We arrived in the capital Roseau by early afternoon and were still able to clear into the country. One of my new floorboards in the dinghy had unfortunately broken in two, so I looked all over town for a new one. No luck but the city had a lot of charm. We had a few beers with a local guy who had watched our dinghies and he told me he would have a floorboard for me the next morning. But I had a bit of a fallout with him over money so I never went over the next day but instead sailed on to Portsmouth.
They offer boats tours (rather expensive) on the Indian River here. But we had enough of boats for now and went on exploring from the land by ourselves. Andi and Kudi had already done this before so I was happy to tag along. We also hiked to a hot spring.
There are some incredibly huge roots for the trees in the rainforest and we also found a “bushbar”. All in all a nice place. I had wanted to take bus and explore the island but I also had to finish my recordings and there was still some work left on the spinnaker boom. I had also found a carpenter in the village and he was finally able to cut me two new floorboards for my dinghy. Unfortunately he also cut the table of his circular saw in the process but that wasn’t my fault. I now have one board in reserve because Andi and Kudi had already given me their table and it fit perfectly.
Checking out was at the other end of the town and a long walk away. When we got there the little office in the commercial harbour was guarded like an airport. We were searched and had to take out everything out of our bags. When we were finally allowed in the office we were told that checkout wasn’t necessary in our case.