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!!