First...Rojay made the most delicious mango pancakes. They were sublime.
Then, Pancho picked us up at our boat at 10 AM for a 10 minute thrilling boat ride to a snorkeling site called Champagne Reef.
His boat is a heavy wooden boat, not unlike that of Martin, our tour guide in Portsmouth. The "boat boys" all have boats that are painted bright colors and have a heavy duty outboard on the back. We were flying! I like Pancho. He is quick to tell you he is married to a Belgian woman and his two boys, 4 & 7, are of mixed parentage. We flew by the seaside village in which there is a church and school which the boys attend.
He is cheerful and helpful and hustles all day with his VHF on and his cell phone going none stop. He is scooting all around the waters doing whatever he can to be useful and to earn some money. He took us to snorkel at Champagne Reef. It was amazing!! The reef is beautiful and the fish are great, but to see these streams of bubbles coming up all over the and when the sun is shining the bubbles all look like prisms of rainbow colors and to feel them against your skin was just so unusual and other worldly.
We were back at our boat by 11:30 and commenced a 3 hour cleaning job of the boat. This may seem like a queer thing to include in a perfect day but not really. The result is something I crave...order and cleanliness. And, there is a sense of accomplishment.
Then I lazed (or, "limed" as they say) the rest of the afternoon away reading and swimming and showering in our cockpit as the light faded from the sky. While I rewarded myself for a good days work with relaxation, Roger fixed several of our screens which had been damaged by a couple of felines. Sometimes during the afternoon Pancho came by and offered us two fresh fish just caught which we accepted. He cleaned and deboned them and we had that for dinner with fresh green beans and beets.
We leave for Martinique tomorrow. I will miss Dominica!
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