Tuesday 13th December
Nowcrew
Wed 14 Dec 2005 15:54
Portsmouth
Bay - Dominica
We left Martinique
early on Tuesday morning. We knew we had a full days sail ahead of us to
Portsmouth Bay at the top end of Dominica and wanted to try and make it in
daylight.
Andy left the helm
to Ian as he set about writing the previous two days diary entries. The wind was
up and we had a comfortable reach up the island of Martinique at about 8 to 9
knots. We had clear sky's and Nico decided it was a tanning day and spend most
of it reading on the aft deck. Andy and Ron caught up on some lost sleep and we made
good time on our destination.
Ron put on Tomato
soup and baguettes for lunch as we cleared the top of Martinique and hit open
seas again. We had fun catching and cruising past an American yacht along the
way, it was good to be chasing boats again and the waves were breaking over the
bow of Now3 as if we were out in the mid-Atlantic.
As we arrived at the
south end of Dominica we were in the shelter of the land again. The sea's
dropped and we were in calmer waters but the wind stayed strong and we made good
progress. We arrived at Portsmouth at sun down and were met by the local boat
boy Jeffrey. We anchored up in the bay and were all taken ashore to the Purple
Turtle Beach Bar for a drink. We had ordered fresh fruit from a guy
paddling around on an old surf board 20 minutes before we left and he stopped us
on the way in with fresh tangerines and oranges.
Dominica is very
under developed and clearly very poor. There are clear signs of Hurricane damage
with three ships run aground off the beach that are rusting to
bits. The Purple Turtle also showed signs of hurricane damage with a big
crack running through the terrace and the building.
After drinks we
headed back to the boat and Ian rustled spaghetti with tomatoes and garlic
sauce. Then it was an early night for us all
Nowcrew
out.