Independence Day

August 31, 2008 - Today Trinidad and Tobago are celebrating 46 years of independence. To recognize that I thought I would tell you a little bit about the two islands. (Information taken from the T&T Boaters' Directory for 2007 - 2008)


The first settlers that came to the islands were the Arawak and Carib indians that came across from Venezuela. They all but vanished during the Spanish domination. Spain, France and England all battled over ownership of the islands with the Brits finally winning in 1797. The Spanish and French imported slaves from Africa to work the cocoa and sugar cane plantations. After emancipation of the slaves the British brought in indentured servants from India to do the same. In 1898 the two islands were joined politically and in 1962 they gained their independence from Britain and finally became a republic in 1976. They are now a democracy under a parliamentary system.

Trinidad covers 1,864 square miles and Tobago covers 116 square miles. There are approximately 1.3 million people living on the two islands. Although English is the national language when you listen to two Trinidadians speaking together you would be hard pressed to recognize or understand anything they are saying. They speak quite quickly and in a patois.

The flag is a red background with a diagonal stripe of black on white running from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. The red colour represents the vitality of the land and its people. The white is the sea by which the islands are bound and also represents the equality of all men. The black is the colour of strength, unity, purpose and the wealth of the land. The three colours also represent the elements of Earth, Water and Fire.

The national flower is the Chaconia or wild poinsettia. It blossoms during August and is seen as a flaming red flower in the verdant green rainforest. Its name is in honour of the last Spanish Governor of the islands - Don Jose Maria Chacon. It is an indigenous flower and has been present throughout the entire history of the islands.

The two islands each have a national bird. For Trinidad it is the Scarlet Ibis which nests in the Caroni Swamp, 15,000 acres of marshland, tidal lagoons and mangrove trees set aside as a bird sanctuary. These birds also display two of the official colours - the young are black/brown and the adults are a brilliant vermillion. The official bird of Tobago is the Cocrico. A bird found in Tobago and Venezuela. It is also known as the Tobago Pheasant. Compared to the Ibis it is a drab looking bird about the size of a common chicken.

For the past week red, white and black bunting has been appearing on buildings and walls along the road. There is a big celebration with fireworks in Port of Spain this afternoon.

Still in Trinidad

Well. it is a bit later than it was - of course it always is isn't it? So, time for a bit more news from Trinidad. As we said last time, we changed the timing for our trip back to Grenada. We had decided to travel with a couple of other boats up the Macareo River, which begins in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela and eventually meets up with some other rivers and becomes the Amazon. There are two possibilities in the Delta for river trips that yachts have done. One is the Manamo river, which ends up the same place, and the other is the Macareo. The first one is more civilized and more populated, which means if something goes wrong i.e. with the boat or illness etc, there are more facilities to handle it. The downside of course is that it is more"civilized" and more populated so there is more danger of bad guys and more hustling.

The Macareo, on the other hand, has a population that still uses paddles rather than outboards, has only one village big enough for a school in the 60 miles you travel upstream and the people want to trade rather than beg for handouts. We had been asked to do this trip before but weren't terribly interested because we didn't have all the facts. We then talked, however, to people who had just returned and they made it sound well worth doing so we committed to it.

HOLD IT - bureaucracy reigns again. Monday we were informed that customs had ordered the only fuel dispensers on the island not to sell subsidized fuel to foreign-flagged vessels. I went to customs to investigate and was informed that there had always been a law in place that forbade selling subsidized goods to outsiders. Up to this point it was one of those laws that no one paid much attention to but for some reason customs had chosen now to enforce. There is a rumour going around that a foreign-flagged fishing vessel took on 5000 gals of fuel last week and a local complained - that apparently happens quite often with the big fishsing trawlers and cargo ships and the problem is that when these vessels do that, this is the only money they spend here. Yachties also take the fuel but the yachting facilities here take in about $30,000,000 from the sailing community each year so of course an uproar has been raised.

Customs assured me that they have no problem with outlets selling us unsubsidized fuel but were not able to tell us where these outlets might be. All outlets sell subsidized!!

