The Caribbean 

We arrived in Martinique early in the morning.  Our first stop was the fuel dock as by the time we arrived, we were down to 1/8 of a tank.  Check-in was a breeze, done on the computer at the fuel dock for just €5.  We had repairs to do after crossing the ocean.  Our sails needed repair and the furler for our main sail needed bearings replaced. Our electronics were also giving trouble but after both the mother board and power board were replaced, it was discovered that there was just a little software glitch on our card for our American charts!

Refreshing waterhole

We rented a car and travelled around the island.  John and Mary wanted to visit a waterfall that they had noted on Tripadvisor.  We thought this would be an easy  15 min. walk. When we arrived at the start, there was a chain across the path with a “No Entry” sign.  This we duly ignored.  We hiked along a steep and muddy path, had to climb over/under a fallen tree and walked along the top of  a slippery water pipe through a long and very dark tunnel (thank goodness for iPhone torches) in which there were bats.  There was much grumbling from Dimitri, who refused to take off his sunglasses in the dark tunnel, about the things we got him into! In the end we arrived at a lovely river in a gorge and Mary and John found their waterfall.  We had a swim at a second, more accessible waterfall  on our way back to Marin.

The next day, Mary and John went for a swim at a beautiful beach which was fringed by shady trees. When they came out of the water, they found that the crabs living amongst the roots of the trees had attacked Mary’s dress and had eaten large holes in it.

Crabs feasting on Mary's dress

The next day we headed for Dominica.  This is one of the poorer islands in the Caribbean.  We arrived to total devastation.  From out at sea it looked as if the forests had all burnt down as we could not see foliage.   As we got closer we saw that the trees were actually denuded of their leaves and some had even lost their bark.  Hurricane Maria went through here, taking almost all the poorly built homes, there was no electricity and the people had resorted to doing their washing in the rivers, as in old times. We took a tour of the island.  Many of the roads were closed, some of the bridges were down and we were told that it would be 18 months before all the electricity on the island was restored. It is sad that the poorest island was hardest hit. 

Washing day

Both Martinique and Guadeloupe on either side of Dominica and only about 20 nm. on each side across the strait were relatively spared.  We did find an interesting man whose grandparents had moved to Dominica and built the home he was living in. He makes boutique chocolate from locally-grown Cocoa   beans. He showed us the whole chocolate making process and it was interesting to see how much work goes into one chocolate bar. We especially enjoyed his “Spice Chocolate”.

We had an overnight stop in both Guadeloupe and  Nevis, anchoring off the beach. Our next stop, Saba was very interesting.  Saba, belonging to the Netherlands, is a small volcanic cone that rises sheer out of the ocean with very deep water all around.  Most of it is marine park and they have installed buoys for boats to tie up to. In days of old, goods were offloaded in waist deep water and then carried up 800 steps to the settlement above.  Nowadays, there is a little port.  We motored the 1.5nm. to the port via dinghy to check in and then took a taxi to the town above.  There are two villages on the island, “Bottom” and “Windwardside” and two roads on the island – “The road that couldn’t be built” and “The road that shouldn’t have been built”.   Up until the 1950’s the only way to get between the two villages was to walk.  Dutch engineers from Holland said that it was impossible to build a road there so one of the residents took a correspondence course in road building and over several years the Sabans hand- built the road. Today there is a very short airstrip, enabling tourists to fly in by short-haul plane.  Saba has one of the best dive sites in the Caribbean. On our way back to the boat after dinner, we were surrounded by large garfish.  They were thrashing along the surface of the water as we startled them with our torchlight but some went the wrong way.  One jumped up and hit Dimitri on the arm and another went into the side of the dinghy with such force that I thought it was going to puncture it with its sharp jaw.  We also saw a large shark in the little port where we had left our dinghy and some turtles.

Our next stop was a lovely bay in the BVI, on Norman Island.  Here we enjoyed snorkeling. A lot of the reef had been destroyed by the hurricane but there were pockets of intact areas, mostly under rock overhangs where beautiful tropical fish were congregating to feed.

We decided to give Puerto Rico a miss because it too had been damaged by the hurricane.  We sailed for the Dominican Republic instead,  to Luperon, a bay on the  northern coast.  We arrived just at sunset, a bad time as the bay is fringed by mangroves and we were attacked by thousands of mosquitoes.  Luckily we have insect netting to enclose our cockpit.  The bay supposedly has three marinas.  Two of these are no longer operating and the third has a single dock, holding a maximum of 6 boats, taken up by local boats. There are mooring buoys in the bay though ($2/day) and plenty of space to anchor.

Check-in here was quite a saga We went from one office to the next, to the next and then back to the first to start all over again.  Over and above that, the commandant visited the boat as did Drug and Security inspectors - twice. They were happy to depart with a bottle of wine for their dinner.

Luperon is very poor and run down. However the people are very friendly and we enjoyed the food.  There is a small community of sailors living here on a semi-permanent basis as this is a good hurricane hole and living expenses are minimal.   Some of them had been there for over four years.  They were pleased to see us and gave us good advice for our next leg, through the Bahamas.

Much of the Bahamas is shallow and more suited to motor boats.  We stopped on the western shore of  Mayaguana Island, outside the tiny settlement of  Betsy Bay. Most of the houses were still boarded up as hurricane season only ended on 1^st December and we were there on 30 November!  John and Mary decided to camp the night on the enticing, deserted beach.  Early next morning, John arrived at the boat, having swum out to our anchorage, desperate for them to get off the island as they had been attacked by thousands of sandflies.  They were covered in hundreds of bites and spent two very uncomfortable itchy nights.   We moved on to Cat Island.  This is a very long, thin island with the highest mountain in the Bahamas, Mount Alverna at a height of just  220 ft.  Atop it sits “The Hermitage”, a miniature,  one-man replica of a Franciscan  monastery built by   hand by Father Jerome in his retirement. He lived here as a hermit until his death and is buried under it.  From this vantage point, one can see right across the breadth of the island, from the reef-strewn Atlantic shore to the leeward shore.

We stopped overnight at Great Abacos

and then moved on to Bimini.  Here we only just managed to negotiate the shallow canal into our marina.  We enjoyed swimming with feeding bottle-nose dolphins and watched the bull sharks circling for food below one of the restaurants.

We have arrived in Fort Lauderdale and are now snuggly tied up  alongside a  dock in one of the canals which belongs to a family member.  We plan to be here for several months before going on to Cuba, Panama, the Galapagos, Pacific Islands and then home.