We relaxed on the boat for the afternoon then headed in to the dinghy docks the next morning – first we headed to the Marine Centre’s dock but it looked a bit high (too challenging with the swell that was running from the north west), so we turned round and headed to the Fort Young Hotel dinghy dock in town which turned out to be much lower and easier access, but we still had to tie off the stern of the dinghy due to the swell! There was a cruise ship in, so the town was pumping and we had tour guides galore telling us of the pleasures of the island. We just wanted to clear in and relax around town – which we were told was a waste of a day for us, but we had the time.
After a stroll round town we headed to the Botanical garden and viewed a famous cricket ground (what it was famous for I don’t know but it was smaller than most country grounds in Qld) and headed up Jack’s track to Morne Bruce, the cross overlooking the city and a panoramic view of the city. Notice how the city is dwarfed by the cruise ship. As a matter of interest in a week we saw 7 cruise ships arrive, with 2-3000 passengers each, so say 20,000 people, just under 1/3 of the population of Dominica transited Roseau in that 1 week!
We also saw the power of Cyclone David in our stroll through the Botanical Garden in the form of a fallen African Boabab tree – luckily the bus was empty!
We wandered round town and enjoyed a Kubuli beer (or at least I did) and went in search of the elusive lime. Another point of interest – Dominica used to be one of the world’s largest producers of limes in the world, but we struggled to find enough to flavour my rum, apparently the annual crop or limes has been replaced by bananas which produce year round.
The following day was to be relaxing, snorkelling or touring but the starboard engine had other ideas. Whilst charging the batteries that evening, the engine slowed and stopped. We tried to restart it but to no avail! So the next day was a work day!
Our first assumption (Karen is really starting to understand some of this stuff) was that the dirty fuel we got in Trini had fouled the filters, so I drained the pre-filter and changed it – it was dirty, but it was hard to say if it was clogged. I had to fill the pre-filter and filter with clean fuel so we took off in search of a small gerry can with which to buy some. This we thought would be easy but it was challenging enough just getting the stern anchor set on the dinghy (never done that before) and climbing onto the fuel dock at the marine centre, but then finding a small gerry was also challenging – a walk into town in my smelly work clothes got us a gasoline gerry, which the service station attendant was reluctant to fill with diesel!
Anyway with clean diesel we filled the filters and tried to bleed the system which seemed slow but the engine ran…. For 10 minutes before it stopped again…. Obviously used up all the fuel from the filter. So my assumption was that it was a fuel filter issue or I wasn’t bleeding it properly. I remembered a tip from Danny (Magnum in Grenada) to put a fuel bulb in line from the tank to prime quickly, so next morning I found one and cut it into the line and pumped away. The effect wasn’t how I imagined with still only a little fuel coming out when I tested it, but fuel was making it to the fuel filter so I gave it another go with the same result… A little frustrating but narrowed it down to the fuel pump or so it seemed to me – tomorrow’s job to try and find a pump.
As I agonised over the problem in my sleep (Karen by now was a sounding board only) I remembered John’s (Stevee Jean) problem with a split fuel pick up line on his 420, so at 6:00am I was up and pulling apart the starboard bed and fuel tank. Sure enough, the copper pick up line was split from a$%*hole to breakfast! Well that should be cheaper and easier to get than a fuel pump – one would think. However tomorrow was Sunday so it would have to wait a day….
So Sunday, we decided to take the snorkelling gear and grab a bus down to Champagne to snorkel the underwater volcano vent. Wrong! Sunday is dead, no cruise ship and no buses. So not to be put off we stroll down to the anchorage hotel to check out the whale watch centre. We had seen our first whale between St Vincent and St Lucia - we wanted to learn how to identify them and how we should sail the boat in their presence. When we arrived, we were told that there was a whale watching expedition that day and so as a Chrissie pressie to ourselves we booked ourselves on after checking the likelihood of seeing a whale (95+% and they had seen whales all of the last 11 days). So for US$57.50 each we would get served fruit juice, a rum punch and see thousands of whales.
