It gets rather hard for me sometimes to keep up the blogs with my busy adventure and sailing schedule. Making a video episode for the YouTube channel takes a whole day to make and it takes about half a day to put a blog up. Given that I am so busy lately with sailing hiking swimming and boat maintenance it has become a little difficult to find time to write, but… I want to keep friends posted on the most recent stuff… so here it goes…
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Portsmouth Dominica
I spent the first day there working on a YouTube video for you guys and Mr. Kol went to shore to explore. I didn’t step foot on land until later that evening when I went in to pick him up. What I found there was the same friendly and kind people we met in Roseau and the very polite and helpful Dominican spirit. The sail into the bay was in light winds and an easy day of sailing with a highlight.
We just LOVED the easy sailing into Portsmouth and were just delighted to get escorted in by the Dominican navy. This was the best dolphin display I have seen yet. There was probably 20 or more dolphins and they swam with us for like 15 minutes or so. It was just spectacular. Any and all time spent in the company of dolphins is time well spent. No matter how much I dislike sailing anymore I am still always completely delighted like a child when we get a dolphin escort.
Interestingly… for what ever it is worth… I was talking out loud to Elena a few days ago and commenting that both the people from Dominican Republic and Dominica would call themselves Dominicans. A smiling local guy actually piped in and helpfully informed me that actually the Spanish people from Dominican Republic call themselves DominiCAN… but the English people from Dominica refer to themselves as DominiCUN… So there you go… now we know.
As we motored into the bay in Portsmouth we could not help but notice how many vessels were abandoned and destroyed on the shoreline. They did get pummeled by Hurricane Maria here two years ago and there is still much damage evident. It is hard to know if these boats are hurricane victims or something else. It seems the locals do not have the ability or interest in cleaning up the wrecks.
If you remember my last blog I was talking about how corrugated sheets of tin was the universal building material in poor countries… I found more evidence to support my argument. I say this not as any kind of insult or jab at these poorer countries but rather only as a personal observation of their genius, or the genius of this miracle versatile building material.
Some brilliant local person built an entire home out of bits and pieces of tin sheeting they found laying around after the last hurricane.
Another person down a different street took advantage of the free building materials all scattered around to finish building their fence along their property line. It is not the kind of expensive prim and proper wooden fence built according to regulations I find in Canada so I have never seen the likes of this before. I find myself so intrigued with these things… I love them.
The other thing that caught my attention was these rows of beautiful row houses built very much like the ones I would find in Canada. They seemed so fresh and new… and so out of place… they caught my attention. They look just great and seem like a place I would like to live in… but they are so out of character with the local building techniques I was dying of curiosity to know the story behind these homes. Later I found a big development sign at another site showing the proposed medical center a Canadian company is going to build for these people.
I cannot say that the money for these is private money… probably not… it seems most probable that it is disaster relief money given to the country after the last hurricane… that the government used to contract the helpful Canadians to build them more sturdy housing. It is good to see Canada’s positive influence in poorer countries.
Canada is AWESOME… I love my country.
I do want to add a little note here… that last Saturday morning… when we were about to leave to sail north… mr. Kol told us that there was an old English fort here that had museum stuff in it and was worth checking out. So we did move WildChild closer to the north end of the bay.. drop the hook.. and go ashore for an hour to check it out. What is super interesting… is that there was a HUGE decisive maritime battle here 250 years ago between the English and the French …. AND… there is also a French Museum up in Isle De Saints we checked out. I found the two different versions of history so intriguing I am going to write the next blog about both forts… but that is for next blog…
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Isle De Saints Guadeloupe
So I think it was 4 days ago (Saturday March 7th) that we left PortsMouth in Dominica and sailed up to Isle De Saints on the south end of Guadeloupe to check into the country. The sail was lovely and easy… we finally had winds NOT on the bow and could beam reach all the way up. Mr. Kol does great on the helm but he seems to love going fast and as WildChild got up to 8 knots boat speed mr. Kol came alive with excitement. I had to convince him we really should reef the sails and slow down. The sailing gets more stressful and rough the faster you go.
