February 2008

(To view Album and Film scroll to end)

What a great feeling to sit at anchor again, being awakened by the cry of roosters when the sun climbs over the mountain spreading warm sunrays over the bay. Skimmers scooping up plankton of the water's top. A gentle breeze keeping us cool while reading a book. After a relaxed day watching the sun disappear on the horizon leaving a trail of reddish colors in the clouds and at night the drumming of the fisherman against the hull of their fishing boats chasing their pray into the nets makes you drift into a different dream land. This is what we like best and definitely do best.

Cruising is………..

………. sitting in your deck chair
Resting your legs on the life lines
Looking at the reflection of the anchor lights
Above you see twinkling stars
And all you can think of is
How lucky you are

Manuela Olshefski Grenada August 06

After one week getting some last minute things done at the Redonda Marina we excitedly left the dock, hoisted the sails and headed towards Laguna Grande in the Golfo de Cariaco. A gentle roll guided us through the Mochima Islands. Once leaving the protection of the islands the swells increased a bit so did the wind but it staid fairly calm. The wind of course came right on the nose again and so we motor sailed our way into the Golfo de Cariaco. Max the autopilot decided to give up and so we manually steered the boat. I sat on the bow reading a book and watching occasional dolphins play in the wake of the boat as Sid called me asking me if I heard an alarm. Sure enough an alarm sounded which we thought was the Autopilot again, but clicking the buttons didn't turn it off. Immediately I went down below to turn the Autopilot off and the alarm still sounded. I smelled something funny, like hot rubber mixed with overheated water and wondered about that. As I got back in to the salon with horror I noticed that lots and lots of water was pushed through the crevasse between the engine cover and the cabinet, spilling onto the floor. I screamed as loud as I could for Sid to stop the engine, which he immediately did, the spray of the water stopped. While Sid hurried inside I ran for the bilge pump and opened one of the floor hatches to discover that the bilge was filled with water to the top of the floor. It took a while to empty the bilge meanwhile Sid was inspecting the engine but couldn't find any problem. Then Sid realized that earlier he tried to run the water maker but it didn't work, and figured that it was the valve he had opened. Sure enough the hose clamp came off the hose and by opening the valve it started filling the bilge. We tried to sink the boat, what were we "sinking about";

Watch this clip, it's too funny:

The rest of the trip went with no further problems and 11 hours later we anchored in beautiful Medregal. First thing in the morning I emptied the bilge (wine and rum cellar) washed off all the bottles and Sid cleaned out the bilge. Since our batteries are in the bilge we surely hoped that they didn’t get harmed. We also had an old alternator in the bilge which needed to be rebuilt that was submerged in the saltwater and now of course beyond repair. Luckily our refrigerator pumps are all sealed so no harm done there. After we were all done cleaning up the days were filled with eating, drinking, relaxing, reading, resting, eating, drinking, relaxing and realizing time had just run away again.

As soon as Chris and Luima knew we were in Medregal they came for a visit and spent two nights at the Medregal Village Resort. We had such a good time with them and I think all we did was some more eat, drink and relax. Although Chris did take us on a car trip around this area, enjoyed snacks on the beach with ice cold beer and Cuba Libre (there goes the eating and drinking again), relaxed at a lonely resort with more ice cold beer and a platter full of sea snails and crabs which had just been collected in the shallow waters in front of the Hotel, get this the whole platter cost us $1.50 and the beer 30 cents each. I noticed a papaya tree with the biggest papayas ever the owner saw me eyeball them and told me to pick one. They were still very green and unripe, but the perfect papaya to make Green Papaya Salad, most delicious.

As we left the owner's son came towards us with a dead snake about 6 feet long dangling in his hand. Luima was not too jazzed about it but I got a good look at it and couldn't keep my hand of the silky skin. On the way out I spotted a banana flower for my banana flower salad and along the way we passed a Tamarind farm and the tree limbs that hang over the road side we though were fair game and picked quite a few fresh Tamarind. I made some tamarind sauce which I basted onto chicken legs baking in the oven, end result wonderful tasting Tamarind glazed chicken legs, a new recipe in our galley. Unfortunately time went by too fast and Chris and Luima had to leave. We went right back into reading and relaxing, cleaning the bottom of the boat (Sid), early morning water aerobics with pool noodles (Manuela), meeting at 5ish at the resort with all the other cruisers for cocktails.

