A step back in time

Sunday Mar 15th 7:52 am Portsmouth Dominica It has been a relaxing and strenous 13 days. Both Joyce and I looked forward to our return to Dominica. We had a nice sail over from the Saints. We were met by our "boat boy" Martin from last year. We unloaded the bikes and made the 2 mile ride to customs to check in. Side note here. When we checked out of Nevis the customs guy prinited out our port clearance, had me sign it and he stamped it. Back in the bag with all the other"Official" papers. I really didn't read it till we were getting ready to go check in here. The damn guy had given me someone elses paperwork...all of a sudden the Lady H was 44' sloop from England. They did not have any guns aboard.and had a crew of 4. In some places these customes guys are drunk with their power over the lowly cruiser. Back to the checkin...by the time we reached the office I was one sweat soaked guy. These guys were fun...we all had a good laugh over my lack of physical conditioning. They never even looked at the port clearnce asked if we were staying longer than 2 weeks no...so they could check us in and out in 1 easy step. 10$ EC about $2.60 USD to check in and out. Now that was refreshing. Remember there are islands I will not go to due to the rudeness of the customs officials.. and yes I am very vocal about that with other cruisers. In fact, the number of islands in the eastern Caribbean that I will go to is making it difficult to plan passages around them. In the 30 yrs I have been sailing down here, there has been so much "change" and none of it good. The last 13 days was like stepping back in time. This is a beautiful island, with proud friendly people. We went on a tour with Martin and a couple off of another boat. We went Chauiere Pool. The was a short hike, 2680 ft of that the vertical drop was probably 900 ft. This was one wooped old fart by the time we arrived and this beautiful spot. After a refreshing swim in the cool clear water we had to make the 2680 ft climb back to the van...DAMN ... On Saturday we went in to the weekly market. seems everything was 2 EC .74 cents. A dozen of the juciest grapefruit, nutmeg..2 EC..would have been 6 US back in the states. We then sailed down to Roseau, the capital and main town. Joyce had arranged a tour and a dive while in Roseau. We were met early by our guide for the day, Lambert. This was one cool dude. There were 4 cruise ships docking as we started the tour. Lambert said we were doing things out of sequence so we could miss the cruise boat crowd. Small talk went to politics. Lambert was the 1st black man we have met on this trip that was not entranced with Obama. His comment was "How could the US elect such a leftest with so little experince" This guy was refreshing ... watches Fox news like Hannity and Rush. Interesting that this guy knows more about US electrorial process and the real issues than 95% ov the voting public back home. He indicated his island was also in the hands of the Labor party.. just like our Democrats back home...in it for the power and the money...screw the common man. He fears his beautiful island will go the way of the rest of the islands. A few interesting facts... Dominica's electrical power is 40 % hydro..Joyce will have the pictures. They could get the rest from geo-thermal from the volcanic activity on the island, but the elected officials are in bed with Hugo. Infact Chevez is sending his poor and homeless to Dominica.. a cultural exchange... he adds his unemployed to the already 30% unemployed rate here on the island, while the politicions line their pockets. Wedensday AM we went diving. Joyce was eager to get going... they had called on the radio and said they would be out to pick us up about 9am. By 10am Joyce was getting antsee, a little after 10:15 they showed up.. I told her they were on "island time" and this was normal in the islands.... we had the same problem on Thur. It was then that we figured that they do not have the daylight saving time change like we do at home...We were 1 hour ahead. Joyce had decided she wanted to dive this special spot on Thur AM... me I stayed back on the boat and recovered from the punishment Joyce had put me through the last week. I will leave the dives to Joyce. Phil and Jonanna were leaving Antigua on Thur and would arrive in Portsmouth Thur PM. We had decided to sail up and meet them ...just 18 miles. They had picked up the computer parts for Joyce's computer and we were eager to get her computer back on line No luck computer still down One good thing...IBM has decided to replace her computer..but we will have to wait till we return to the States. Seems they cannot ship a computer out of the US.... our government does not want the Chineese stealing our computer secrets... damn thing was built and shipped from Hongkong. The wisdom of our government. I have rambled enough...Joyce will fill in the blanks and I'm sure have tons of pictures of this beautiful isalnd. We are ready to lift the hook and do an overnight to Bequia. Why and overnight you ask... well it's to sail past those nasty islands...we will spend what dollars Obama lets us keep where we want to...