We arrived in Portsmouth at 1530, about 45 minutes before the rain started again. We were lucky to have a reasonably dry sail up, with only a few drops coming from the often leaden skies.

We saw one of the "boat boys" employed by 'Alexis' as we approached Port Arthur Bay. He recognized us, welcomed us back, and knew not to bother offering us a mooring as we anchor in this bay. He appreciated the cold can of Kubuli beer I tossed over to him.

As we were approaching our traditional anchoring area, one of the other "boat boys" approached us and wanted to engage us in conversation as we were in the process of anchoring. I yelled at Ken and the guy "Hey, we are anchoring here!" to get Ken's attention and to get the boat boy to leave us alone for a bit. Afterwards, I nicely told him to wait until a boat is anchored and set before trying to engage the crew in discussion; the distraction was/is not appreciated when anchoring.

This morning as I was running, Martin from 'Providence' popped by to say hi. He commented to Ken that it has been very quiet around here lately. Certainly the weather, with the high winds and the seas that accompany those winds, has changed a few cruising schedules, but it may be a difference in the cruisers, too. Hopefully things will improve for the Yacht Services providers. They certainly have a good product and provide great services for cruisers.

After breakfast (Dutch pancakes with stewed plantains, yum!) we both jumped into the dinghy and walked through "town" to get to the Customs office. We had "permission" to be in Dominica until January 10, and had to get an extension to be able to stay until next week instead. The Roseau Customs officials told us we get it done in Portsmouth, which was no big deal, as we have to walk past Immigration in the Police Station in Roseau, anyway.

"Town" is actually a collection of a number of communities that have basically blended together. What most of us think of as Portsmouth, is actually Lagon, Glanvillia, Portsmouth, Port Arthur and one or two others I may have missed, working with a basic road map. It has sort of melded together, like any metropolis would, except the population would not be considered large by non-Caribbean standards, even if it IS the second biggest town in Dominica.

We walked through the collection of towns after dropping off our laundry, observing the new sidewalks (Roseau, you could have had that!), and made our way to Customs. We were recognized by a couple of people, as we recognized familiar faces from our previous visits. The Customs visit was a non-event. Rather than being sent to Immigration, as we were told would happen by the Roseau officials, we were told we were fine and to just return when we were ready to leave. Yup, that was easy!

Back through the populated areas we walked, stopping for a couple of Ray's Rotis, and picking up some cans of beers for the yacht service providers (boat boys feels like the wrong expression for these professionals). Some fresh grapefruit, as sweet as oranges, and we were ready to return to the boat.

It's nice to be back.