Arrived in Dominica

The alarm was set for a sharp 5am departure before sunrise, to escape anyone’s attention. Plus we had to be in Portsmouth in Dominica by 2pm so that our PCR tests were valid, cutting it fine because we delayed our departure due to the lack of wind. It all went like clock work picking up the anchor in the dark, always a little alarming, and amazingly the old fishing boat next to us had gone, they must have had an even earlier departure. We had to pick our way through fishing buoys out of the harbour, we hadn’t gone far when the morning rays came through and all was much easier.

Leaving St Pierre at sunrise

Almost as good as a sunset! Happy to be on our way undetected by the Martinique coast guard!

Not much wind when we started as we were still in the lee of the island, but it wasn’t long before we reached the end of the island and the wind picked up to a nice steady 15-17 knots. Rowan got the Gennaker sail up and we were cruising along beautifully, creeping up on another Cat that was way out in front of us, which pleased the captain. It was a lovely comfortable sail.

After a couple of hours we could see Dominica and Rowan predicted the wind would increase near the corner of the island, it was just edging over 20 knots, our limit for the Gennaker, so it had to come down. We had our routine all planned, I was to feed out the rope to Rowan who was up front on the trampoline, furling it in. I had too many turns of rope on the winch so I took a loop off, and with that the pressure whipped the rope through my hand, it happened so quickly, I couldn’t get my hand out the way and I got a horrible rope burn. About 6 blisters and an area on my palm was de-skinned. It hurt like fury, once the sail was down I had my hand in ice cold water to ease the burn. We have sailing gloves, we just never use them, I will from now on when dealing with the big sails! It could have been a lot worse and at least it will get me off washing dishes for a while! We finally broke into our enormous First Aid case and found loads of goodies to make a very impressive bandage.

Portsmouth is the only place yachts can enter Dominica at the moment during Covid, it is right at the north end of the island. When we got half way up the island the wind dropped again and we gingerly got Gennaker out again. It didn’t last, the wind died completely and we had to get it down (easy in no wind!) and get the motors on. We passed magnificent steep mountain scenery on the way.

Dominica has the most active volcanoes in the Caribbean, nine of them, crossing fingers none are rumbling!

We made it into Prince Rupert Bay just after 1pm, thankfully making our deadline. To enter the country you have to use an agent, Rowan picked Geoffrey who guided us into our quarantine area, between the Cruiser Dock and the the first building with the big red roof! It turned out to be easier than it sounded. It looked like there were 6 boats in quarantine and quite a few boats in the rest of the bay. We anchored and Geoffrey said we had to wait to be called up for our medical examination. It is boiling hot, we hung around all dressed up, until he finally told us we had to go in tomorrow morning at 9am. With that it was into our swimming costumes and we had a mammoth session cleaning all the ash off the boat with endless buckets of sea water . It took so much effort shifting the gritty ash and I was only able to use one hand. We finally got the worst of it off and at least we can walk on deck and not spread black grime everywhere.