What does this have to do with the river trip - the trip upriver is 60 miles against a 4 knot current and it must be motored not sailed due to the width of the river and the lack of wind inland. This means that we all needed to be fully fuelled to go. To further complicate matters, one of the boats only carries 37 gallons and they would have had to borrow fuel from us and from Southern Cross in order to get back.

The matter is still being discussed at meetings attended by the Trinidad and Tobago Sailing Association, our champions in matters such as these. They are Trinidadians who do all they can to facilitate our needs because of course they want us to keep coming back. To this point nothing has changed and Cheryl and I made the decision that if by Friday morning, our proposed leaving date, we still couldn't get fuel, we would not be going. The boat with the small tanks had already filled up and the other boat is prepared to pay a local to circumvent the laws and use jerry cans to buy diesel fuel at service stations and transport it to their boat. Cheryl and I are not comfortable with this. The way we look at it is the law exists, whether is makes sense or not. Before you say - well, it wouldn't hurt anyone - imagine if there were a group of tourists who came to Canada from wherever and decided they didn't like some of our laws. How would we feel or what would we think if we discovered that they were ignoring our laws because they thought they were unfair and were in fact circumventing them. What if that cost us money??

Anyway, whether you agree with our stand or not, unless we get fuel by Friday we won't be going. We can still sail wherever we want and have lots of fuel to get to another country that will sell us fuel. We are going to Grenada to meet the Perrys anyway so - there you go!

What have we been doing, you ask.

We are no longer tightly tied to the boat so last Sunday we went for a hike with about 22 other people from the various boats. We were supposed to cross the golf course and end up at a beach after walking a bit of the coast line but because of all the rain and flooding, all the access points to the golf course were closed so we ended up hiking about 5 miles up a hill, coming back down and then walking to a small beach area for an hour or so. The hike began by going through the bamboo cathedral, a stretch of road through a whole forest of bamboo (remember bamboo is grass, not a tree). The bamboo was leaning over the road from both sides in huge arches. Very majestic. We were at the back of the group and they were soon out of sight. Whenever we came to a fork in the road they left us a marker being very ingenious in their choice of materials.

At the top of the hill we came on a satellite tracking and communication station that was no longer in use but was nevertheless very impressive. We found out when we went to the museum on Monday (more later) that this particular station transmitted and received the first VHF radio signal ever bounced off a satellite. The communication was to New York city.

Although the trip down the hill was faster, we found out the next day that is was much harder on the muscles, particularly in the shins!!

After coming down the hill we went to a small bay that has a beach. There are very few developed beaches in Trinidad and this one fit the norm. Apparently the small bay it is on used to have US submarines come in and anchor when the Naval station that the USA built during the war was still open. The base opened in 1941 and closed in 1976. More about that too when we talk about the museum.

Monday - museum and potluck day

There is a military museum just down the road from the marina so 6 of us decided to walk over and then attend the cruisers' potluck at TTSA (Trinidad and Tobago Sailing Association). The museum was a surprise. From the outside it looked like a typical small town museum.

Some old military vehicles in various stages of repair/disrepair and the building from the outside looked small. We figured we would probably spend an hour and then head back to the potluck in plenty of time. Once inside we were pleasantly surprised. The first display we saw were four showcases filled with swords that had been confiscated by customs and then donated to the museum. In Trinidad you may import swords, but only if you are a member of a karate club. There were gold ceremonial swords from Japan and India and others from China. Some of them had very intricately carved handles. From there you went into the museum proper. They had a history of war on display starting with the Grecco/Persian wars in BC and right up to the Vietnam war and other Cold War actions and the most recent Gulf wars. They had articles written at every display as well as artifacts. There was a section on pirates and the colonization of the Caribbean islands. Rather than having the displays in rooms they were set up along a 'path' that wound back and forth. At one point we could see each other, but it took a good 10 minutes before we were together and that was with one person standing still. The one display we both found intriguing was one set up as a trench from WWI. It was dark and they had sound effects of shooting and shells exploding. As you walked along you came upon dioramas of what life was like in the trenches. Very remarkable. We were in the museum for about 2 hours and felt we could easily have spent another 2 hours there and not seen everything - especially if you wanted to read most of the articles. Finally at 6PM we left as the museum was closing and the curator wanted to lock up and feed the dogs that had been running over the corrugated tin roof of the museum all the while we were in there. Added to the sound effects of the trenches!!

