Cruising the Windward Islands

We left Les Saintes in the morning of March 27 to make our 22 mile run to Portsmouth, Dominica.  Portsmouth is a well-protected harbor on the North end of the island.  The great thing about Portsmouth is that the "boat boys", the guys who come out in small boats to help you onto their moorings and sell you ice and other items, are highly organized and quite professional.  After getting a bad name some years ago, they created a professional association, came up with a rotation system so there are no fights over customers on the water, strictly enforce security and have very well maintained moorings in the harbor.  Our helper was "Cobra", an entertaining and widely traveled fellow (real name Andrew) who is quite the character.  He rented us our mooring, as our agent checked us in and out of the country with customs, arranged several eco-tours for us and sat and drank wine with us that evening for 90 minutes.  I don't understand why the boat boys in other ports in the Caribbean don't follow the lead of Portsmouth.

Cobra arranged an Indian River tour for us in one of their traditional Dominican wooden boats.  Dominica claims to have 365 rivers, one for each day of the year.  Of course most are very short.  Our guide was Jerome, who paddled because engines are not practical in the shallow water and are not allowed by park regulation.  Jerome knew the names of the trees and plants and was quite engaging.  This is essentially a tropical mangrove swamp, teeming with life.  Crabs, fish, bugs and beetles and birds were all about, the tropical canopy 70-80 feet above.  Part of Pirates of the Caribbean II, the evening visit to the witch's cabin, was filmed on this little river and the movie set is still there.  At the furthest point of travel up the river is the Jungle Bar where you can have a Peanut Cocktail or the Dynamite Punch, plus see a small botanical garden.

Indian River

Witch's cabin movie set

The next morning Cobra had 68 year old Winston drive us way up into the mountains to see Milton Falls.  Winston was also very engaging and quite proud of his island nation.  Winston had been a farmer and a truck driver.  He made several stops at the small farms of friends on the way up to show us how they do small-plot farming on the sides of old volcanoes.   These gardens are seldom more than a few acres and often on very steep ground.  They rotate a number of crops, including bananas, pineapple, and cocoa.  Root vegetables such as yams and taro are also common, and most of these farms have some fruit trees as well, guava, avocado and the like.  They grow vanilla bean and cinnamon and all kinds of herbs.  Out of these small plots Dominica provides most of the fruits and vegetables for the rest of the Caribbean.  Winston apologized that we were on the "dry side" of the island where they only get 80 inches of rain per year!  We trekked into the magnificent Milton falls, 80 feet tall, and gingerly stepped into the foaming plunge pool.  This morning tour was a highlight of our trip - we really enjoyed it.

Our knowledgeable guide Winston

Milton Falls

Cindy swings on vine to cross stream

After spending a night rockin' and rollin' in the Roseau harbor at the S end of Dominica, we made our crossing over to Martinique, about 30 miles away, arriving at St. Pierre on March 29.  St. Pierre was hot. OH so hot, and once again the anchorage was not very comfortable.  Customs was supposed to be open, but without any explanation, the office was closed up tight.  We had a French dinner in town, returned to Avventura and went to bed early.

Sunset at St. Pierre, Martinique

The next morning I had another scare when our anchor windlass stopped working and we had to pull up our heavy anchor and chain by hand.  That will get your heart pumping first thing in the morning!  We headed South on the West side of the island, past the capital of Fort-De-France and then across the Southern end of the island to Le Marin, which has one of the largest marinas in the Caribbean.  I won't detail all of my problems here, but let it suffice to say that this is a challenging marina to get into and get onto the dock.  There are no "finger docks" down the side of the boat, and you are squeezing into small spaces "med-mooring" style while trying to secure your nose on a mooring ball.  There was a certain amount of yelling in French from the marina staff and the whole thing was stressful.  Once again, despite the advertising, this marina had no 110 V power for boats like ours.  This marina was especially hot, and we pretty much roasted ourselves there for 4 days with little air conditioning.  We also find that there are virtually no proficient English speakers in these French islands.  Arriving on a Friday afternoon, I soon discovered that there would be no one available to work on our windlass until Tuesday morning.

Saturday and Sunday we had good visits with our cruising friends Tom and Sabrina of Honey Ryder.  Tom and Sabrina are from Kansas City and had for years been on our docks at Lake Perry.  They have been living aboard for three years, basing out of Trinidad and they had been in the harbor at St. Anne just outside of Le Marin for nearly 2 months.  We enjoyed catching up with them and getting good advice from these very experienced cruisers.

When the workmen finally arrived to check our windlass, they quickly discovered that the 18 month old electric motor was fried. There was no replacement part on the island or in this whole part of the Caribbean, so it looks like this is something we will need to arrange to be repaired after we leave.  In the meantime, we will be pulling our big anchor up by hand - OH BOY!

April 4 was Cindy's birthday.  Birthdays are kind of hard to manage on a French Island.  You can't find birthday cards -apparently the French don't buy them.  It is also really hard to keep any gifts a secret on a boat.  I prepared a hand-drawn "Joyeux Anniversaire" card did the best I could on the gifts.  We rented a small car and drove partway around the island to a very interesting tourist attraction that Cindy wanted to see, and then we had dinner in the nicest restaurant in town, Zanzibar.

The tourist attraction was Habitation Clement, an old sugar cane-growing, rum-producing plantation, but this one includes a world-class art museum and sculpture garden.  There is also a botanical garden, a historic creole mansion, rum cask storage buildings and a very well curated display of the old rum production equipment.  They had handheld interpretive guides in English, so you could hear about each interesting plant and place in the whole complex.  At the end of the tour, there was, of course, a very fancy rum-tasting room.  Mitterand and Bush I had a big summit meeting at this place just after the Desert Storm victory, so this has been a famous place for many years.  In the art museum they had a very impressive exhibition on abstract expressionism on loan from the Pompidou Center in Paris.  We both enjoyed this side-trip immensely and agreed that this was the most polished and professional tourist attraction that we had seen in all of the Caribbean.

However, this day was somewhat marred by another mechanical failure.  As we were using the generator to get us a little bit of air conditioning and to recharge the batteries, the generator started banging loudly and giving off an acrid burning smell.  We later determined that the alternator had burned up and seized, which ripped off the fan belt.  Here is another piece of equipment that will need to be repaired in the off season in Grenada!

Our departure from Le Marin was relatively easily on April 5, as was our 24 mile crossing over to Rodney Bay in St. Lucia.  The seas were moderate and we had fair wind right on the beam.  Rodney Bay is a very well protected lagoon and the marina here is the best in all of the Southern Caribbean.  It is beautifully maintained and they have lots of knowledgeable staff  -who all speak English!  Good restaurants, a pool and most importantly - 110 V, 50 amp power, just the kind Avventura likes!  We once again have air conditioning after several weeks of "roughing it" in hot anchorages and hot French island marinas.  We are getting good sleep here.  Even the wifi is top-notch.  I would like to spend some more time at Rodney Bay, but we need to get to Grenada and we are leaving at first light tomorrow.

AHHH, rest and comfort at Rodney Bay