We arrived in Dominica on Sunday March 5th
after a nice sail from Les Saintes – as usual, the wind was not what was
predicted and rather than have winds on our beam, they were about 40 degrees
off the bow. Not the most comfortable angle for sailing but it eventually got
us to where we wanted to be!
Portsmouth – our first Dominica destination
has a wonderfully effective system in place to assist yachts. There is a group that is sanctioned and
licensed by the government to act as the primary points of contact. The
organization is called PAYS – Portsmouth Association of Yacht Services. This
very profession group replaced a very ad-hoc group, of individuals all trying
to secure whatever business they could get from the boats. The PAYS gents are
all trained tour guides and their roll is to provide a secure and organized
experience for us boaters. They assist in locating a mooring, providing
information about propane refilling, their Sunday night benefit BBQ on the
beach, directions to the closest ATM, a shuttle to Customs if you want and
lastly they sell their services for guided tours.
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| PAYS |
Our PAYS master was Uncle Sam and he
certainly lived up to the role. He got us to our mooring ball, customs and then
made sure we got our tickets for the BBQ that night. They also do a great job of intervening in the
event of a conflict between yachts and some of the guys selling their fruit or
whatever off of surfboards! Every island needs to learn from what Portsmouth
has going to welcome yachts.
Our Sunday night PAYS BBQ turned out to be
a sold out affair serving at least 75 or 80 folks with chicken and fish and an
all you want rum punch!
Island Tour with Uncle Sam.
We reserved a car tour of the northern
section of the island with Uncle Sam and we were happy that the weather was in
our favour. This trip started by heading inland into the rain forest of
Dominica – awesome! We drove for a couple hours visiting the only remaining Caribe
Indian settlement – in all the other islands they were murdered of kicked out.
Much like our native Indians – they receive government funding but from what we
could see, they work extremely hard at cultivating fruits and vegetables on the
VERY steep hillsides.
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| West Coast |
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| West Coast |
A stop for lunch overlooking the western shore of the island offered us the chance to experience some new to us treats –
“poulet boucané” along with a plateful of unknown vegetables!
The last impressive stop was a beautiful
waterfall called the Emerald Pool and it really does live up t its name. A
spectacular spot indeed.
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| Emerald Falls |
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| Emerald Falls |
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| Video of Emerald Falls |
Wanting to get all the touristy items in,
we booked an Indian River tour for the next day. Mid afternoon, Uncle Sam
picked us up at the boat and we headed off to Indian River. The guides are not
permitted to use the boats engine to tour the river, so they row us the entire
afternoon. What now makes this a famous spot is that it is where a few of the
swamp scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 were filmed. Of note is the witch Calypso’s hut.
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| Witch Calypso's Hut |
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| Indian River |
The trees grow completely over the river
making for an incredibly beautiful experience. The tree roots are so twisted
and intertwined that it looks spooky – good thing it is daylight!
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| Gnarly Roots |
At the top of the tour is a swamp hut bar –
how very convenient of them! The rum punch was deadly – could not have two of
these!
The next 4 days turned to to be an absolute
deluge of rain. Normally this is their dry season. It rained almost without
stop for the entire 4 days. This turned out to be a major weather event for
Dominica.
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| Washed out bridge on the main road |
The airport was closed down for 2 days due
to weather and flooding of the taxiways. The main highway (in Dominican terms
this means a FULL two lanes!) between Portsmouth and Roseau suffered a bridge
washout that will have the highway closed for weeks if not months.
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| GOING..... |
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| GONE!!!! |
Well the rain did stop and after been
cooped up on board, it was great to get out and walk about. We took the
opportunity to hike up the Cabrits National Park and the restored Fort Shirley,
dating from the 18th century.
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| The rain is gone!!! |
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| Fort Cabrits |
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| Fort Cabrits |
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| Fort Cabrits |
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| Fort Cabrits |
 
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| Up the mast looking for land! |
We did have one VERY surprising coincidence
while we were in Portsmouth. A gentleman stopped by one afternoon and stated
that he almost confused our boat for his! We chatted for a while about the
Hylas 46 model and as the conversation progressed, I asked him the name of the
boat – he answered Capers but the prior name was Tranquilite. WOW – when we
were looking for a Hylas 46 there was only two available on the US East Coast –
one was Tranquilite and the other was to become Ambition. We had turned our
back on Tranquilite because the boat was in a terrible condition inside. The
woodwork was deeply gouged, scratched and damaged by water.
Plus the boat just did not feel good for us.
Here we are some 3 ½ years later and the two boats are side by side in a bay in
Dominica! It is an awfully small world indeed!
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