We headed over to TTSA for the potluck. TTSA is a marina in the next bay over from were we are and our friends D and Don on Southern Cross are anchored there. They have a cruisers' potluck every Monday evening. We had left our contribution for the potluck on Southern Cross on our way to the museum so D went out and brought it back. There were a lot of cruisers there from Chaguaramas bay as well as TTSA so we knew some people and met some new people. We had a lot of fun and as usual the food was delicious. We walked back to our marina with Leona and Bill on Voyageur C (fellow Canadians) about 8PM and called it a night.

Autopilot and other stuff

We finally have an autopilot. You may say - so what? An autopilot on a boat gives you a similar freedom as cruise control in a vehicle. Think about what it is like to driving a vehicle without cruise control. Cruise control enables you to maintain speed up and down grades without very much attention on the part of the driver. An autopilot on a boat enables you to maintain course without having the helmsman physically moving the wheel when the wind, waves or current takes the boat off coarse. This means the helmsman does not need to keep a constant watch on the course. We have not sailed with an autopilot and are looking forward to the experience.

On Tuesday we went out with David for the sea trial of the autopilot. David being the 75 year old who was in charge of installing the equipment. We headed out at 0730 because the forecast was for rain in the afternoon. Once we got out in the bay away from other boats we started to do a couple of slow 360 degree turns, that is, we started going in circles slowly. This was the calibration phase to ensure that the compass attached to the autopilot computer was set the same as our compass on the boat. We were within 4 degrees of deviation which is acceptable. Next came the learning phase. The autopilot was activated and took over the boat. Now things did not go too smoothly. Theoretically the boat was to proceed in a straight line and the computer would change coarse a few degrees and the autopilot would adjust and put the boat back on coarse. This was supposed to happen up to 27 times for the autopilot to learn the adjustments both to starboard and port. Instead what was happening was the boat would start turning to starboard and the autopilot did not start correcting the coarse until we had turned tharough a half circle. David tried switching wires, and re calibrating, but nothing was working. We had come to the point where it was decided that the computer was at fault and a new one would have to be ordered. David then noticed that the display was showing we were turning to port when we were actually turning to starboard and vice versa. A quick phone call to a co-worker and David decided to switch the wires for the rudder control and lo and behold the next attempt at learning worked and we were able to proceed with the autopilot correcting the coarse.

During all this we decided that it did not make sense for us to go to Grenada only to come back in a couple of days to have our diesel tanks cleaned prior to proceeding on a trip to the Rio Macareo in the Orinoco Delta of Venezuela. We are still in Trinidad preparing for that trip. We will be going with 2 possibly 3 other boats - D and Don on Southern Cross, we met them in BVI; Rose and Tom on Sojourn, we travelled to Tobago with them; and Leona and Bill on Voyager C, a couple from Nova Scotia that we met here in Trinidad. Talking with Sarah and Richard on Quintessence, who just returned from the river, it sounds like an experience we would regret missing. Check out their blog site on our links.

That has been pretty well our experience since the last blog (Griff here now). Up to this point we have not had much time to really relax what with having to stay around the boat for people coming aboard to help us or to do various things so we were/are looking forward to some R&R. Unfortunately the weather is not cooperating. I was saying to Cheryl that between staying around the boat to do things and getting rained on during the times we have been able to get away, I am reverting to a Canadian colour.

