We sailed from our overnight anchorage for about 2 hours to the most northern harbour on Dominica Portsmouth. The wind ranged from about 2 to 30+ knots and all around the compass. As Chris said “If you don’t like this wind there’ll be another one along shortly.”
On passage Chris had done some navigation with Alex as part of his schooling and while he Chris and Robbie went off to explore the town and find a doctor for Chris’ ear Jamie and I tackled some schoolwork too. In fact it was probably one of our most successful schooling days so far with Alex finally engaging with his St Lucia project and answering his class emails.
At 4 we went with a guide called Monty up the Indian River so called because until a hurricane in 1974 the last of the original Caribbean Indians lived along this river. The hurricane “mashed” everything up and the Indians moved but the name has remained. Our guide rowed us (7 in the boat) up the river against the wind and pointed out bloodwood trees so named because the sap is red, iguanas, herons, egrets, crabs, mullet, crayfish, hibiscus, mangrove and a boa constrictor. Cool. The river narrows rapidly and the trees form a green tunnel all around you. We met some other people we knew at the end of the trip upstream and spent some time chatting and drinking local rhum punch while our guide made us beautiful models of frigate birds, fish and grasshoppers out of palm fronds. On the way back, we passed the sites of the filming of the witch scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
We are considering moving straight on to Antigua missing out Guadeloupe but we can’t get a met at the moment so we’re waiting till tomorrow.
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