Sorry for the delay, folks. I’m not feeling the blog this year. It’s probably because I’m enjoying myself and haven’t really felt like making time to write. At any rate, I’ll catch you up a bit now.
We arrived in Dominica on February 5th, eight days before the start of the Salty Dawg Rendezvous. We landed in Prince Rupert Bay, at the town of Portsmouth. After clearing into the country with customs and immigration, we had a late lunch ashore, purchased a local Digicel SIM card in town, then spent the rest of the day relaxing on Lady.
Our time in Dominica, pre-rendezvous, wasn’t particularly interesting. We were just living normal boat life, just in another beautiful and warm place. We tended to boat tasks like minor repairs, cleaning, changing beds, doing laundry and making English muffins. We acquired some local currency, Eastern Caribbean Dollars, which required ultimately going into the bank after two ATMs refused our debit card. We explored the town of Portsmouth. We took a taxi into Roseau, the capital of Dominica on the southwest side of the island, to get one of our propane tanks filled and to pick up our new Garmin multifunction display. (I described our issue in my post on 1/15; it’s “Bump #4.”) We also met and hung out with a couple of Salty Dawgs who, like us, arrived in Dominica early.
Our explorations of the area included food, of course. We quickly discovered that one can get fresh produce any day of the week on the block near the fishing/town dock. On Saturday, however, they have an even bigger fresh market with MORE produce. Oh, the produce! This island grows quite a variety of produce. I felt like a kid in a candy store, only with healthier options. I even tried a new fruit called sapodilla, or sapotille. We had a particularly tasty Saturday lunch (after the fresh market) of broth and soup. My “broth” contained two small marlin fish steaks, a variety of “ground provisions” (root vegetables like sweet potato), banana, and smoked chicken wing. I don’t know what seasonings were used, but between those and the smoked chicken it was so flavorful! Dave also enjoyed his “soup,” which contained smoked chicken wing, smoked red meat of some kind (probably pork), some sort of root vegetables, in a savory stew-type broth. We were quite pleased.
We spent that morning of the 13th walking around Fort Shirley, located in the Cabrits (twin hills separating Prince Rupert Bay from Douglas Bay to the north). We even hiked across to a viewpoint of Douglas Bay. That evening, the rendezvous kicked off with a BBQ welcome dinner in the PAYS pavilion. I’ll tell you all about PAYS and the rendezvous next time.
Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Life on Lady 