Some things about Trinidad: it is kind of a contrasting society here in Trinidad. I spoke at length with the driver that helped me get the stuff for Artemo from the airport and he says that he doesn't perceive Trinidad/Tobago (T/T) as a have and have not society. He says because of the oil, the economy is strong, lots of jobs, everyone can afford toys (there are 1.2 million people on Trinidad and over 500,000 registered vehicles-really apparent when you drive around here!!). The contrast I see regarding the strong economy is that this year to this point in time, there have been 346 murders, most of them with guns and not counting the bad guys killed by the police. Talking to other natives it seems almost like cancer is in our country, everyone has family or someone known to family who has been killed. Case in point, the guy who did the fiberglassing for our autopilot - very nice guy - was not at work on Wednesday because his wife's cousin was killed by police while transporting one of the top criminals (wanted for 11 murders), running a roadblock and firing on police. Of course a huge part of this is the fact that the Caribbean, particularly Venezuela and Trinidad/Tobago have become the drug running corridor from Columbia since the US pretty well shut down the big distributors in the Mexican corridor.

Another contrast -in spite of a lot of money seemingly available to the government, they appear to be ignoring the basic needs of the people. There have been 120 cases of suspected Dengue fever and in fact an 8 year old girl died last week. The health minister said there is no problem because, in spite of the death certificate stating she died of dengue (a photocopy was on the front page of the paper), the minister says the only way you could tell if that was true is if there was an autopsy, which they didn't ask for. Of course you could say that about any death!! So there is no epidemic. Manning (the prime minister) is apparently a fan of Hugo Chavez and the common perception of the population I have talked to, even those who like him, is that he is trying to set himself up as a dictator.

The contrast overall and perhaps this is because of something that I said we had to be aware not to do and that is to judge other countries by our standards, is that the conditions I just mentioned almost seemed to be taken for granted. In spite of the fact that since we have gotten here there have been at least 2 murders per day, you find this information of page 3 or page 5 of the newspaper, and sometimes even farther back than that. The stuff about the dengue was front page for a bit but they used pictures of the little girl who died almost as circulation boosters (reality or cynicism???). Of course they have had coverage of the Olympics, at least what their teams are doing. It has been difficult to find out through the paper what other countries are doing.

Contrast - even with all the negatives, the people here are great and Cheryl has been downtown 3 times now with other women and felt no threat (of course the guide book says don't go past such and such street and stay between here and here) Do I sound more sour grapes than grateful - sorry, I'm not really. I am glad we came to Trinidad so we could say we have been. Although native Trinidadians admit there is not a lot to do here (except for some who seem to constantly use liming and drinking as entertainment) , they say it is worthwhile because Carnival makes up for a year of inactivity. Even our 75 year old friend David says you have to be here for Carnival and there is a huge economy based on the costumes that each "band" creates and on "panning" for the Carnival.

We have been here and we have seen Trinidad and we are glad, but we will likely never make it back to Carnival. There are places to go, things to do and people to meet in far too many other places!!

By Request

Certain people have told us that we have been neglecting the blog and that she and Joe and Heather and Griff - whoops - did I name drop!! were not sure whether we had sunk or not so here goes.

We had not realized it had been so long since we blogged so there is some stuff to catch up but part of the reason we haven't blogged is when you stay in one spot for any length of time things run together and we don't want to bore you with daily grind type of stuff. Anyway, this is what has happened.

First of all we moved our spot in the marina - couldn't stand being in "money boat row". Actually, we needed to move because we had booked until the 14th in that spot but knew the work wouldn't be finished by then and the spot was reserved by another boat after that so when we were offered a spot across the way that gave us more time we took it. Bit of a dicey move because it is fairly crowded between rows and to make things harder, the tide was coming in and there was a significant current so that when we tried to pull into the spot, we were pushed away from the lane. Our second try a very nice man in a dinghy offered to act as a tugboat and he pushed our front end against the current and we made the docking.

Things we have done - an update -

Autopilot - we found out our 75 year old assistant is in the process of selling his business and the new owner has become our 2nd assistant. David, our 75 yr old is a super nice person and knows his business but is very slow moving and has a balance problem. Of course we don't want to say anything because it would take away from the effort but sometimes it is very hard not to jump in and say "I'll handle that part, particularly when it involves stuff inside the rear hatch. Dennis, the new owner, has the same problem with David but again doesn't want to offend the dignity of a man who is dedicated to what he does. The result of this is things got a little behind. Hopefully, however, on Monday afternoon we go out for the sea trials and are then done. The new autopilot has great features such as adjusting itself for the wind, like a windvane autopilot, and it has the ability to follow a course between waypoints and even to tack if necessary when a waypoint is reached and of course the standard things like setting a course with the ability to make as little as one degree changes in heading. Enough sailing talk. It will be a great thing to have.

