So we moved 6 miles down south to the "main" anchorage in Tobago. Cruisers
currently there are 6 boats in the anchorage.
... It was a rainy day so the first impression was not that great ...
Bucco Reef about 1/2 mile north of us is supposed to be a fantastic snorkel spot .. unfortunately Jill has done some research today and discovered that the reef is in serious trouble because of the over use of glass bottom boats and the general over use by tourist's - mostly dead:(


She is also reading a lot about Dengue fever in the area .. doesn't make her happy.....

If the weather allows we are planning on packing our snorkel gear, walk the 1/2 mile and see for ourselves tomorrow.

So today things did not go that well ...and we are running out of time
launch is scheduled for Thursday 3:30 PM :-)
- The bushing from Beneteau to "repair" the rudder didn't show up.. therefore I put it all back together with the old bushing.... (really not that bad as there is not too much play yet). While putting the rudder assembly back together I realized that there is still some interference with the arm of the autopilot- something definitely need to look at tomorrow..-
The engine guy didn't show today- after calling they re scheduled for tomorrow ..
We'll see ....
Finally they finished the modification of cover for the starboard locker- just in time as they took off the protective cover this afternoon ...but we lost at least 1-2 days because of the it ...
On a positive note, I did get the dingy in the water today :-) :-)

Fred is arriving tomorrow night ...

Until now, Tomas has not affected us at all.
Everything stayed calm....
Some boats that originally were launched on Thursday - hauled out on Friday - actually relaunched today. (The main reason behind this is probably the fact that it could be very hard to get a new launch date next week)

Tropical depression / Hurricane Tomas...
So this whole issue with this enormous low approaching off the coast of South America started yesterday afternoon.. The radios started broadcasting the approaching distortion during the early afternoon... The radio stations were all over this for the rest of the day by having people talking about hurricane preparedness and so on ..When I looked at the models in the evening it sure looked like the low was heading straight for "our" marina " ... UPS.... but at the same time the experts on the radio or the Internet kept mentioning that for the system to develop properly it would have to move up north first ...and sure enough when I checked in the morning that's exactly what happen - it seemed rather clear to me that the system would strike somewhere north of Grenada..
**** but here comes the "funny" part .. I didn't check the progress all day long but early in the afternoon people were starting to move boats out of the water in astonishing rates ???
Lot's of boats ! Boats that just where lunched the day before !
The yard got in emergency mode- they put sand bags in front of all doors at street level - they even moved my rudder into the shop as they were worried it would get flushed away ??? (we are expecting heavy rains)
Anyway .. somebody told me that the whole thing started with a local guy pulling his boat out and everybody else just "panicked"..
(schools where closing early today also - some schools didn't even open - regardless of the media telling them not to panic ..)
This was a good day for the Yard - haul outs run between $500-1000 ( Times 2 if you don't want to miss the season :-))
- Now maybe we were just lucky this time - but I think looking at the models online around 3Pm should have clearly shown that it would pass Trinidad by a big margin)
Now for the other islands, this is a different story I would not want to be up there right now ..... If this would happen in about two weeks that would be a serious problem for me, as once you pass Grenada there is "nowhere" to go anymore... Ill keep my fingers crossed :-)

They really started to dig in today ..
- We had to cut the rusty bolts inside the cabin....It looked like they would have survived another season ......but you could tell they have never been replaced .... better to be safe
- The rudder got dropped - now we are waiting for the machine shop to fabricate a new bushing
They also started removing the "leaking" port windows- luckily for me they decided to hold one of the new windows up to the opening - just to discover, that one of the 2 new port windows got cracked on a corner during shipping :-(
- I guess we will fix only one side this time around:-)