We arrived on a Saturday evening and went to shore the next afternoon to check-in… and… super bad Captain Lexi…. the French do not work on Sundays…. so the check in place was closed and we had to wait until Monday morning (yesterday) to check in. I should have known better. We explored the town a little bit and really found it to be a very touristy place with the prices to go with it.
I am not sure if I am getting spoiled with the luxury and freedom of having my own sailboat down here… but… I really do not like the touristy places. I usually prefer the off the beaten path places where the locals live and meeting local cultures, as long as I feel safe.
This place feels super safe, I never had any worry about my Yacht being boarded in the night or my dinghy being stolen. We wandered around freely and feeling completely confident we were going to be safe. This is part of first world countries I like the most. Safe is good.
The real problem comes from the “for profit” mentality that comes with a tourist place. Every place good to anchor was full of mooring balls and anchoring anyplace good was of course prohibited. So WildChild had to anchor way far away from the town and exposed to the nasty roll that settled in Sunday when the winds shifted a little NE. It was a super rolly night at anchor there last night and this morning I couldn’t wait to lift the hook and just leave.
The other thing that really got under my skin… we were anchored within 200 meters of a cell phone tower. We had perfect E band 5 bars of super slow crappy terrible internet access. They do this on purpose to get the tourists to pay for wifi. For us sailors… especially for those of us who are paying for a local French SIM card… this is extremely annoying. We had better internet access out in the ocean sailing north today than we had right beside the tower this morning. I finished a YouTube video for you guys in Dominica last Friday but did not have decent internet access to upload it until now.
Again the only little side note I want to interject… the thing that made the stop worth while… was the tour of the old fort on top of the hill… just awesome… but… I will get to it next blog.
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Pelican Island Guadeloupe
So today we had another lovely and easy sail about 20 miles north up to about the middle of the island of Guadeloupe. We got here to anchor after an easy 4 or 5 hours of sailing this morning.
The very exciting news is… we hooked a big fish while sailing this morning. As always, I was trolling a fishing line while sailing and this morning I had a good feeling about my $50 Gibbs spoon with a juicy piece of fat on the hook. Sure enough about 2 hours later mr. Kol at the helm reports to me that “…Lexi… I think we have a fish on…” After about a minute of him trying to get it reeled in the line snaps and the fish steals my $50 lure… Grrrr… to the fish.
This just happened a few hours ago so I am still a little bitter about it.
Now the exciting part for now… is where we are. As I was reading thru the navionics reviews for the west coast of Guadeloupe a few days ago I ran across this treasure, that I eluded to in the last blog.
It seems… that this little island that we are currently anchored beside… is world famous. This is a marine dive park. Apparently this rated as Jacques Coustou’s most favorite dive spot in the world. It seems that the underwater topography around the island is teeming with healthy living reefs and perfect protected habitat for fish.
Other cruisers have called this the BEST diving / snorkeling spot they have ever seen. Some even claiming it to be better than anything the Bahamas has to offer, and I must say my personal opinion is that Bahamas diving is spectacular. People rave that the fish are so used to having people around you can almost reach out and touch them. One guy said he has never seen so many parrot fish in one spot in his life. The experience is supposed to set the highest standard for diving anywhere.
So with reviews this good… with a reputation this wonderful.. how could we pass up the chance to snorkel here tomorrow?
Now the bad news for you guys… it seems during my last swim with my Nikon camera it got a bit screwy. It seemed unhappy I dove with it in salt water and took me days to try and repair. So I am hesitant to take it underwater anymore. I do however have a cheap gopro in a case I can take down with me and try and get you guys some cool pictures. At the very least I can tell you how it was.
Okay sailor fans…
I have to go cook dinner again… Elena is refusing to again…
We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow…
Cheers
Captain Lexi…
. …….. the happy …..