We rushed back to the boat, got the big camera and rushed back to their dinghy dock for the briefing – which was very informative but we could not wait for our 3.5hours of dodging whales, identifying them, learning what their tails looked like, how to track them etc etc. We did learn how you can track them, had our US$57.50 rum punch and 3.5hours later we returned to dock to check out the pictures of whale tails. Little did we know that on the 12th day the Whales rest….so we saw nothing, not even a dolphin. We did see some nice rainbows though. (Sorry no photos of whales – check elsewhere on the internet)
Monday we went to the Yanmar dealer, who sent us to the chandlery, who sent us to the Yanmar dealer, who sent us to a hardware in Pottersville, who sent us to Valley Engineering, who sent us to a building supplies centre, who sent us to another hardware (we walked from Newtown to the docks) all to no avail. On the way Karen had spotted an agricultural supply store who had irrigation supplies so as a last resort before swapping the generator pickup for the engine pick up we tried there and I hate to admit Karen was right, but we were able to pick up 16mm HDPE garden irrigation pipe that looked like it would do a good temporary job, which it did that afternoon. So after 3 days we were back in action!
Tuesday, with a new cruise ship in dock we headed into town and bargained our way into a tour with a bunch of Italians and Slovenians from the ship (well all we did was wait until a driver told us he would give us a tour for US$10 and we were in- how bad could it be for $10). This cruise started in the Med and 19 days later had seen most of the Caribbean – what are we doing wrong that that has taken us 3 years?
We headed off to the botanical gardens (and the squashed bus) and Morne Bruce (which I had to walk to) and then it got interesting.
We hit the highlights of the south as the Italians were saying “Mamma Mia” as we took the hills and corners at a reasonable pace…
Trafalgar Twin Falls (notice there are 2)
Wotten Waven Sulphur Springs
Freshwater Lake (very cold – yes cold and cloudy) and back to town.
We could have continued to Mero for a few extra bucks but we planned to sail there and do a distillery tour.
Next morning it was up and off to Salisbury for an overnight stop and a distillery tour.
We anchored south of the dive dock and were promptly told by the operator that he had moorings available if we wished to use them – he later told us they are free of charge as he is trying to discourage anchoring to re-establish the sea grass. We splashed off the back of the boat and enjoyed the cooling water. The water in Dominica is so clear it is really like swimming in a pool back home!
Next day, as it was still a few days before Christmas and he had some spare time on his way to Aus, we left Santa on watch and headed to Macoucherie Rum Distillery.
Unfortunately, after a bit of a hike we found out the tour guide was not there so a tour was out of the question. So we kept walking, thinking it was not far to Mero, but an hour later we realised it was.
However it was a lovely little beach and we stopped at the new Romance café for a refreshing grapefruit drink, before hiking back to Salisbury.
Having hiked all we were going to we packed up that afternoon Portsmouth, a quick 2 hour (after the Minnow, nothing is a 3 hour cruise on Where II just in case) sail north. We were met outside the harbour by Alexis – one of the Portsmouth boat boys, who introduced himself and then headed back in to harbour leaving us to find a spot and anchor. He visited later to say hello and we said we would talk to him over the coming days once we decided what we wanted to do.
Over the next couple of days we were quite busy, running into Aussies everywhere, and at one stage 50% of the boats in Portsmouth were Australian registered! Friday we took the Indian River tour with Alexis which included a tour of a plantation and 2 backpacks of fresh fruit and 218 different ways to make rum punch! The others on the tour were from another Melbourne registered yacht! Notice the entrance to Indian River where the swell is breaking just in front of the wreck! Alexis did a great job of rowing us up the river and explaining the wildlife and his links to Johnny Depp (Pirates 2).
Saturday was Christmas Day and I discovered how to get Karen out of bed before 8:00am. The night before Christmas, when all through the boat, not a creature was stirring except for me about 2:00am. I wrapped Karen’s presents and carefully placed them under the tree. (The good thing about a small tree is it makes the pressies look big!)
Karen got up at about 4:00am to steal orange juice and check the anchor track and saw Santa had been and from then on she had trouble staying asleep! (Who says I’m the big kid of the Family?) So we got up at 7:00am to open the presents and then have breakfast in true Donovan style followed by a feast (unfortunately as Evergreen could not make it, my lamb roast shrunk to shanks but it was delicious none the less)!
With the festivities over, we got onto the serious stuff, we went hiking (yes hiking) through the Cabrits and the ruins of Fort Shirley which was hot, tiring but very cool, especially when you got to the ruins of the old northern gun battery. This took us the best part of the day covering the west battery all the way back to town.
