Trinidad again - at last!!

Lin:-

The last week at home was a nightmare, I didn't think it was possible to pack the cases to go away and pack up the rest of 'Trehill' ready to be let again in the time that was available.

Poor Paul was so busy with his parents - his mother had had a bad fall just before Christmas, luckily not breaking any bones, and both parents went into respite care for two weeks. Paul and Avril, his sister, knew that his parents did not wish to stay there and therefore spent a long time re-organising their home creating a bed sitting room downstairs and arranging care for them.

I felt terribly guilty that I had been unable to help them more but knew we would never get on the plane if I did. Paul came home in the evenings and said he didn't know where to start - I suggested that as he had been so busy during the day that he just relax and leave it to me, trying to be reassuring but at the same time wondering if everything could possibly be completed.

In the end we left leaving Lucy and Jake to do the final clearing up in the kitchen. I never did see our new cooker and hob installed as this had to be delayed due to the snow preventing the contractors reaching us.

The Sunday morning when we were leaving for the train station, Michelle, Paul's daughter, picked us up from Paul's parent's house in Teignmouth where we left the car, and we stopped off at Lucy's (my daughter) on the way to pick up the suitcases which we had left there the day before, in case a further snowfall prevented us leaving Trehill with the car and we had to walk up the hill out of the village.

When we arrived at the station it was lovely to find that Dave, Charlotte and baby Farley were there to see us off as well. We are going to miss our grandchildren so much!!

We arrived at the hotel at Gatwick and unloaded. We had three huge suitcases + three smaller ones, we were very apprehensive as to whether we would be able to take it all on the plane but the next morning at the check in it transpired that we were allowed two big cases each and that instead of having to pay for the third, as we had been led to believe, we could have, in actual fact, taken another one free.

The flight to Barbados was uneventful and we felt that on the plane at last we could relax. The transfer on to the smaller Caribbean airline was very swift and before we knew it we had landed in Trinidad.

We declared the new boating equipment we had taken with us at customs and were told we had to report to Chagauramas customs as soon as we arrived there.

We then took a taxi to the hotel that we had booked for the night as we did not know what state the boat would be in at Chagauramas and did not want to arrive in the dark.

It was midnight (UK time) when we arrived at the hotel and as we had been up since 6am we felt rather shattered, however, we were also a bit peckish having only eaten on the plane since our early morning breakfast at Gatwick airport. We therefore decided to walk to the local Pizza parlour. We were a bit nervous, as we discovered on our arrival that the hotel, which looked quite plush when we booked it on the internet, was not in one of the better areas in Port of Spain, and although the lady on duty was very welcoming and directed us to the pizza parlour we wished it was not so far from the hotel through the back streets!! Needless to say our walk was quite uneventful and we arrived back at the hotel at 1am (UK time) but only 9pm local time, having enjoyed a very good pizza.

The next morning at breakfast we sat chatting to a travel writer from Canada, because I didn't write down his name immediately it now escapes me. He showed us pictures on his computer that he had taken just the previous week of the volcano eruption at Montserrat, he had been on Montserrat the previous few days before the eruption and had spent the evening with George Martin, who managed the Beatles. Many of the locals had left when the volcano began to erupt, but our writer was in a boat offshore and got the most amazing photographs.

After breakfast we took a taxi to Chagauramas and saw Sareda again after 18 months. She was filthy inside and out, on the bright side we had no cockroaches or other vermin but we did have mouldy curtains and headlining and everywhere was thick with black dust. The cover we had carefully tied on to her before we left had shredded into minute particles which mingled with the dust, and all that was left was triangles of fabric still attached to the ropes we had tied her down with, looking like tatty bunting. We took the cases onto the boat which seemed to fill her completely, and made our way down to the Customs at nearby Crews Inn.

We were chastised by the Customs officer as apparently we should have reported there immediately on leaving the airport. We explained that we could not board our boat the previous evening and had therefore stayed in a small hotel in the capital Port of Spain near the airport.

We were told that we should have gone directly to Chagauramus Customs - if necessary staying in the hotel at Crews Inn, just by the customs office. This is a very upmarket hotel and their prices would be well out of our range!!! Our only course was to apologise profusely pleading complete ignorance, which indeed was the case, and we were dismissed with a warning!.

We awoke the next day having been bitten to shreds by the mosquitos, a hazard when you are on shore at dusk. Everywhere on the boat was thick with this dirty black dust and we didn't know where to start, even the ropes were thick with black mould looking like black moss. The heat was really oppressive, seeming even more so since we had left snow in the UK.