Last summer we were here Jean Mark had just hauled out the first boat in his new yard, in the mean time he had 8 boats stored and the first one just got launched with a brand new paint job. Good paint job for a fraction of what we paid in AquaVi. The lift is really neat as it lowers across the beach into the water and even a boat with 7 foot draft can easily get onto the lift, then it is pulled back out over the beach onto the yard. He just received a trailer to haul out Catamarans as well. The yard reminds us more of a nice KOA campground and each boat gets the most beautiful view over the beach, water and bay, not to mention the mountains behind them. Every two slips have palapa huts to work in the shade, power and water and all. This yard is out in nowhere so shopping for things are a bit tougher, but most everything can be found in Corupano a two hour car drive away. Jean Mark drives there every Wednesday and offers a ride to cruisers. Corupano is a small but very busy town and pretty much anything can be found knowing where everything is of course. Just before the town are some saltwater ponds and to my amazement I saw hundreds of pink flamingos standing on one leg close to each other across the other side of the pond and on our return they were all right next to the road, my first wild flamingos.

The weather here is just amazing, we were surprised last summer how cool the evening got even during summer. Now it gets down right chilly at night and on occasion during the day I had to put on a jacket to keep warm and sip on hot tea during the day. Even Sid who likes to sleep in the cockpit needed not just one, but two blankets to keep warm. In the morning we found the inside temperature at 70 degrees.

The Christmas winds were still howling and for the previous 10 weeks we had 20 to 25 knots blowing almost daily. It had definitely been blowing non stop since we arrived, except for the night it would blow around 10, but then after the sun rose it would start up again. We had only one evening with total stillness where the water surface was as slick as a mirror. Then word came that a break in the weather was approaching we could finally get a good weather window for our sail to Trinidad. Chris Parker our weather guru announced that there was an opening coming but would be short as a very strong cold front was pushing off the coast of the United States. We hopped on this opportunity left the following day.

A huge squall was closing as we decided to pull the anchor so we waited for it to pass. 15 knots of wind followed the squall and since the weather was a bit unstable we only pulled the jib up, which paid out as just 5 miles later sailing along the coast the wind swept down the tall hills and created at certain places a strong funnel effect. We started getting gusts up to 25 knots and decided to reef the jib. About 7 miles before Laguna Grande the waves started beating against the hull sending the water curling on top of the wave into the cockpit. To prevent the water spray we headed towards shore to get more protection from the swell. The wind now blew 30 with gusts to 35 knots and Paradise speeding along with up to 7.2 knots healing over quite a bit too. Coming into Laguna Grande was a big surprise seeing nothing but white froth rushing towards us, it looked like a raging river. The wind was howling a steady 30 and slowed us down to 2.3 knots even though we ran high rpm's. Sid thought that maybe we had a transmission problem and instead of heading to our usual anchor spot we chose the first bite into the big bay to drop the hook, (later Sid checked the motor and luckily it was just the wind that had slowed us down). This little nook gave us good protection from the still strong wind but occasional gusts still whipped us from side to side and the near bay sounded like a raging river. Concentrating on the anchoring procedure I didn't pay attention to what was going on in the cockpit until we were securely anchored then I noticed the cockpit covered in black and moving. Ohmygosh, I have never seen so many flies, they were everywhere. Sid’s mouth dropped when he saw the cockpit covered with black flies and the war started. No matter how much we sprayed it seemed every fly that fell twenty would take their place or is it kill one and 100 come to the funeral! The cockpit turned into a gruesome battlefield which seemed the flies had the upper hand. Time to bring the real weapons out the net I just had made for around the cockpit and the sticky fly strips you hang up which usually just catches my hair or Sid’s sleeve instead of flies. I tell you the second it was hanging in the cockpit there was a battle amongst the flies who could get to the sticky tape first. The buzzing of them getting stuck on that gooey stuff was amazingly loud and oh so annoying not to mention gross. At the end we won the battle and sat comfortably inside the netting tent sipping on a cocktail, while watching mama goat bring her two babies down the hill hopping from one rock across the beach and up the next hill.

