We are here in Dominica, known by many as the “nature island”.  We made the run  from Les Saintes a few days ago to join a group of Salty Dawgs, 25 boats strong, who are gathered for a rendezvous that will last nearly a week.

Being here has been a nice respite from the constant rolling in Les Saintes, a combination of ferry traffic along with wrap-around swell from the ocean that plagued us for the nearly week long visit.

Sitting at anchor in a swell is so tiring but you really don’t know how bad it is until it stops.  Well, when a book jumped off of a shelf and landed on Brenda’s head in the middle of the night, she knew it wasn’t good.

Well, it’s stopped here, finally.  And the very sporty run here from Les Saintes was yet another reminder of how much we were looking forward to a calm anchorage.  The 20 mile run between the islands had us in 10′ waves and winds up to 30kts apparent along with two nasty squalls.  Not too much fun.

But it’s calm now and there is a group of guys here that cater to the cruisers and will take you on guided tours, which is very nice.

Dominica has many wonderful hiking trails and some will bring you to the lip of an active volcano that has so much steam rising out of it that it is known as the boiling lake.

We took a hike, brought snacks like some protein bars, and got home after dark.  For an old guy like me, that might have been a bit much. However, what an experience.

There have been nearly nightly get-togethers with free flowing rum punch and barbecue.  This evening we will be doing to a fish fry featuring lion fish caught today by some of our members.  Lion fish are native to SE Asia and are a terribly invasive species here in the Caribbean.  They think that a few fish escaped in FL years ago and have basically taken over reefs in much of the Caribbean, eating just about anything that they come on contact with that will fit in their large mouths.  It’s really terrible the toll that they have taken on native fish, destroying the balance of the reefs.

Sadly, I don’t have my scuba certification so I wasn’t able to participate in the roundup.  However, I did go on two hour hike up one of the smaller peaks.  It was moderate and very enjoyable.    As we reached the summit, I was struck by the view of the ocean.    West of the island the next landfall is, I guess, Panama,  a long way off.   Most of the islands of the Caribbean saw a lot of action as the French and English worked to gain control, primarily to secure the sugar trade that made the islands so critical to commerce.   While Dominica never saw any actual sea battles, the island changed hands between the French and English multiple times.  It is now an independent nation as of the 70s.

The view of the harbor is pretty impressive.  If you look closely, you can see Pandora. Perhaps this photo will make it easier.  She’s just to the right of center, forth boat in on the center string of moorings.  The grey boat. Our hike took us to the summit that was once a lookout for whomever was in charge at the time.  The fort, Fort Shirley, overlooking the harbor, has been beautifully restored and now is used as a conference center.  Our walk took us past some old ruins of officer’s quarters and even a room that once was used to store cannon balls.  Today the floor is still littered with small “grape shot” iron balls about 1.5′ in diameter.  I was dying to take one, but didn’t.  The strangling fig tree on one of the walls really gave the place a wild vibe and a feel that would make Indiana Jones proud.  This 6″ to 8″ fungus looks a lot like coral but isn’t.   Our guide William said that they called it “land coral”.  I get it…We saw plenty of hermit crabs and small lizards.  This one was clinging to a branch and was about the size of a lemon.  Termite mounds were everywhere.  This one, about 2′ tall.  To me it says “do not disturb”.  I was struck by the symmetry of this delicate vine climbing a small tree. Nearby, visiting for the day, was Sea Cloud, once the largest private yacht in the world when she was owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, daughter of the founder of Postum Cereal that became General Mills.   She was fabulously wealthy and owned her when she was married to her second husband E.F. Hutton.  Among other homes, she also owned Mar-a-Lago, in Fl, home to “The Donald” these days.