Cushions - we decided to re-cover our salon and main cabin cushions so Cheryl went into town with a friend and bought the materials. We got a few estimates and decided to go with Mervin - probably to a great extent because he looks so cool. He is a very talented and personable person too however and we are very happy with the end result. The cushions now have zippers instead of velcro for easy removal for cleaning but a solid hold when they are on.

Varnish - we had bought some varnish to re-do the companionway hatch cover and the doors into the companionway and we also intended to re-do the salon table, the nav desk and my work bench. They looked okay but needed some work. I started to work on the hatch cover with the intention of sanding the top coat of the old varnish off, applying an undercoat and then putting on 3-4 coats of marine gloss varnish. We had the same general plans for the interior work. When I started to sand the hatch entranceway, however, I discovered that the last job that was done, they had sanded but not applied an undercoat and as a result the old varnish started to peel down to bare wood (teak). What this meant was that I would need to peel ALL of the exterior woodwork before continuing with the job in order to keep a uniform colour to the finish. This would have been okay if all of the varnish was strippable but alas, it wasn't. They had done a proper job on part of it and a poor job on part of it so that meant a MAJOR sanding job. It turned out that we had someone available (Ronnie) who, for a good price, would do the entire job, so since there were other things I wanted to do (and I hate sanding) that took care of that. Ronnie also cleaned and polished all of the stainless steel on deck.

The result - new gloss finish on the companionway, cmpway hatch cover and doors and the stairs. New rubbed effect varnish finish on the salon/dining table, nav desk and work bench top. It looks great!

Outside covers - I think we mentioned that we had put up the sun cover over the stern portion of the deck. Well, we decided we needed something to keep the rain off the front portion. The rationale for these covers is not just for when we are on deck. Since we have been in Trinidad it has rained for at least 2 hours a day and prior to this on other islands we had a fair amount also. Problem - every time it rains we have to run and close hatch covers. This is a pain in the patootie, particularly at night when we are sleeping (Rob - you would have found this out on your upcoming visit if we hadn't fixed it!!!!). So, again, Cheryl was off to town with friends to buy material. She was able to get some light coloured material that does not fray and is waterproof in Port of Spain and then borrowed a bit bigger sewing machine from a friend (ours is good for light material). She is a marvel with that machine. After a day's work by Cheryl (with lots of assistance from Griff) we now have a cover for the front. It drapes over the spinnaker pole, which we let down from where it is normally kept strapped up the mast. It extends out 90 degrees from the mast, we drape the cover over it and then fasten the edges to the toe rail. Bob's your uncle!! We got enough material to re-do the back cover also (at present it only keeps out the sun) and to add a flap to keep the back hatch protected and our bedroom dry but we will wait to do that.

Cheryl also made two more cushions for the settee and two more dresses for herself. What a lady!!

Spinnaker pole - the reason we were able to use the spinnaker pole for support now and couldn't previously use it for anything - the people who had the boat before us never used the spinnaker sail and obviously never sailed wing on wing (a sail out each side of the boat - used when running nearly downwind so that the maximum wind is used. The main sheet is put out on one side with a prevent line to keep it from swinging around - we mentioned that before - and the foresail is put out the other side using a whisker pole or a spinnaker pole to keep the tack of the sail as far out to the side as possible). Anyway, when we asked Simon, the previous owner, by email about the spinnaker, he said he had never used it. It was "the spawn of the devil".

