08/12/2012, Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad
Another photo showing the change in water color from all the runoff. There were calls on the radio about whether conditions were safe to come into the harbours, with someone responding that there was a lot of debris in the water and caution should be taken. All in all, it was a pretty dramatic day. We hope those who were negatively impacted will get assistance and we of course offer our sympathies to the family of the two residents who were killed.
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08/12/2012, Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad
Yesterday we woke to hard rains, thunder, lightening and general wetness. Water aerobics was postponed until the afternoon and in the meantime, the city flooded in many locations. Two deaths in the city were blamed on the conditions, the roads broke apart, houses collapsed, mudslides occurred. The cruisers were advised not to take taxis/buses into town, to stay put. Outside the Coral Cove fence, which runs along the double lane road, water was rising making it difficult for passing traffic. I watched as the overflow poured like a waterfall into the boatyard (which is about 3 feet lower than the highway) with the ground quickly looking like a swamp. It was disconcerting seeing all those boats on the hard with the soil underneath them getting muddier and unstable. I heard this morning from a local man that the Chaguaramas, which used to be a submarine base for the American military, was dredged after the US left and filled with coral. That made me feel a wee bit better. This man, who owns a business in the Coral Cove Marina said the boats on the hard don't have to worry since the coral will remain stable. This photo shows the rising water next to our dock. The color, as Willie described it was like coffee. Latte, to be more specific.
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08/10/2012, Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad
Yesterday was one of those eventful boat days. The kind of dreaded day which occurs far more often than we'd like, but is a normal part of cruising. While Ed was draining the coolant from the engine block (that was on his chore list, remember?), he went underneath the aft berth (where we sleep) to drain the reservoir next to the water heater and noticed everything we stored there was wet with antifreeze. Evidently it's been leaking without our knowledge and explains why we had to add coolant more often than we thought was normal. We had a mess on our hands. My favorite yellow hat is ruined, which is not the worst thing in the world, but still... Ed had to remove the hoses and tank, and then go back to the engine to remove the opposite end of one of the hoses to drain the antifreeze in an environmentally safe way. As he was pulling the hose out of the fitting, the fitting cracked off the engine, leaving a threaded pipe stuck inside and antifreeze all over the engine room. Now we had two messes to clean up. This is what we live for. We cleaned up the mess in the berth first, Ed removed the tank, took it up to the cockpit for an "operation" and once that was cleaned up he figured out a fitting was leaking. He went back to work on the part that was cracked off in the engine, using a large easy-out and wrench to back the broken fitting out of the engine block. I was giving him my input throughout this procedure, like "Why did that thing crack off like that? Now what are you going to do? Oh shit, look at this mess! Damn, my hat...." Just kidding. I try to offer assistance and help where I can. He walked down to the Budget Marine store, bought new fittings and proceeded to put everything back together again like Humpty Dumpty. Oh wait, Humpty never did get back together again in spite of all those horses and men. There seems to be no drain under the berth so all the water that collects there leaks out onto our floor. It's classic. You go to do something routine, discover a problem, fix it, put it back together, break something along the way, put it back together again only to discover a terrible flaw in the boat that demands a prominent place on your ever-expanding chore list. As Ed says, "It's a pain in the ass." That it is.
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08/10/2012, Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad
Ed and I love food. Cooking for or with each other has been a central theme in our relationship since the beginning. We're both adventurous and curious about local specialty items wherever we travel and going to the large open markets up and down the Caribbean islands, we ask questions of the vendors about how to use different items in new dishes. I've told you about callaloo and breadfruit (I can't actually recall whether I wrote about the breadfruit so if anyone wants to know more, leave us a comment). Now I want to introduce you to my favorite herb, except that I don't know what to call it. I could call it shadon beni which is one name for it. But I could just as easily call it by its numerous other names, such as chadon, shado bennie, shadow benny or bandhania. Then again, you might know it as Mexican coriander, culantro, spiritweed, Recau, fitweed, spiritweed, duck-tongue herb, sawtooth, saw-leaf herb or sawtooth coriander. Don't care for any of those names? Fine, let's settle on the Thai name for it, phak chi farang except that name is rarely used. I suggest we settle on the Vietnamese name ngo gai, just to keep it interesting. Totally confused? Imagine how long it took me to figure out what to ask for! Our American friends kept calling it cilantro, which though similar in flavor, is not it. I refer to it as shadon beni but if you look at bottles of local green sauce you'll see it spelled every which way. It's a local herb that grows like dandelion weeds along the road and sells for a song in the markets. Mostly it's used for seasoning and marinating. One bunch lasts a week or more; a little goes a long way. The photo is a full bunch, which sold for .40 US. It spices up everything but rarely overpowers the food. Last night we cooked up coconut shrimp with it. Today I made chicken salad for lunch and it was front and center. We also love the spring onions. They too are dirt cheap, last forever in the fridge and get thrown into everything. They're far more flavorful than the ones we get in the States.
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