The wind didn’t lie down, so we decided to spend an extra day battling the flies, what a war (it took a lot of scrubbing and cleaning in Trinidad to get read of all the bodies. The wind finally slowed down after sunset and at 10 pm we lifted anchor and headed out into the dark night. Although we had a problem with the GPS, it could read the satellites but couldn’t come up with a position, so Sid hooked the handheld up with the computer, which worked just as well. We had a pretty calm crossing and arrived in Porlamar at 11 am. A couple hours into the trip Max the autopilot decided to quit as well and after we had anchored Sid tried to fix Max and thought he was successful. I jumped ship and raided the wonderful stores on Isla Margarita and loaded up on especially rum and wine, heard they were pricy in Trinidad. Imagine buying a case of wine, three cases of rum, 6 bottles of champagne, 2 Cuervo Gold Tequilla and 1 Campari and spending less than 200 bucks. We even managed to get the diesel guy over and filled up four jugs of a total of 24 Gallons and paid 8 bucks and that’s the inflated price. He comes up in a boat full of big black jugs with a hand pump and a long hose and away he goes. The pump, pumps a liter every pump and that’s how he counts how much it is. What a busy afternoon that was, we were exhausted and finally could relax at 6pm, had a quick dinner and tried to get a nap until midnight.

The Porlamar anchorage is always rather on the rolly side, especially that night so needless to say we didn’t get much sleep as the swell were on the beam tossing us from side to side. The wind was still making Maxine our wind generator scream but we pulled anchor anyway and headed out into an even darker night and fairly unsettled sea. We had to leave as there was two more days of a good weather window and God knows when the next one would be, besides our visa had run out so we had to leave.

The sea was confused I guess Max did not like it more than we did and gave up the ghost for good, which meant manually steering the boat for the entire 146 miles or 36 hours. Besides that the GPS still couldn’t read the position, the two most crucial instruments we need were out. Max is like a third person on a long crossing and even more so needed when it is rough, at least we had a backup GPS. About 3 miles out to sea the boat started to run sluggish. My watch was over and I had just settled in and started to doze off when I heard that alarm again. Sid went immediately down below to find the same mess I found a couple of weeks back, water was spewing up through the engine box. The bilge was filled to the rim again and this time came above the floor in the aft cabin and the carpets in the galley were soaked as well. NOT AGAIN!!!!! While looking for the problem I turned the boat around and started to head back towards Porlamar, just in case. Sid found another hose clamp that came off, all rusted out, this time on the engine. He fixed it the water pumped all out and we turned back in route to Trinidad. Wow, that was a close one again, not to mention the cleaning that lay ahead of us. As if that wasn’t enough the stress from this ordeal and the rough seas made me seasick, so Sid let me sleep it off for 4 hours. Then poor Tika missed her litter box, the smell of it was lingering inside the boat and it was too rough to even think about cleaning it up. Of course we found the counter current (1.5 Knots) which runs 1/3 of the way against us and so we steered our course a bit closer to the Araya Peninsula hoping to loose the current. It was a bumpy night but passed without any other problems. When daylight arrived we enjoyed seeing the beautiful coast line of the Araya and Paraya Peninsula, unfortunately this area is off limits for us cruisers as too many boaters in the past years had problems getting boarded and still are at risk. What a shame as this is by far the prettiest coastal area of Venezuela. The wind was blowing a steady 15 knots and of course on the nose, we had 6 foot swells with cross wind waves which gave it that washing machine effect. It was a bit uncomfortable but doable. When night came we hoped the wind would clock due south again and slow down a bit but that was just a nice wish that never happened. Instead the wind blew a steady 16 Knots and the sea was fairly unsettled. It was pitch dark and therefore it made it seem even rougher than it was.

Poor Sid developed a horrible migraine headache and we both were sleep deprived. Not to mention that it was too rough to cook so we lived off soups and didn’t even attempt to make tea. By sunrise we approached the end tip of the Paraya Peninsula and as the first sunrays warmed our faces. We turned Paradise into the channel between Venezuela and the Trinidad islands. What awaited us there was rip currents, 8 foot swells and really churned up water, but the most beautiful thing was hundreds of small dolphins plaid in the wake of the giant swells; a picture that couldn’t have been captured by any camera. It was about an hour and a half in that chop inching our way closer to our destination while the dolphins accompanied us having more fun then we did as Sid still had a tremendous headache. Of course while heading towards the islands three huge freighters had to cross our path. Once around the island all was calm and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery of first three lush green islands and then the main island with rolling lush hills.

