I wish that the LSM folks hadn’t put me so far out in the anchorage. After the big cruise ship left, the waves washing around the headland rocked the outside line of boats constantly during the night and I’m sure that those closer inshore weren’t faring as badly. At least the breakfast delivery of croissants and a baguette worked flawlessly and was something of a consolation after a night where I kept on getting awakened by an unusually large roll of the boat.
I went ashore too early and had to walk around a bit before the café opened which houses the clearance computer and had already had too much coffee aboard the boat to be able to withstand another one. Once the LSM café had opened I was in and out in a jiffy, using the previous clearance form as a template and having given up on blind typing due to all the differences in the keyboard layout and using the time-tested hunt-and-peck typing method. I’m almost sad to see that my passport is due for renewal, since I’ve almost memorized my passport number by now.
Back aboard I started getting things ready for departure since I recalled the intensity of the last passage. The weather report was quite a bit nicer this time around so I wasn’t to worried about things flying about but took care in any case. A boat that I’d met in the BVI and St. Martin, “Nomad” (An Amel Super Maramu) had just arrived and I spoke with them on the VHF and learned that they’d just come from Dominica and saw the boats heading south tacking to get enough easting, so I decided that I’d not take the direct route through the Îles des Saintes but would go north then east around the islands, giving me a couple of miles more east.
While I had to motorsail against the wind to get north and east, once I made it around the NE corner I turned off the engine and managed to sail the whole stretch to Dominica on one tack, at times I was close-hauled but other times I had 10-20 degrees more than that and I made fairly good time despite having too conservative a sail plan.
Once I was close to the headland protecting the anchorage of Portsmouth on Dominica I was once again approached by a panga with a boat boy, but all I had to do was shout across “I’m with Alexis” and he, visibly disappointed, veered off and departed. He must have notified Alexis on another VHF channel or via phone, since he did come by after I anchored to see if he could do anything for me.
It was just after 15:00 when I completed anchoring and I put the engine on the dinghy and cleaned myself up a bit and slowly motored to the customs office. As the previous trip had been done in a high-speed panga I hadn’t realized how far away the office actually was, certainly over a mile and my dinghy engine is still not firmly attachable so I couldn’t go any faster than a slow walk – it seemed to take forever to get there. As I was leaving the gated dock to go to the office, a jeep with 2 customs officials driving by asked me where I was going (as if they didn’t know, and as if I didn’t know what they were going to tell me once I answered their question). They said that they were closed (no big surprise there) but then said I should walk down the road to a yellow house and I’d be helped. No quite sure of this, I walked ahead to the house and the car had let out one of the officials who showed me into a kitchen door of a private residence, that of an immigration official. He gave the me forms and we completed the paperwork (there was a lot of it, with carbon paper inserts for the copies) but I was not only cleared in but also given my exit clearance despite my wishing to remain a week! That really is the type of service I have never had from officials anywhere else!
Back aboard I relaxed and just watched the anchorage for a bit, then Alexis came by after dropping off a group of visitors and we shared a beer (his wooden panga would bump against the hull, so I got in my dinghy and we talked from there. He might come by tomorrow if he’s got a group doing something I haven’t done yet and has a space to fill – but I told him that I had time and would be here a week, so no worries and no hurry. Subsequently I made a simple pasta dinner and finished watching the movie “Loopers”, which I’d downloaded in Guadeloupe but had turned off after about 10 minutes since I didn’t like it that much and disliked the premise, which was rather weak in my mind. The movie did get better and make a bit more sense as it progressed, but I don’t think I’ll be watching it again.
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