Since we will be going West for a significant portion of time we decided we needed to be able to either sail wing on wing or to run a spinnaker sail (the prettiest picture in the world) but we had found out from previous attempts that the catch on the spinnaker pole that would allow us to release it from the bottom of the mast was frozen. Just so you know (and of course you do care!), our spinnaker is stored so that the "free" end is fastened to the mast at the bottom with a trigger type catch. The pole runs up the front of the mast to where it again attaches to the mast. Here, however, it fastens to a slide that begins about 4 feet off the deck and goes up the front of the mast. You release the bottom catch, pull the spinnaker pole forward away from the mast and as you do, the top end comes down the slide until it reaches the end (4 ft off the deck). You fasten a halyard to the outer end of the spinnaker to keep it parallel to the deck and you can then swivel it either port or starboard so use as a kind of forward boom. The end on the slide is attached to a pulley system so when you want to put it away you can pull it back up the slide. Another one of the many things you probably never wanted to know about sailing!!

Anyway, bottom line is we got a rigger to come over and fix the release so we can now use the spinnaker pole so we are set to sail downwind. By the way, we also have a whisker pole which we can use to ...............never mind.


That is what has been going on with the boat. Last Friday we finally took some time to see some more of Trinidad. We went on a tour of Port of Spain, ate lunch at Fort George where we were treated to a magnificent view of the coastline from Chagauramas on the northwest corner of Trinidad to the Caroni Swamp (where we saw the Ibis nesting ground) which is down the coast to the south of Port of Spain. After eating lunch up there we went to visit a small pan factory (one man operation) and learned some fascinating facts about that whole musical genre.




Details following - Cheryl is much better than I am at that.


The tour of Port of Spain provided us with lots of history of the country. Rediscovered by Christopher Columbus for Spain, then taken over by the 'Brits'. Trinis say rediscovered because it was originally discovered by the Amerindians from South America in pre-historical/pre-european days. Both the Spanish and English used slaves from Africa to work the land. The 'Brits' also brought people over from India as indentured servants to replace the slaves after emancipation. Trinis are now 40% Negro, 40% East Indian, 10% Chinese and the remaining 10% others. We learned some about carnival, the big celebration usually in February at the start of Lent - the same as Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

When we were stopping for our lunch, at a take-out Chinese restaurant, we drove past Maple House, the Canadian High Commission. I decided I would walk the two blocks to it and take some pictures. I had taken 3 pictures and then noticed a guard walking down the steps. I took one more and he came across the street to tell me that picture taking was not allowed. I asked if he wanted me to delete the pictures and he said yes. As you can see, being the good Canadian that I am, I obeyed. The funny thing was as I walked past the guard in the security booth he asked me to take his picture.



After lunch we headed to the pan factory. What is a pan you ask. Another brief history lesson. The African slaves used to communicate using drums which the British outlawed because they were afraid of a slave uprising. The slaves started using the Tamboo Bamboo. This was various lengths of bamboo which were tapped for sounds. Then that was outlawed. The people then discovered they were able to make music by tapping the bottoms of biscuit (cookie for Canadians) tins. Then they found out that if they made the bottoms concave the sounds changed and they could tap different parts of the tins to get different notes. They went to bigger and bigger tins so they could get more notes. Finally during World War Two they started using oil drums and that is what is used today. So after all that to answer the question what is a pan? A pan is what a steel drum is called.

The Factory

The factory we went to was essentially a one man operation. He worked out of a shipping container with a lean-to attached - not what I envision when I hear the word factory. The process of stretching the bottoms of the oil drums remains the same - either dropping a cannonball repeatedly on the bottom or using a hammer to make the bottom concave. The depth of the concavity and the depth of the side determines the pitch of the pan.

Tools of the Trade

Pan music started in the 40's and the focus was on acheiving the sound popular then, big band music. To no one's surprise, they were very successful. A pan band has the sound of a full orchestra with the various pans called tenors, double tenor, guitar, cello and bass. The tenor is the highest pitch about 8 - 9 inches deep in concavity and side depth and about 29 notes on it.

A guitar drum - 5 inches deep and 16 inch side

The bass is only 4 inches deep, but uses the full drum for the side. It only has 3 or 4 notes on it. In order to get the full scale a bass player would play up to 12 pans together. A full pan band/orchestra can have upwards of 300 players and can play classical music as well as the calypso/soca music of carnival. We hope to pick up some pan CD's before we leave.