I was rather tearful on and off the first and second days but felt better when Paul said that if I had not been with him he did not know whether he could have stayed and faced it alone.

I began to think we would never get back into the water again. The boat had to be cleaned on the outside and painted with anti-fouling, the wind generator we had brought out with us had to be fixed on a tall stainless steel post at the stern and the sails had to be put on, Paul had to go up the mast and check the rigging and the navigation lights, all the sea cocks had to be freed and serviced, the engine had to be serviced and the oil and filters changed, new sheets for the jib had to be purchased and fitted, another solar panel was purchased (second hand) and fitted as the one we left here had ceased to function. A new starter battery was purchased and installed, etc etc. Paul had his work cut out - we decided to pay two of the local lads that worked at the yard, Errol and Frankie, to complete the outside cleaning and anti-fouling to relieve Paul of some of the pressures. I undertook to clean all the inside.

Every locker and cupboard had to be emptied and cleaned, especially the food storage containers. Many things had to be thrown away and all the inside woodwork had to be re-oiled. The curtains were taken down and put through the washing machine and surprisingly came up quite well. My problem was that with the excessive heat, although we started at 6.00 in the morning, I was exhausted by 9.00. We tended to get up at daybreak, and do as much work as possible but by nine it was already too hot to work inside and I couldn't imagine ever managing to complete it. .

On the Friday we went to see Bryan, a young local lad, who was making the pole and supports for the wind generator. Whilst Paul was talking to him I was looking around the store which was part of the building where he was situated. There were air conditioners on the floort and I saw a notice saying they were for hire. I went to see the lady to find out how much they cost and was told about a £100 a month. I only wanted one for a week as we hoped to be in the water after that. A lot of negotiating took place as usually a month was the minimum time they let them for. Eventually we agreed that I could hire one for a week for the price of two weeks as it wouldn't be worth their while sending someone to the boat yard to fix it up and take it down again a week later for the weekly rate.

I caught up with Paul who was very dubious that it would work at all and he said we didn't have room for it on the boat. I almost resorted to pleading but he said if it would make me happier we could try it. The difference was amazing - the fellow came and fitted it to the hatch above the foc'sle so our sleeping accommodation at least was always cool - we couldn't shut the boat up completely to obtain maximum benefit as we needed to continually get in/out but the rest of the boat remained at a temperature that didn't exhaust us and I managed to continue working all day. Because everything had been covered in this thick black dust the carpets had to be taken up and scrubbed. I scrubbed them two mornings running starting as soon as it was light whilst it was still cool and then hosed them down afterwards to get rid of the soap. I was nervous that they might shrink but luckily they were not expensive wool (Trago's best!) and did not shrink at all.

By the end of the week I had cracked the back of it and Paul said he couldn't ever remember seeing the boat so clean and that hiring the air conditioner had been well worth every penny. We were able to take our breaks in the cool of the foc'sle and we turned it off at night whilst we slept, as it was always cooler then, and the noise would have kept us awake.

We felt we had come a long way toward achieving our goals so we decided to have a game of scrabble one night, this reminded us just how filthy the boat had been because when we opened the box the dust was thick inside, we opened the scrabble board and you couldn't see the squares for dust and all the tiles had to be washed even though they had been inside a cloth bag which was inside the box. We decided to leave it for that night and I cleaned it up the next day.

After I had finished cleaning the inside of the boat I started on the ropes that were covered in this thick black mould. I soaked them in buckets of water overnight and the following days I scrubbed them inch by inch until they began to resemble the original colour. Some parts of them I could not reach and we hope that eventually the sea water will wash them clean.

We kept delaying the launch date as we found more and more to do but finally booked her in for Monday 25th January. At the last moment we decided the pole that the new wind generator had been fixed on was not supported enough, Bryan had made the supports of the pole to fit to the pulpit on the stern and this is where Paul had fixed them, but if you shook the pole hard enough the whole pulpit moved as the pole was so tall it acted as a fulcrum. In normal weather conditions it would have been fine but if we were caught in a gale it could rip the pulpit from the deck.

I wanted to delay the launch yet again as, if Bryan made new supports to fit to the deck, I was concerned that we would have to take down the pole and generator whilst in the water and I could imagine the whole lot dropping into the sea and being ruined. Paul, however, felt we could not delay launching any longer.

Monday dawned and I took the final load of dirty washing to the boat yard washing machine, our work clothes got so dirty I dreaded having to wash them by hand!! Although Errol and Frankie had achieved miracles with the cleaning of the deck and topsides the cockpit was quite dirty again due to all the work we had done. I took advantage of the fact that we had the use of the hosepipe and scrubbed the cockpit, washing it down afterwards with the fresh water.

