Basse Terre – Nelson’s Dockyard Antigua

A long day’s sailing. We set off at around 6am and arrived in Antigua at about 3:30. 2-3m waves. Glad to dock.

Domenica to Guadeloupe

The met was inconclusive so we decided to go anyway. Chris visited a doctor about his ear Jamie and Alex did some school, we had lunch and got ready to go. While preparing to set sail we saw an extremely large turtle -- three times. Each time we called the kids who came roaring up from below (silently) but he’d already dived below. They got very fed up with us.

The sail to Guadeloupe was 31 miles and we did it in about 3.5 hours – the wind was strong but fortunately the waves weren’t too high. We saw fabulous rainbows over Les Saintes. We anchored outside of the marina at Basse Terre and Chris and Jamie dinghied over to a neighbouring boat to see if the strike was still on. According to the rather Eeyore/Marvin type who was sailing single-handed to the BVI with a failing engine and broken mainsail
it was. So we decided to start early next morning for Antigua. Great sunset.

Portsmouth Harbour, Dominica

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.

Portsmouth Harbour, Dominica

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.

Chillin': Roseau-Castaways

We left Roseau to head for Portsmouth Harbour -- about a 3 hour run. We decided to stop for lunch at a small anchorage called Castaways which was supposed to have some good snorkelling. It was lucky we did. Our ever-so-reliable generator was belching out great gouts of white smoke. Out came the manual and we diagnosed hot exhaust or hot engine. No obvious breakages so it had to be a blockage. Chris finally found a great plug of twigs and weed in a hose. Drama over but too late to go to Portsmouth. We decided to stay at our mooring and had a pleasant afternoon and evening snorkelling, eating and watching Bringing up Baby.

Roseau

The kids were up early hoping to play with their new Australian friends and spent the early part of the morning using their kayaks and swimming round the boat. At lunch time we all went in to Roseau to provision and found the supermarket packed like Waitrose at Christmas. We fought our way round and while I was in line waiting for ham and turkey, I found out that it was the start of Carnival that afternoon which was why the whole of Roseau was in Whitchurchs. We had lunch, got the food back to the boat and Jamie went with the Australians to see the carnival parade. We all joined up in the evening for the jump up, but we decided to leave early and head back via one of the Dominican minibuses to the boat.

Roseau

After Friday school, a catamaran moored near us sporting an Australian flag and children! Much excitement from our two who are missing the company of other kids hugely. We dinghied over to make friends on the way to lunch and spent the rest of the day with the family – Peter, Donna, PJ and Heidi. They have been around the Med and at sea for 20 months already and were deciding to whether to go to South America and down or straight across to Australia. Chris was most jealous.