Playing the Pan

Changes in Trinidad

We are writing this from CrewsInn Marina, where we have moved to facilitate our autopilot installation. To catch up, we talked in the last blog about going on the shopping trip on the Saturday. On Sunday Denny stopped over for a visit and although we had intended to go into the marina to meet with fellow Canadians Leona and Bill (Voyageur C - Halifax), it started raining so we just lazed around. Monday was errand and small jobs day. I took the Sea Anchor out and hung it up.

The sea anchor is a 19 ft parachute attached to a bunch of nylon strapping. This in turn is attached to a huge swivel clamp that, when we want to use the anchor, we attach to 320 ft of line. A sea anchor is used when you're at sea (of course) and you run into the kind of storm in which the use of any sail, other than a storm sail for stability, is not feasable due to strong winds. The main thing you want to do is remain on top of the water. Of course during these types of storms the waves are usually overpowering so the last thing you want to do is to get caught in the trough of the waves. The problem is, even when running the motor, the conditions are sometimes bad enough that you can't keep the boat into the waves and wind - enter the sea anchor. You attach the 320 ft rope to the sea anchor, which is in a bag, make sure the bag is open and throw the whole thing overboard. Oh yeah, make sure you attach the other end of the 320 ft rope to the bow of the boat!!! The water pulls the chute out of the bag and it opens out off the bow and starts to drag. Since it is attached at the front, the rear of the boat then swings out behind and the boat is headed into the waves and wind. Due to the size of the chute and the distance from the boat, there should not be much backward movement at that point. According to the old tars I have talked to, you then go downstairs, batten the hatches and wait for the storm to pass. I forgot to mention that there is a line coming out of the bottom of the bag to which you attach any kind of float i.e. small fender, old vinegar bottle etc. After the storm you spot your float, reel it in, which brings in the bag and the chute and Bob's your uncle.

So, back to Trinidad. The sea anchor had not been out of the bag since we got it so looked kind of moldy and gross so we left it hung up to let the elements clean it. It is still there!! Monday we also cleared out the rear hatch where the autopilot will be installed and ran all the cables through the boat to connect everything.

Tuesday we waited for the marina to call and about 11:30 took the boat into it's new temporary home. The slip has a short walkway down the starboard side to which we attached the docking lines. We also attached two lines off the front to two cleats on the dock in front BUT at the rear we had to connect our stern lines to pelican poles. Pelican poles are poles standing about 10 ft out of the water and situated off the docks about 30 ft. They define the lanes for each boat while in the dock and are used to attach the stern lines to in order to keep the boat from swinging back and forth at the rear. By the way, you can also back into these slips and in that case insert stern for bow, bow for stern, front for back and back for front in all of the above. We back up our boat as little as possible because with the 3/4 keel and prop position, it's a b..ch.

CrewsInn Marina is quite nice. We are in the 'high-rent district' - the power boats on either side are probably in the million dollar range. The marina has a swimming pool, laundry, showers, electricity and security plus there is no outdoor bar so it is quiet. The water is just as "bilgy" but we don't get as much big garbage floating around and the boat waves are a lot less. Of course just after we came in it started to rain and there was a big lightning strike and we lost our shore power so were still on boat power for the day. They finally fixed it about 7 PM and we settled in.

Wednesday we went on a full day tour. In the morning we went to the Asa Wright Nature Centre. Very interesting tour with a very knowledgeable and personable guide, Isaak. He could imitate an amazing variety of bird calls and was very quick at spotting and pointing out a huge variety of flying things. There was a chart showing average varieties of birds over a certain size of land - 1000 sq miles I think. Anyway, Trinidad had 234 per and the next closest (the countries included South America, the Caribbean and Central America) had 93. Very impressive displays.

Some of the birds, animals and flowers at the centre.