We headed into Chaguaramas and went straight to the custom dock as you have to check in right away. Keith on Tortuga waited for us and helped us tie up to the concrete dock. Check in was fairly easy especially clearing in Tika, as there is a quarantine time for pets. They simply told us that if she does not get off the boat she’s fine. Right after check in we took a slip in the Cruise Inn Marina, not what we had planned but under circumstances having almost sunk the boat again, we needed water to wash the bilge down and especially the batteries which this time were under saltwater. After all that rock n’rolling on the water I had a hard time being on land again. I guess they call it land sickness as I had the spins like the spins you get when you’re drunk I had to literally hold on to everything near not to fall over. That lasted for about an hour, it was really strange and too funny. After enjoying a beer with Keith and catching up on stories Sid went straight to bed to get read of his headache and I went to work emptying out the bilge and hosing the salt crust off the deck. Too tired to cook we went to the restaurant that belongs to the hotel and marina. We had most delicious meal and are realizing we are back to the prices of the US the reasonable life stile of Venezuela is over for a while.

We felt pretty lucky we arrived when we did as there was a nasty weather system headed from the US coast south bringing 30 foot waves from the north Atlantic into the Caribbean, resulting in damaging 9 to 10 foot waves breaking ashore on all the Caribbean islands. We were on the safe side of the island but did get some surge as a result of the high waves.

We had a lot of clean up and fixing to do, poor Sid was in the bilge for days and also had some extra work to do on the engine and exchanging the sump pump which by now was corroded and refused to work. It took us four solid days to get back to normal and barely left the boat other than to take showers or take a dip in the pool. This was a first ever that we didn’t explore our new surrounding, not until about the 7^th day. Since we had the clean up to do we decided to take a marina to make it easier. We were only going to be in the marina for four days but that changed as we fairly soon arranged boat work to start. (I don’t want to bore you with all the boat work problems we had so for those who are interested I will add the story at the end of this Turtle Express.)

The Crews Inn Marina is the nicest but also the most expensive marina in Chaguaramas. It has a grocery store, restaurant, wine store, dive shop, a pool bar with of course a nice pool and the newspaper was delivered to the boat every morning. Oh yeah, and there was a bank too with an ATM machine that would not accept our pin number. We went across the bay to the other ATM and same thing and immediately thought “oh shoot our cards had been compromised again” and “how the heck are we going to get money?” Just good a boater sold us some Trini money before we left Redonda, that kept us going for a few days and luckily we found out that our credit card worked and bought our groceries with that. It still was a concern for us as most yards here only take cash. A couple of weeks later I discovered a Scotia Bank downtown which took our pin number, yeah saved. Weeks later I also found an ATM machine at the only bank at West Mall that gave out dollars it would take our pin but only for Dollars.

Chaguaramas is the biggest boating center we’ve ever seen and has as many as 11 well equipped yards and each yard has its own marina store, so you can get pretty much anything and what you can’t find here can been shipped in duty free, the Marine Warehouse was the best and most reliable for that. The yards are all pretty impressive and they do good work from what we’ve observed. Our first excursion to check out all the yards we ended at Peake’s Boat Yard and one of the first boats we noticed in the yard was “Cat Bird” a blue hulled, white trimmed Ericson 36C, the sister of Paradise, how kewl. We never expected to find one this far south and of course wanted to meet the owner which happened to be the tore manager. Shawn was just as excited as we were and the boys swapped hints and tips about our boats. A couple of weeks later him and his wife Debbie came over to look at Paradise and were pretty impressed what they saw. Same boat but oh so different. He was especially interested in the dodger and she was just speechless as she came down below and saw all the cabinets as theirs has none. Poor Shawn’s project list just doubled. They were just going to stay for one hour; 6 hours, appetizers, dinner, 4 bottles of wine, and who knows how much RUM later, they left at midnight with an invitation to their home. We sure had fun. Two nights later Shawn picked us up and they wined and dined us in their beautiful home. Debbie made the most delicious Callaloo soup, a Trinidad specialty. You’re probably asking what the heck is Callaloo, I did too, they will tell you it’s like spinach but when you see the leave it’s as big as the leave of a water lily and the flavor smooth and silky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaloo) all I can say is it’s yummy and on my list of soups to cook. Shawn cooked the most wonderful shrimp curry with saffron rice and curried beans, wow. We made wonderful friends and in the many months in Trinidad we spent numerous times with them whether on Catbird, on Paradise or just meeting for lunch.

