Aimee got us up bright and early to head south the 18nm to dominica. We where concerned the winds would shift more southerly latter in the day so we bashed east around the island before heading south. This turned out to be unnecessary pain as we had more of a reach for the short sail down. We did get a bit of practice hand steering once we got in the lee of the island with the winds switching around every which way. Aimee actually enjoys hand steering so i was quite happy to handle the sheets. unfortunately we lost our favorite lure early in the trip. it looks like i will need to be putting sizing wire on all our lures as we cant afford to loose a lure every 3 fish, kind of defeats the fishing savings!
Finally we pulled into “portsmoth” harbor and could just make out the black pirate ship “waka irie”. As we approached them we could see a massive pirate flag and another massive kiwi flag flying off the stern. sietse hailed us on 16 and recommended a spot of sand of their stern. we dropped the hook and they stopped by on the way to the market and offered to get us ice. you can never have too much ice so i handed over the cooler we now keep in the cockpit for just such eventualities.
when they returned they invited us over to check out waka-irie. the first thing i noticed was it had an amazingly roomy cockpit area for a 32 foot boat. we had a few beers but just as we where getting ready to head to shore for lunch we started to drag. from my perspective we where really close to shore but from their’s it was not such and issue since they only draw 3 feet! we re-anchored but the wind was gusting up to 25 kts in random directions making both our boats tack back and forth. eventually after swapping in their second heavier anchor and finding a sandy spot we appeared to be stuck.
at this point no one was excited about leaving the boats so aimee brought some mexican fiest bean and salsa dish over for lunch but not before siets had to recover tiki when i failed to tie it properly while picking up aimee. while siets and i relaxed in the cockpit jen was making mango chutney, which turns out to be quite messy but as we where to discover is delicious! eventually i volunteered to check the anchor as siets was still a bit concerned about it and had just “washed his hair”. after a few dives to push and prod it i pronounced it “in enough”. ours had completely buried its self up to the shank about 20 meters downwind of where we dropped it.
we adjourned the party over to palapa for chutny and cheese and my famous fish tacos. i used a filet and a half of the dorado and after breading it pan fried it in olive oil. after adding a bit of mayo and canned chapolte peppers and a little lettuce (we had no cabbage) we where done. as usual it was a big hit, again no pics argg. aimee made us a rum drinks with rum, brown sugar and lime muddled together very good especially with the 4$ per liter rum but i cant remember the name, caparina? we eventually declared victory and headed to bed leaving jen to take the ever sleeping siets home.
Cheers, Roger
Siets washed his hair? Yeah, right.
yep Seth, it was an annual event i must say!