Adventures on our Trintella 57a…
Checking in and where’s the customs house? Went past the heaving ferry terminal and hoped it wasn’t in there – bet it is though. We end up in the fish market and meet Big Dave who leads us back to the meleh of the ferry terminal Customs is often a kind of underground thing and we are led to a black door at the side of the terminal which is then unlocked and we are on a dockside. Customs is down the line. We meet the guys who are very unusually not
One of the ways to reach land in Rouseau, Dominica, is to land at Seacat’s dock. It’s big and looks fit for purpose. That’s step 1 over. Step 2 you arrive at his back garden gate and then go through his back garden, across his lower terrace, and up the side of the house to his front door then out onto the street. That’s odd and it’s even stranger coming back the other way.
We thought we were simply unwrapping a dark green flag as we went to raise the Dominican courtesy flag. Unfolding it revealed a centre crest of a brightly decorated parrot so we think this is the coolest flag yet.
This one comes from Martinique where the city centre sports shoe retailer has a different take on branding:
The wind has been blowing East 15-25kn for 4 months. Part way down Martinique is switches to North West? What’s going wrong? Initially we motored back winded as it was only 5 kn but as it started to pick up we went on the other tack. Now the boat is only stored such that provisions can take a starboard tack as there should be no port tack going north. It could be that we won’t see the floorboards again for a while if we heel. But ahead in the distance is a line of white water. The mountains are causing
In Martinique we have a shopping centre (like most lots of the units are closed) with a Carrefour – and suddenly we are in a world of cheeses. I don’t especially wait to take these photos. There’s just nobody in these large supermarkets. You can count about 3 people in the shopping centre foyer – it’s getting busy.
A taste of France with a stop in Martinique. At last good food, cheeses, back to French wine prices for French wines, good restaurants. But how easy is it? We arrived at Fort de France. Nice calm protected anchorage with probably the best dinghy dock in the world. It’s a bit of a city mind
St Lucia delivered the usual disappointments. In the middle of the day there was a knock on the hull following which we were quickly boarded by a young girl who made it to the cockpit. This was clearly an opportunist looking for something to steal. Then there’s customs. And here’s the dummy…. Checking in and out is a lottery. The chance of getting some kind of aggro I put at about 50/50. The typical power games include: Mumbling instructions so you can’t understand anything (this is clearly good
Our boat has largely made the decision for us and we have deferred our circumnavigation in favour of returning home. We are now making our way north for the essential ‘get you home repairs’ in St Martin before routing via Bermuda, the Azores and then onto somewhere in Europe. There are improvements that we want to make to the boat for life in the tropics and we would rather complete the work ourselves in the UK in our own time. Not having headsail furling for about 3200 miles and with a generator throwing out odd voltages the decision to take