Author: Paul and Claire

Along the long, very long, same around every corner, this is a bit tedious, are we there yet, rocky shoreline of western Guadeloupe

The guide is clear that being low lying the Iles Des Saintes are dry. Las night we knew we had rain but we had no idea how much until Yves told us to look into our tender. Who’s Yves? He is anchored next to us at Iles Des Saintes with his wife Miriam. Yves came out here on an expedition to search for the missing treasure of 5 sunk Spanish galleons the location of which he studied extensively in Chicago. Diving at 90m depth did not uncover the wrecks and Yves would like to have been able to go to

That is all these islands function for and they are great in a way. French food, French quality dinghy docks, scooters all round, pretty colours and a kind of Mustique peace with street level energy. They even have cats around town and we haven’t seen those for a while. Let’ start with Customs now camouflaging their office as a street bar laundrette and move on through the town to Fort Napoleon:  

We took a trip to the Botanical Gardens and one of the main features is a tree that crushed a bus during the hurricane.

Dominica’s rainfall is continuous and heavy but it brings with it some great rainbows which gradually advance toward you, pass over you and head out to sea.

In general we have no idea who reads our blog, nor why, but just occasionally we have contact from the other side of the fence and a reader gets in touch. This is very much appreciated and it’s great to hear that we are giving some readers a bit of information (apologies if at any time it’s misinformation), some thoughts on planning, maybe a bit of light entertainment. There was a time when we had one reader; that was me! Then a few more joined up to the point we did a post on Derrible Bay and that for some

The side door is locked and being Easter Saturday there is nobody around. So the lady running the food stall in the ferry terminal says why not go up there pointing toward, well, customs not surprisingly, but of the ferry kind not the yachtie kind.                         I then caused all kinds of excitement when I walked up through the security scanner expecting to go round the back to Customs as opposed to the usual back alley. Ooops gone too far. So a security guard comes down and walks us

So we have done our research and it’s back to Customs to check out so we can leave Dominica. Over the dinghy dock, through The Loft, and turn left to head downtown, past The President’s new office and a few other interesting buildings.

So after some research we think we may have zig zagged our way through the customs speak of 24 hours ago. Dominica is said to have the simplest customs arragement.The agreement at the top was that cruisers would check in and get a 14 day automatic permit and they could leave anytime within that period. But implementation is another issue. So Doyle’s guide says one thing, the government another and customs follow their own customised version of the intended rules. You can check in and out of one port with the same crew. But you can’t go anywhere. To go

And so it happens. This is an open and friendly island. After shooting some pool with a match against local islanders in French language we then met up with a whole bunch of residents keen to tell us about their world. We were then joined by our Boat Boy, Desmond, who is a really nice, calm and patient guy. We met the taxi drivers, tour guides, chefs and who knows who else from the island keen to tell us about life and have a good laugh. One of them put me onto a Virgin rep from Neckar Island when his