The hoist arrived and over a period of two hours or so we were lifted into the water and waved a final farewell to Errol, Frankie and the other yard workers who had been so helpful. The engine started at first turn of the key and it was wonderful being on the water again and I took great pleasure in knowing that the mozzies did not come over the water to the boats!!

There were still many jobs that had to be done but they did not seem so onerous once we were in the water. The different contractors could all be reached by various slipways along the water front. We were on our way to have the inflatable floor of the dinghy repaired and drew up at a particularly green and slippery slipway. I stepped out of the dinghy and began to pull it up the slip and Paul jumped out after me, then all of a sudden he was gone, he had fallen flat on his back. After checking that he wasn't seriously hurt - just bruised - and helping him back to his feet, I felt rather unkind commenting that he had ruined his brand new t-shirt - realising that the "green" will never come out!

A couple of days later we went to the same slipway again. We pulled alongside a very dirty pontoon rather than risk him slipping again. This time he lost his footing climbing up and was having to support his weight on his bad wrist until I managed to reach him and give him a hand. I'm afraid I've now warned him that if he keeps falling about like this I shall have to take him home!

I have painted a rather bleak picture of our time in Chagauramas but there were some very good times as well. Chagauramas is a port for all shipping so naturally is very commercial. It is the ideal place to be working on the boat whilst it is out of the water as there are experienced boat people everywhere to supply equipment and expertise to complete any possible function that is necessary to make a boat seaworthy.

However, if you look beyond the thin strip of boatyards at the hills beyond, it is a national park area and very beautiful, and we did on occasions hear the howler monkeys in the jungle behind.

We also met some very interesting sailors. On the boat next to us in the boatyard was Kurt from Austria who was the same age group as us but looked ten years younger, He has a 45ft long keeled boat which he sails single handed most of the time. He invited us aboard for a drink and we enjoyed a very pleasurable couple of hours. There was also Bruno from Brazil and his Danish wife whose name I never could catch, they were a very cheerful couple who had just sailed up from Cape Town, South Africa and were waiting for a new engine to arrive for their boat.

We were walking down to one of the chandleries one day and stopped to admire a Tradewind 35 which was a boat that Paul would have loved to own but out of our price range. We started talking to Dave the owner from the Hamble and discovered that he and his wife Sue had spent six years building her after purchasing the hull. They have spent three hurricane seasons in Venezuela and had some tales to tell. They decided not return there after the owners of their boat yard were both shot dead one night and the owner of a restaurant up the road who was having an affair with the wife of someone else, was also shot dead along with his girlfriend. Apparently, the government and police are corrupt and the President of Venezuela gave a speech on live radio telling the poor people that they were within their rights to steal from the rich so crime is rife there.

When we were a little more organised we took time out to enjoy a coffee and cheese croissant in the up market café in the Crews Inn area of the port. This is the marina for boaters with rather more money than we have, many of them American, but it is nice to see how the other half live occasionally.

We enjoyed one of the best pizzas we have ever tasted at 'Joe's Italian Restaurant' on the waterfront and said we must go back for another but we ran out of time.

Twice Paul and I caught the local maxi-taxi into the West Mall, a very modern shopping centre just outside Port of Spain and a considerable contrast to the local, rather run down areas we passed through. The maxi-taxis are great - minibuses, in various conditions, which pick up and stop anywhere on route, there is usually one every 3 minutes or so and they cost just pence. They generally have two speeds, very fast or stop and the drivers hold their money in one hand and drive with the other including changing gear!

We really enjoyed the food mall and had some wonderful lunches at very reasonable prices - we could choose from local Creole cuisine to Chinese to Burger King. I generally chose the Creole vegetarian option which was a mixture of local vegetables in spices with a cheesy topping, after having it the first time we were there I found it so delicious I didn't want to try anything else - Paul found a delicious vegetable curry on another stand. The Rituals Coffee Shop was also good and I experimented with iced raspberry tea and a 'to die for' Belgian chocolate chiller!!

I went to the mall once by myself to engage in some retail therapy. I bought outfits for each of the grandchildren and managed to pick up two new shirts for Paul and a couple of tops for myself in the sales - all at very reasonable prices..

Paul fitted the new struts for the wind generator which is now as steady as a rock and the supports are so strong that we can use them as additional hand holds at sea which is a real bonus. However, although the boat was in the water, the water here wasn't fit for swimming and we were both itching to move on to Grenada to rediscover the true Caribbean as we remembered it.