Sea Cloud is now a cruise ship, and a very exclusive one at that.  With the coin, she can be your home too.  Check out her site. She frequents these waters in the winter and we have seen her many times over the years.   She’s here today with all of us “little people” in the distance. She looks much the same as she did when private.This short video gives a feel for just how opulent she is and some interesting views of the ship now juxtaposed against what she was like when she was a private yacht. Yesterday, while some in our group were gazing down into an active volcano, Brenda and I opted to go into town to get some produce at the Saturday market.   Once a week vendors come from all over to show their waresIn addition to those on the streets with colorful umbrellas, there is a pavilion where many vendors set up on tables, overflowing with all sorts of fruit and vegetables.There is also a place to purchase fresh fish.   It’s a messy business and to see guys whacking away with machetes pretty much put  Brenda off of seafood for the day.   It was a noisy splattery business to be sure.   The fist was certainly fresh, having been caught that morning and unloaded less than 100′ from the market. Right off the boat. Nothing says bony to me like a needle fish. This is a really beautiful place but never more beautiful than at sunset.  This ship, a Danish training ship, was anchored behind us with the setting sun glistening on the hull a few days ago. A short while later in the twilight, the sun sets quickly in the Caribbean, she looked different. And yes, it’s as calm as it looks and that’s good.  After a few weeks in rolly anchorages, it’s nice to be in the calm waters in the lee of Dominica.

I guess I’ll close with a shot of the view from the bow of Pandora.  Not bad if I do say so myself. First a swim and it will soon be time for sundowners.

Did I mention that it isn’t rolly?

So, here we are in one of our favorite places in the Caribbean, Les Saintes, a small archipelago of islands south of the big island of Guadeloupe.  It is a very charming and scenic spot with a lovely fleet of local fishing boats. A main street filled with places to eat.  Nearly all of the vehicles on the island are golf carts and scooters.  And some very colorful homes.  Love this one, pink with a lovely color coordinated Vespa scooter. In spite of the lovely scenery, I’ll admit that it’s a bit rolly here with the constant ferry traffic from mainland Guadeloupe bringing French tourists on holiday.  I understand that there are daily flights from Paris.

Because the water near town is so deep, more than 50′, they have put down moorings and established a designated a no-anchoring zone.   Unfortunately, if you arrive in the afternoon you aren’t likely to find an open mooring and will have to anchor in an area that is pretty exposed and wait for a mooring to open up.

This is almost always what happens to us when we arrive, so the first night is generally uncomfortable with constant rolling,  It was very windy when we arrived and the rolling was some of the worse we have ever had to endure.  Well, at least since the last time we had a “worse night” but I won’t think about that.

A friend of ours, Bill, on Kalunamoo, and a veteran, with his wife Maureen, of more than a dozen seasons in the Caribbean, put together this roll rating system, “Kalunamoo’s 7 stage guide to anchorage roll” to help describe what it can be like to be rocking and rolling at anchor.  Instead of “you had to be here to know”, this rating system, like ratings for  hurricanes and earthquakes, gives us something to compare our experiences to and make it understandable to those who weren’t there.

Sometimes we feel like we will never find a spot to anchor that is really calm and I will admit that we have both become more immune to a reasonable amount of rolling.  Fortunately, most places aren’t worse than stage 3 “good rocking sleep mode”.  However, unfortunately, it’s often stage 4 “noticeable uncomfortable roll, watch your drink.”

However, on our first night here, before we snagged a mooring closer to town, it was easily approaching stage 6 “Difficult to keep plates, drinks and footings stable! Ready to leave!” and a few times it ventured to stage 7, “WTF! We’re out of here!”

During sundowners that night, a daily ritual I’ll admit, we had to hold on to our wine glasses firmly lest they lurch off of the cockpit table. Overnight was very uncomfortable and things were flying off of shelves and pots and pans were banging against one another in the cabinets.   WTF!  It was ROLLY!

And move we did, as soon as it was light and I saw a boat heading out from the mooring field.  In fact, we weren’t the only ones that wanted to find a better spot and we ended up drag-racing with another boat, albeit at the snails pace of sailboats, as we made for the mooring field.   We won and got the better of the two moorings that opened up.  Mission accomplished!

