Day 160, Year 6 Martinique to Dominica (pronounced “Domineeka”)
Day 160, Year 6 Martinique to Dominica (pronounced “Domineeka”)
Date: Saturday, April 2, 2011
Weather: Sunny; E to ESE 5-20 Knots
Latitude: 15 17.065 N
Longitude: 061 22.573 W
Miles Traveled: 52
Location: Roseau, Dominica (one mile south)
We clicked off another 50-plus miles today in our trek northwards. The sail was a mixed bag of motoring and sailing with a one to two knot current against us all day. We’re not sure where that came from, but we hope it doesn’t follow us northward through the Leeward Islands. We arrived on the southeastern coast of Dominica just a mile south of the capital city of Roseau at 4 pm. It is deep here right up to the shore, so we called ahead to the Anchorage Hotel to see if we could get a mooring. All of their moorings were taken, but they referred us to Pancho out of Sea World, another small resort. He met us and helped us get attached to the mooring and said to call on VHF 16 if we needed anything. Then before we got ourselves together to dinghy into Roseau, Pancho returned with Hansen from Sea World and enticed us to come to a lobster dinner for 25 EC. Lobster sounded great, so we said we’d be there at 7 pm.
We got in the dinghy and motored the one mile to the cruise ship dock in Roseau. We locked the dinghy to one of the ladders and climbed up on the dock. As we walked down the long dock toward town we realized that there was a gate and it was locked. So we went back to the dinghy and tried the next dock. I was driving the dinghy and really didn’t like the looks of things at this dock. There were rocks exposed under the dock and I just wasn’t sure whether or not there could be rocks right under us. The surge was bouncing us up and down, so we decided to try another dock a little further south. This was a fuel dock, but since it was late in the day, we tied up and walked ashore. A woman at the gas station said it was fine for us to leave the dinghy there while we walked into town. Compared to the large city of Fort-de-France, Roseau is very tiny. But it is certainly bigger than a village. We first came to Fort Young which was built in 1770. Today the fort has been converted into the upscale Fort Young Hotel. We walked through the open lobby and out on to the upstairs balcony. It is really quite nice and very inviting. Across the street is the old Anglican Church and up the street from there was the impressive Catholic Church and a Methodist Church. There was a huge permanent market space in the town center but being late on Saturday afternoon, everything was shut down. We enjoyed the old buildings and wished that we could have arrived a few hours earlier to see the town in full swing. By the time we made our way back down to the cruise ship dock (with those locked gates), the sun was starting to sink low in the sky, so we headed back to the dinghy and motored to Sea World for dinner. We read about this place in Chris Doyle’s Cruising Guide to the Leeward Islands, but we have a 2003 copy. The place was new when that guide was published. It looks a little worn now but is still run by a mother and daughter team, Philomon and Decima. We didn’t meet the mother, but Decima was there and her husband Hanson we had met earlier in the afternoon. We found ourselves sitting at a VERY long table with seats for twenty people, but there was just the three of us. The lobster was small but good and Steve got an introduction to Bush Rum. Decima had Pancho drop by to talk to us about a tour for tomorrow. It is going to cost us $80 US to do the tour, but Pancho threw in a free mooring for tomorrow night, so that helped a bit. He also talked with us about what it means to him to be a Rastafarian. Dominica is definitely Rasta country and it was interesting to listen to Pancho’s philosophy. If we were willing to spend twice as much money, we could visit with Pancho’s Uncle Moses tomorrow who lives high in the mountains by Victoria Falls and is a “pure” Rasta man. If we had more time and more money, we would definitely do that, but in the end we decided that we will be visiting the island’s interior and hiking to a waterfall, swimming in the waterfall pool, sitting in hot sulphur springs, and then wandering through Roseau’s botanical gardens. Dominica is a nature lover’s paradise, so we’ll get a one-day intro tomorrow. Then it is on to Les Saintes in Guadeloupe on Monday morning.