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We had planned to leave Chagauramas on the 3rd or 4th February to sail North to Grenada, there were a few jobs that Paul had planned to do before we made this overnight passage. When we had sailed down to Trinidad from Grenada it had taken us 24 hours and we were anticipating the same length of time going back.

However on Saturday 30th we were visited by6 Dave from Barnstormer - the 35ft Tradewind that had been in Venezuela. He asked if we were going North to Grenada and if so were we interested in forming a flotilla with them and John and Doug from another yacht 'Charissima'. Apparently there had been several piracy attacks during the past year off the coast of Venezuela on the rhum line between Trinidad and Grenada.

Their plan was to leave Chaguaramas and travel East along the coast of Trinidad towards Tobago following an easterly current which ran from approximately 10.30am until 4.30pm and then turn North to Grenada. This would be a longer less direct passage to Grenada but would largely avoid the areas frequented by the pirates. It also meant we would complete much of the passage during darkness and as the pirates reputedly struck during the daylight hours it seemed a good idea.

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Paul:-
All three boats were anchored near each other in the Chagauramas bay so we held a "council of war" on Barnstormer to discuss strategy for the voyage between Trinidad and Granada, taking advantage of tides and winds but clearing the reported pirate routes as much as possible.

Our problem was that Sareda was about 2 days away from being completely prepared for the voyage but we thought it a good idea to join the other two boats for protection so there was much to do in a very short time as they wanted to leave the next day. Although there were other boats travelling north, most tended to be faster and bigger than us and both Barnstormer and Carissimma were long keel, heavy displacement and would travel at about our speed so clearly they were a good choice for companionship.

We left Chagauramas at 11.00 having cleared Immigration and Customs (which took over an hour) and we had been up since 6.00am preparing for the voyage but there were some checks on Sareda that still had not been done as I would have wished prior to our first open sea voyage of the season. However it was exciting to be travelling at sea again and we soon cleared the harbour and out into the open sea through the Bocca de Monos passing Scotland Bay and the howler monkeys. We turned East along the north coast of Trinidad and the wind was on the nose with a short, steep sea from the north-west leading to two reefs in the main and the engine ticking over to help us keep way on through the waves. Both the other boats were having similar problems as us and we could see their hulls plunging and rearing as they, like us, fought to make as much easting as possible but it was a slow and uncomfortable ride!

After about 4 hours of this uncomfortable sailing we had made about 8 miles progress and with no prospect of improvement we agreed, via the VHF, to turn north and head for Grenada. This put us on a much better angle to the now easterly wind and we started to sail well reaching 5 to 6 knots although still heading into the lumpy north west swell.

At this point Lin started to feel poorly even though she had taken her normally reliable anti-sickness tablets and indeed she was laid out below for most of the voyage filling basins regularly!

Our journey was fairly trouble free until dark. We had agreed to travel without lights, although this is illegal, we felt it offered the best chance of avoiding the attentions of the pirates. It presented a problem in that, until the moon came out, we couldn't see each other so it was difficult to judge our positions.

The first problem we had on Sareda was a sudden clanking and banging sound which proved to come from the inner forestay that had come loose. We were not using this and I had intended to take it down but had not had time and I had not moused the shackle holding it thus it had worked loose and threatened to do serious damage. It took about 30 minutes to tame and lash the forestay down by which time we had lost sight of the other two boats completely.

We had two other problems with the jib which involved "heaving to" so that I could repair the problems - difficult with a lively sea - but I was strapped on. During each of these diversions Lin was a brick, coming up into the cockpit to help pull and tie the appropriate ropes and to check I was ok - all despite her, by now, quite severe sickness!

By this time Barnstormer and Carissima were way ahead but it was only when we met later on in Grenada that we found out that they had their fair share of problems too!

Lin & I continued on our own, unsure of where the others were and perhaps it was tiredness on my part, but towards the end of the night I was seeing pirate Pirogues in every breaking wave. Normally Lin and I would share the watches but she was in no condition to stand a watch so I managed to keep awake throughout, having the occasional cat nap for 15 minutes.

We sailed into Granada in style! Sailing at between 6 and 7 knots we rounded into the lee of the island at about 8.00 in the morning and were safely at anchor off the capital of St Georges by 11.00 followed by the inevitable visit to Health, Immigration and Customs when they opened after lunch.

After a good sleep and rest we took in our new surroundings and over the next few days explored some of the island, went shopping and generally finished the jobs on Sareda that we should have done before leaving Trinidad and, of course, swam every day in the deep blue and clean waters of the Caribbean.

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