Brenda has always been prone to motion sickness and many years ago when we were on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, in NYC on the Hudson River, the motion on the ship that day made her quite queasy.   What she didn’t appreciate is that the Intrepid doesn’t actually move at all as it is firmly stuck in the mud.  For her, it was “mind over matter” and it didn’t “matter” that the Intrepid was in the mud and she didn’t feel well.

More than thirty years later, and many less than calm nights, she’s a (little) bit more accustomed to movement and it takes a lot more to make her feel queasy.  So here we are, enjoying Les Saintes, rolling and all, where we expect to spend a week before heading to Dominica, the next island in the chain, to the south.

Ok, enough about rolling.  Let’s talk about clouds.

One of the things that I enjoy most about the Caribbean is watching clouds.  As a “card carrying member” of the Cloud Appreciation Society, out of the UK, I am always on the lookout for clouds that are “worthy” of submitting to the Society, with the hope that they will choose mine and publish it as one of their “Cloud a day” emails.

I learned about this group from the NY Times a few years ago and joined immediately.  Check out this post I did at that time.   I have always loved clouds.

The society has thousands of members and I am member #54,749.

I have gotten a number of my photos published, 4 or 5 I think.  It’s great fun to hear from them after a submission saying “we’ve chosen your cloud”.  My cloud?  Awesome!

Perhaps the most memorable photo chosen was of a “green flash”, something that we watch for every night here in the Caribbean.   I was fascinated by what they wrote to accompany my photo.  Check it out.  It was “blog worthy“.

It’s been a while since I have done any submissions but today I sent in a few.  It’s very hard to know if they are “cloud worthy” but we will see what happens next.   Fingers crossed.

I will say that being a member, and seeing 365 submissions every year, does inspire me to keep track of what is going on up in the sky and nowhere is the sky more interesting than the Caribbean.   Our son Christopher’s partner Melody is a poet and a fellow Cloud Appreciation Society member.  One of these days I’ll send her a photo and she can do a poem.  They will JUST HAVE to publish our joint submission as I doubt that they get many joint submissions.

With all this in mind, I do take a lot of cloud photos.  How about this squirrel?  Well, at least it looks like that to me. Not close enough to tell, you say?  Now do you agree?   Probably not. I am fully focused on clouds at sunrise.  No better way to start the day. Or a bit later as the sun is higher. Or in the middle of the day. Or the plume of the active volcano on Montserrat as we sailed south to Guadeloupe last week. Or the clouds rolling off of the mountaintops of Guadeloupe. And absolutely nothing beats sundowners while watching the rise of a full moon which we enjoyed yesterday evening.  Rolling or not, and it was really rolly that first night here, it’s hard to imagine a place more beautiful to appreciate clouds  than here in the Caribbean aboard Pandora.

 

It’s another beautiful day in Deshaies, Guadeloupe where we expect to spend another few days before heading farther south.

A few days ago a large cat pulled in behind us to drop the hook.  That was fine except when it came time to watch the sunset.  As the sun dipped below the horizon they obscured what turned out to be a green flash.  It would have been the second for us this season.

However, all was not lost as after dark they turned on some underwater lights.  The scene was amazing as the moon set behind them.   Thanks to Brenda’s iPhone, that takes amazing low light photos, check this view out.   The light in Pandora’s cockpit wasn’t all that bright but glows in this image.  Note that this is not altered in any way beyond the way that iPhone sees the world.   The wonders of modern photography. It’s been nice to be back in Deshaies, having visited this tiny port on our every trip south.  The village is very quaint.   I suppose that “shabby chic” describes it pretty well.

It is also the village where the filming for much of the BBC series Death in Paradise is filmed.  It’s fun to watch the trailer to see images of this very harbor.  Yet, I have not yet seen any detectives cruising the harbor in a business suit.  And, the only thing that I’ve seen killed on the beach is a cold beer.In the village there is a nice mix of places to eat out and a lovely shop, Les Cave, that sells a number of gourmet items including foie gras that you can order with a few days notice.  The shopkeeper, who greeted me this year with “I remember you.  You are on a boat”, told me that the liver comes from France but that a friend makes up the pate here in Guadeloupe.  Brenda had ordered a batch and I picked it up yesterday.  It was quite pricy but worth it.  I froze it all and we will portion it out so it will last as long as possible.  Perhaps I will take it to NYC where it is illegal and sell it.  “Hey buddy, want to buy some…”