After this strenuous activity we decided we should probably start to make our way to The Saints, a small group of islands just south of Guadaloupe and as soon as we made that plan it changed. Alexis came by the boat and asked us if we wanted to do a tour of the north part of the island as he had another boat interested. We apologised and said we had planned to depart and that we would do it on the way back down the islands in May. He went off and explained to the other boat that it wasn’t going to happen. 5 minutes later our plans had changed and we called him back and said we would wait it out another day and do the tour…… So he had to go back and tell the other boat it was now on. You can see our quick decisive skills and planning capabilities are still there!
At 8:00 the next morning, Alexis picked us up and dropped us with Geoffrey who first took us to the bank and to customs for the other boat (Ascension Gordon and Ginny) to clear in and we cleared out at the same time – not the fastest process – we were there for about an hour. While we were there Geoffrey realised he had lost his phone so when we came out we were in the hands of 62yo Winston. The tour started slowly with Winston never being at threat of breaking a speed limit, but he was very informative along the way. We headed east past Morne aux Diables through the town that was home to the world’s oldest lady (128yo) until she died.
From here we made for the beaches of the north east (Batibou Bay, Woodford Hill Bay, Marigot and Pagua), all the time with Winston giving us up to date political announcements from the Skerrit administration and trying to sell us real estate on the island! We stopped at one of his girlfriends’ place and the beach, which he said was available for the right price!
The scenery was fantastic and his local knowledge great. He showed us an old sugar mill and explained the construction (using molasses in the mortar to guard against hurricanes etc) rivers, plantations and even the old Methodist church where he went to school!
He gave us the option of doing the Carib Village – a model village on the only Carib Indian reserve in the Caribbean. This was something we were keen to do. On the way there we stopped on the side of the road at a Cassava bread bakery where we sampled the bread and bought some for the trip the next day. Winston had to buy four for another girlfriend he would see later on the tour! (no wives, just girlfriends – less trouble)
The village was interesting and well laid out, but I did expect to see some traditional costumes as you see in the brochures, but everyone there was in jeans (what was I thinking?) The tour was interesting, but not as interesting as I had hoped.
From the village we continued south in the reserve, stopping at a road stall to buy a woven basket from a young Indian girl.
The tour continued on through the centre of the island where we hiked up to Spanny Falls. Unfortunately, it was getting late, cold and it was raining, so none of us felt like going for a swim, although the water did look quite refreshing.
By the time we got back to the van we were wet and quite exhausted and we settled into the long trip back to the boat. We passed through Mero and Salisbury on the way and realised just how far we had walked the previous week – I don’t know what we were thinking!
By 8:00pm we were back on the boat (a 12 hour day) and ready to head off to the Saints tomorrow morning!
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: tina
DATE: 1/9/2011 9:25:35 PM
liked it
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Mum
DATE: 1/12/2011 5:04:16 AM
This was a great blog Matt and I enjoyed reading it but I did not get any pictures. Hope you can keep safe in Antigua until you get the anchor fixed. -----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Mum
DATE: 1/12/2011 5:08:14 AM
Now I have the pictures. Great. Wonderful to see you had an almost traditional Christmas! -----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Patrick and Silke
URL: http://www.la-palma-sailing.com
DATE: 1/13/2011 10:56:03 AM
Wow ... I think this is all we can say at the moment. Thanks a lot Matt and Karen to keep your blog running, we enjoy it so much! And next year around this time we are preparing Quetzal to cross the Atlantic and find you somewhere over there :o). Big hug and hope your family in Australia is fine (news here about the flooding are not nice...)
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Levin
DATE: 1/15/2011 2:38:47 PM
Hi Karen and Matt!
all your blogs have been so fine to read. Even as we are not close friends (yet) I feel close to what you do.
Look. I finally made it over the Atlantic.
Since Rubicon Lanzarote (where we found each other) my boat was damaged in big storm FEB 2010 year. After a lot repairings we arrived to Medregal and JeanMarc 2 Jan 2011. Jemilo is now standing on the hard. Its a big Swedish colony in Medregal but I tell everyone i got the info from Where2!!
All the best to you both.
Keep on mailing your blogs please.
Yngve Levin @ Jemilo
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