The first three weeks in Trinidad we had nothing but rain and we started to worry about this as we still had boat work to do. The great thing about the rain was that all the Poui Trees which is the national tree started to bloom. It was an explosion of hundreds of trees with the most intense yellow blossoms. You can literarily watch them, every time we looked up at the forest another tree exploded, and as fast as they bloom as fast they fall off the tree again and within a day or two the tree looks as barren as it did with the only give away of a yellow carpet below the barren limbs.

For as industrial like Chaguaramas it boggles our minds that this busy place can just like that turn into a peaceful tropical scenery of nature. As all the businesses have closed and boat workers have gone home screams of squawking parrots return flying over our boats to the near trees then chatting in unison for at least one and a half hours, letting us know that sunset was approaching. After they quite down it’s the turn of the cicadas as they start to chirp and now and then a cricket gets lost on the boats chirping away all night long. Just before the sun comes up the parrots wake up and just like an alarm all start to squawk again in unison, louder than at days end. After about a half hour they all take off into the air and fly over our boats across the bay in to the jungle.

The bird life here is amazing, you see all kinds of birds and bugs I was doing laundry I saw a dried out leaf on the floor and tried to pick it up and it started moving. Upon closer inspection I realized that it was a moth looking just like a dried up leaf, very interesting. A the dock there is an underwater light and attracts all kinds of fish at night, including parrot fish and get this a school of about 20 squid, dinner right under the house; no we let them live, but the thought was there. It’s nice to see clear and clean water in a marina for a change. Weather was amazingly cool and after the first three weeks of rain it changed to sunny weather with barely any rain.

Of course it was great to finally meet up with Keith on Tortuga an old cruising friend from way back in Mexico. He has been in Trinidad for 6 years already, unfortunately not by choice but rather serious medical problem, so it was even more so great to finally catch up with having survived two type of cancer. He introduced us to the Trini tradition of “liming” speak “limin”, which we found out are different types. We did “bar-limin” as there also is “beach-limin”, “car-limin”, “house-limin”, “street-limin”, “garden-liming”, “boat-limin”, get it? We also learned the Trini way of greetings, when you greet somebody it’s either “morning morning”, or “gooday gooday”, “evening evening” or just “hi hi” and when somebody asks you how you are you say “oh, goodish, goodish”. The most difficult thing is trying to understand what the Trinis are saying, it’s a totally different language as “thirty” is “ttirtty”, thanks = ttanks, road = rod, “A”s are pronounce like a heavy NY accent, and they speak so fast it frankly doesn’t sound English anymore. You know the English accent India people have just quadrupled that and mix it with Ebonics, all in all it’s a foreign language. It’s actually funny Sid he can only understand the first three words, then its gibberish, so he thought it was his hearing problem and let me do all the talking and dealing, well I had to tell him that I had the same hearing problem.

Trinidad has its cultural mixture but the India culture shows through most, you can tell by the delicate faces and beautiful almond shaped eyes. But this is also the land of the Rasta Man. The food definitely has the India influence and is pretty darn good too; but ohhhhhh soooooooooo fattening. The main flavor is curry. The most traditional food is Roti kind of a tortilla wrap with chana (curried chickpeas) and some meat, the other “Doubles” a kind of egg/flour bread fried filled with chana and hot sauces and is eaten for breakfast. Let me tell you about hot sauces, if they say hot it’s flaming hot, there is no mild sauce here. Then “Bake and shark”, bake is a deep fried bread, reminds me of the jelly filled donuts without the sugar or jelly, filled with breaded and fried shark and topped with cucumbers, tomatoes, salad, onions, garlic sauce, hot sauce and ketchup, very tasty. Oh, ketchup is a staple food here and is used on everything. When we had Joe’s pizza our neighbor poured a whole bottle of ketchup on his pizza, we almost lost our appetite. They smother everything with ketchup.