We have been buddy boating with our friends Lynn and Mark on Roxy since Antigua as we have been for the last few years.  It’s fun to go from harbor to harbor with folks we know.  Here’s Roxy.  She’s a huge 60′ ketch and very heavy at 80,000 lbs.  By comparison, Pandora weights in at about 32,000 lbs. fully loaded.  Yesterday I went on a hike with Mark and the girls met us at a nearby beach for a late lunch.

Along our hike, we encountered some leaf cutter ants, seen as a near perfect example of a symbiotic relationship.  They being leaves back to their nest and a specific fungus grows on them.  Then they feed on the fungus and the fungus feeds on the leaves.  In a very real way they are farmers.  For more about leaf cutting ants and their unique relationship with a certain fungus, check this out.

This is the beach our hike ended on.  A beautiful spot.  You might recognize this beach from the Death in Paradise teaser. Later we walked back to the boat.  It was a very nice walk with huge trees lining the road.The other day we went to the local botanical garden, Jardin Botanique.  It’s up the mountain a short way but the walk would be treacherous as the road is one switch back after another and the drivers go like they are in a race.  Best to take the shuttle that they will send for you.

It’s sometimes hard to decide what to write about when I have already done posts about a place a number of times.  However, I really wanted to do yet another post about these wonderful gardens but this time I decided to focus on textures instead of trying to document the place itself.    Under the “been there, done that category” check out this post about the gardens from our first visit in 2017.  

Anyway, as we made our way through the gardens, I enjoyed looking for patterns in the plants.  There were so many to choose from it was hard to focus.   This season has been wetter than normal and the condition of the gardens were particularly lush.

Some of the flowers looked fake but weren’t.Palm fronds never disappoint. This succulent was not as velvety and soft as it looked.
A tangle of palm berries.
I will never quite get used to seeing “house plants” that aren’t in a house.
These flowers look like little soldiers.
More soldiers.  The soft texture of cypress. I love the koi.  They are as big as they look, some 18″ long. Every where I looked, beautiful textures. And colors. And so many plants that we think of as house plants growing outdoors and loving it. I don’t know, just a dramatic pattern…A beautiful giant fern.A not so giant epiphytic fern. Some that looked like they would be right at home in more arid places. Just love these flowers. I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for orchids and to see them growing on trees here is a treat.And who doesn’t love flamingos?Who you lookin at?Texture in water or is it an aquatic Cousin It?
You don’t have to be green.
And speaking of standing at attention.
Some flowers don’t look anything like flowers.And a view of Pandora in the harbor far below. And what post is complete without clouds?That look, upon closer inspection, like a baby duck reclining on the cloud bank.  Get it, his head with feet to the left?  Well, that’s what it looks like to me.  Not buying it?  Work with me on this. Ok, anyway, I love clouds so perhaps yet another.  Pretty dramatic day here in Deshaies, Guadeloupe.

The sun is out, the sky is blue…  And I see textures all around.

It’s a beautiful day here in Deshais Guadeloupe.  Not sure what this is all about but at daybreak yesterday morning in Antigua this unusual cloud formation appeared.  It’s not a jet trail. We made the 45 mile crossing to Guadeloupe in sporty conditions from Antigua yesterday, where Pandora had been since we arrived in mid November.   Along the way we were hit by a squall with near 30kt winds.  Brenda was not amused.