Crested Orinpendola

Land Lizard

Agouti

Angel Trumpets

After doing the tour, eating at the centre and walking around a bit, we left and went to the Caroni Swamp where Trinidad's national bird, the Scarlet Ibis, are found in great numbers and where the main nesting area for them is. We went out in a flat bottomed boat through various parts of the swamp, seeing on the way boa constrictors curled around branches in the trees, many egrets (snowy and common), little blue herons, cormorants, and Great Black Hawks. We finally got into an area where we could see the Scarlet Ibis returning to the nesting areas. They are incredibly red, with the wing spread of a Canada goose but a much more slender body. They get their red colour from eating the tree climbing crab which has carotene in its undershell. If they can't get that diet, they lose their colour.

Scarlet Ibis

By the way, something to ponder - how many of you know our national bird, our national flower and our national animal. We went on this tour with Leona and Bill and since everyone in the islands seems to know the answers to these questions, I asked Leona, Bill, Cheryl and myself those questions. Guess what - the beaver was the only one we knew. BAD Canadians, BAD,BAD Canadians!! Does anyone out there know the answer - without checking the internet!!!


So, today has been marshall our forces and attack our projects. We hope to get the autopilot done here, re-cover all our salon cushions as well as the 2 from our cabin, get our spinnaker pole working properly, re-finish the companionway hatch cover, doors and entryway and clean the sea anchor.

And so to work!!

To Market, To Market ..........

This morning we were up at the crack of dawn, 0530, to join a group going to the big Saturday market. Basically a farmer's market. Lots of fresh produce. Not a whole lot of variety, but lots of different vendors to buy from. Some of the produce available was local, but some was imported from the states and Chile. There were tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, breadfruit, hot peppers of various colours, yams, bananas, dasheen, papaya, spices, okra, long beans and regular green beans, and a few things that we had no idea what they were. These were for sale inside at tables as well as outside from the backs of pick-up trucks. We bought a few staple veggies and then just wandered around. In one part of the market we didn't go into they were selling clothing. In another part was the meat and fish for sale. We did walk through there. It reminded me a little of the 'meat street' in Athens only not as busy or clean. The meat vendors did not have many customers, however, the fish sellers were doing a brisk business. We still haven't got up the courage to buy any fresh fish mainly because I'm not confident in how to cook it so it will taste good. We saw small shark, about two feet long, one that was completely flat, another piece that was only part of a bigger fish, and many shrimp. On the way back to the bay we stopped at the HiLo Supermarket to pick up such essentials as bread, milk, eggs and meat.

Shark

Shrimp

One Monstrous Piece of Fish

Jaws!!!!!

One thing about having a white deck is as most things white it shows the dirt more than the teak deck did. Yesterday Griff took advantage of a thunderstorm to swab the decks. This was after we watched the storm roll in over the "mountains". Lots of thunder, which is usual, but this time we also saw lots of lightening. We were also able to collect more water, 12 litres. We had been told that after a big rain we could expect lots of garbage in the bay, supposedly run-off from the land. Sure enough today I looked west from the boat and could see this line of brown across the bay. It arrived at our boat shortly after and it definitely was garbage complete with a blue garbage barrel. We hadn't seen it that bad before. Griff cringed and then ran and moved the dinghy so that the garbage didn't get caught between the boat and the dinghy.


Later in the day we stopped in to talk to Bill and Leona, on Voyageur C, a 35 ft Island Packet from Halifax. Actually they were from Edmonton but have lived in Halifax for many years and sailed the east coast a fair amount. We made arrangements for me to meet with Leona to go to town on Monday to look at fabric for re-covering our interior cushions. They also want us to go over to the marina to play Mexican Train dominoes. We may go and watch!! On Monday Griff will stay with the boat and tidy up while he waits for the hatch cover man to call.

Never an idle moment!!

The past couple of days Griff has been a Good Samaritan and helped a number of boats pick up their mooring balls. Today he helped Denny. Unfortunately it did not work out well. Denny mans his boat by himself so he was on deck picking up the line and no one was at the helm. The current caught his boat and it drifted towards a catamaran that was mooring ball. Griff managed to get the dinghy between the two boats, but the bow of Jubilant bumped one of the cat's stanchions and knocked it loose. Denny decided to fore go the mooring balls and went back to Scotland Bay until Monday when he will return to check out of Trinidad and settle with the cat's owner for repairs.

After the Storm