Back to the language, over the years we learned that mañana means, not just in Mexico but all the Latin countries, it means “definitely not today but not necessarily tomorrow”. The Trinidad translation for it is “JUST NOW”, if someone tells you just now, get ready to be here for a long, long time.

The carpenter was supposed to show up on Friday morning at 8 to get the estimate done. He also knew that we had a Taxi appointment at 9.30, which luckily we had canceled as he never showed up. So we figured he would be here on Monday, wellllll! A little complaining later he showed up the following day. Since we don’t have a phone we take messages through the hotel desk and they deliver the message “just now” too, anywhere from 3 hours up to three days later. So we bought a phone card and tried to make some local calls but the friendly automated phone voice told us that we cannot make locals calls just International calls, well we want to make a local call and the card we bought says for local calls, go figure, so had no way to contact people other than going there ourselves.

Finally Narace the carpenter came and it took him two days to make the templates for the cabin sole (floor) and galley (kitchen) counter, you should have seen the boat it was all upside down as we had to move the table and water maker out of the way. He told us that he can finish both within three week. Well, we’re holding our breath with the “just now” in mind and over time learned that everything we started here turned into a fiasco.

Here we were in beautiful Trinidad battling with everything we started. What is it again: Cruising is finding exotic places to work on your boat. Just good they know how to lime here, so we had a chance to forget about the frustrations for the evening or weekend.

On our way here we had problems with our GPS, although it read the satellite positions it couldn’t download data, so we had to send it via DHL to the US. We were surprised that it arrived the following day at 8.30 am. Northstar used to have, for an extra fee, a fast return deal, not anymore and as after two weeks we haven’t heard from them we emailed them. A few days later finally an email came back from Jim telling us that our dinosaur GPS needed a chip replaced in order to read the newly upgraded Satellites and that he needed our credit card info for the cost of $ 104. We sent that back, then silence for 10 days. So we called them and Ramon told me that he didn’t know anything about our GPS and that Jim hadn’t been to work since over one week, great we thought. One day later he called us back informing us that he had found our GPS and that it will be fixed “today” and sent the following day, cost $ 546 and took our CC info again. We didn’t question the price as we needed the GPS back. Sure enough the next day we received a tracking number for FedEx and I tracked it religiously, Maryland to Dallas, Dallas to Miami, Miami to Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico..... What was going on? Then another email informing us that there was a mistake! They had sent our GPS to our mailing address in Florida (even though we told them numerous times to send it back to Trinidad plus we taped a note onto the GPS with the same info, knuckle heads!!). And the one that was on its way to us belonged to another customer. Immediately we checked our bank history and found out that they had charged us for the real repair of 104 plus the 546. It took us two weeks to get that money back and had to pay an additional 175 bucks to have the GPS sent along with our mail from Florida.

At the same time Sid ordered a Waco 12 Volt freezer which the dealer here told us would be delivered in nine days. Nine days later they didn’t know where it was, no tracking number nothing. Three weeks later we found out that it wasn’t even underway yet, they had to get it through another warehouse. Week five still not tracking number and so Sid told them if it wasn’t here by the end of the week he wanted a refund on his money, guess what that did the trick it was here by Friday. Lesson learned in “JUST NOW”!

It was wonderful to have made friends with Shawn and Debbie are wonderful people and made it so much easier for us to feel a bit more at home as after three weeks being in Chaguaramas we still honestly couldn’t say if we liked it or not and that feeling stayed with us until we left. The marina was nice and the Trini's were super friendly it just didn’t feel home for some reason. We also felt rather isolated as it was a long hot and sweaty bus ride into town, getting around this island is not as easy as in most places. Isolated too that we were told not to walk around the area as cruisers get robbed, that was a damper, but after a while we ignored it and never had any problems. Crime rate in Trinidad is very and the daily newspaper is filled with just murder and robberies. I gave up reading the paper it was too depressing, but Sid kept reading it and said that per capita this island has a higher crime rate than Los Angeles. Begin of March already 120 people had been killed, by the time we left it was way over 200 and we were not even half way into the year.

Then of course the struggle with everything we worked on, Shawn and Debbie helped us having some time out. To be continued…………..