The sail was sporty, fast and we averaged over 8kts on a close reach.   As we passed Montserrat, we could clearly see the smoke from the volcano. Here is the view of the town of Deshais, Guadeloupe that greeted me this morning.Deshais is a charming little French village on the NW end of Guadeloupe.  The harbor, more of an indent in the island actually, is very tiny and the bottom drops off rather fast as you get a few hundred yards from shore.   To port is an impossibly steep cliff.The down dinghy dock is very large but sometimes the wrap-around swell from the ocean makes it unusable.  In those cases the town pulls off the wooden top of the dock to keep it from being wrecked.  It’s amazing how clear the water is.   Pandora is anchored in about 30′ of water and you can see the bottom.   This shot, off of the dock, gives a feel for the beautiful color of the water.  Hard to believe that it’s about 6′ deep here. Pretty nice beaches too.  Of course, baguettes, foie gras (not frowned upon here) and many wonderful cheeses in the stores.  Unlike stores in the US where soda, chips and, God forbid, fried pork rinds, take up multiple isles, here the mix is very different where even the smallest grocery has a great selection of pates and cheeses, not to forget loads of rum and wine choices.  I do know the word for rose, it’s rose but with a funny thing over the e.  I so wish that I had paid attention…

After a croissant and coffee, at the local boulangerie of course, we went for a short walk up the of “river”, more of a stream.  It was very peaceful.   Babbling brook. No idea what this flower is called.  In town we did a bit of provisioning.  Chicken on the hoof anyone?  What sort of dish can you make with chicks?  Chicklets?Mainstreet is very charming.  Lots of colorful shops. A lovely church. A bit of excitement.  Some sort of rescue mission going on on the hill overlooking town.  Hope it was a drill. One of the crew was dropped on a cable a moment later. Unlike in Antigua where checking into the country involves going from window 1 to window 2, window 3 and back to window 1 again and then to window 4 to pay, here you clear in at a kiosk in a T shirt shop.  One and done.  “That will be 5 euros please”, up from 3 a year ago. Inflation.

This is an important fishing port for the island and before daybreak many of the boats head out to sea, gently rocking Pandora on her anchor.    The teacup harbor where the boats are stored is protected by a large stone breakwater. To the side is another wall that lines the river that feeds into the harbor.  It’s more of a stream actually.   When the surge in the harbor is too big and they have to dismantle the top of the dock, you can bring your dink up here into calm waters.   This sign says “no swimming!”  See, I can speak French after vall. Here’s someone who decided to dock here for the day.  I fear that if I spent time alone in the Caribbean, without Brenda, this would be me in a few years.  Can you say “man bun?”  I do already have shades like his.   Somehow I doubt that they are trifocals though. And speaking of civilization.  I came upon a local tourist office, set up to give information to folks off of a small cruise ship that was visiting the harbor today.  They had lovely flower arrangements on the table and I asked if there was somewhere I could purchase some flowers for Brenda.

The lovely ladies offered me their flowers so as not to let Brenda go wanting.  It was such a nice gesture.  “Here, let me yank your lovely arrangement apart.  Quick, look away.  Run!”  Not wanting to seem to grabby.  “Sorry Bob… too late. You are grabby”.  I asked one of them to pick for me.   Excellent choices.   And, delivered with a smile! Quick!  Back to Pandora.  Can’t let them wilt.  Well trained after 50 years…

Some late afternoon entertainment from a small sloop.  It was plenty windy and these boats don’t have internal ballast.  Notice how the boom is bending.  They are full keel and this one looks like it was brand new.  A gust of wind.  These boats are very heavily canvased.  Everyone hike out!Like most days, a late afternoon squall.  Rainbow!And about 20 minutes later.  Rainbow #2.  It landed right on the church.  “Jesus, look at that!”  No, I take it back.  That was bad taste. What a beautiful place.  It’s going to be hard to leave.  Well, unless we drag in one of those strong wind gusts that Deshais is known for.  Then I’ll have to add Honduras to the list.

Tomorrow, what to do?  So many choices…

I love Antigua but, well, for the moment, I guess it’s love the one we are with.  Guadeloupe is just so today.   Well, for today anyway.

I do love those baguettes though.

A few years ago Brenda and I were in Antigua and learned about a rowing race across the Atlantic, 3,000 miles, the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.  That’s twice as far as the Salty Dawg Rally run from Hampton VA to Antigua and to make matters worse, they have to row the entire way in an open boat.

The idea of purposely heading out into the ocean in an open boat for a month or more sounds nuts.  For me, the 9-12 day run from VA to Antigua in the relative comfort of Pandora is not all that appealing but I do it because I want to spend a winter in the Caribbean.

The crews that make their run do it for the experience, not to enjoy time here as I expect that after being in Antigua for a short time, they fly home and back to work.

For me, the run to Antigua is a big deal and not all that comfortable.  However, rowing across the Atlantic? Now that is an entire different kettle of fish.

It seems that several dozen boats do this every year and some crews do it more than once, perhaps as many as ten times for some, I am told.  And every crew has a specific goal beyond successfully completing the trip, a charity or something to raise money for.

Here’s one of the boats that made the trip.  All of them are very similar in design with one, two three or four crew.  This one, had a crew of three.Their goal is clearly stated on the aft portion of the hull. When I think about what being at sea for a month in an open boat doing nothing but sleeping and rowing, day after day, I guess that they were truly living their goal.   Misery!  Or should I say, “misery loves company” and they lived that, all together for a month.

And they can’t say that they did it for the cuisine.   This is a lovely sample of food that they enjoyed on passage.  I also saw bags of vacuum packed stuff that looked like oatmeal.   Every item brought aboard has to be accounted for at the end of the trip and a race official audits the items as they are removed to ensure that every single items that they took aboard is accounted for and noting was tossed over the side. The race officials are very serious about all this and monitor the boats for any perceived infraction.   I  had heard about a women’s team a few years ago that thought it would be fun to hold up a sheet as a sail and make a video of what they must have thought was a moment of hilarity.

The committee saw the clip and disqualified them on the spot.  I’ll bet that they had fun explaining this to their supporters.

Like the boats in the Salty Dawg Rally, each boat in the race has a tracker on board so that folks on shore can follow along.   This is a screen shot of the fleet.  A few days ago I decided to go over to English Harbor to welcome one of the boats that was arriving.  There were hundreds on hand to welcome the crew including perhaps 20 or so that were wearing matching shirts.  It was fun to see the boat as they entered the harbor, serenaded by the horns of the big yachts and accompanied by a number of dinks that were happy to greet them too. These guys, all members of the Scots Guard or military, were clearly pretty excited to be nearing land.  I was told that one of them played the bagpipe but I didn’t see or hear that.  Ashore was all done up with banners and such. While I was standing around waiting for the boat to appear, I heard someone call my name.  It was Ann-Marie Martin leaning out of her office window, obviously also excited about the arrival of the boat.  She’s the Park’s Commissioner who I have come to know over the years of bringing the SDSA fleet to Antigua.  As each of the crew stepped ashore, after more than a month at sea, emotions ran high.  It was moving to see them greeted by family after so long apart. There was plenty of enthusiasm for the UK and Scotland in evidence. Next on the agenda was a sit down interview and when that was over, a meal of cheeseburgers and beer.  I’ll bet that it was a welcome change from oatmeal and freeze dried food.  Their accomplishment was really something, rowing across the Atlantic but it didn’t take long for them to announce that “the Atlantic Guardsman were formally retiring from ocean rowing”.  That makes sense to me.  For them, been there, done that.  If you’re curious about this team and want to learn more, follow this link. 

When asked about a memorable moment on the trip, one shared the experience of looking up at the stars on a clear night.  Another, recounted when the boat was rolled completely over, tossing all of them overboard.   Yes, that sounds memorable if not in a good way.  I’ll take the Milky Way above being tossed into the drink.

And if you are part of the “I want to cross the Atlantic because it’s there” group, follow this link to learn more about the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.

And, I expect that the crew of the Atlantic Guardsman would have something to say about that other team’s campaign against living miserably.

Finally, tomorrow we head to the other side of Antigua to provision in Jolly Harbor with our friends Mark and Lynn on Roxy and then on to Guadeloupe in a few days.

Perhaps I’ll close with a shot of the rainbow that we enjoyed this morning following a brief shower.  Another beautiful day in paradise.   Nope, no rowing in my future.  Well, at least unless my dink motor fails.