Chaguaramas, Trinidad

We left True Blue in the early afternoon on the 27th, and made an afternoon stop at Hog Island, to have a swim and a rest before the overnight passage to Trinidad. It was a good sail, but a bit on the "good exciting" side of the scale; the winds were around 20 knots or so from the east, and the seas on the high side of the forecasted 5-7 feet. We did what I think of as our usual watch schedule: Susan 1800-2200, Leigh 2200-0200, JP 0200-0600. No one slept much; it was hot and a bit bouncy below decks, and there was a squall around 1130 and then we needed to stay a mile away from the Hibiscus oil and gas platform that is about 30 miles off the coast of Trinidad, so JP stayed around after the squall for that maneuver.

JP put the engine on about 10 miles from the coast, as the wind was both "variable" and squally, and we came through the Boca de Monos into Chaguaramas around 0700. We were on the dock at Customs and Immigration by 0830; the process was pretty painless and we were in our slip at Crews Inn at 0920.

Here are some Grenada and Trinidad pictures:

2011 06 Grenada

It is hot here, as expected, and we 1) do not have an a/c because the pump was on its last legs so JP took it out in Grenada (a new one is on order and due here on Friday) 2) do not have POWER during the day because the electric company is working on things at the marina from 0800-1400(ish) during the day, so the a/c we rented after chasing one all over town isn't much help and 3)it rains regularly and sometimes HARD so having the hatches open is a problem. Not a great start to our planned several month stay here, but I will probably feel better when the a/c and power problem is resolved (fingers crossed, by Saturday sometime).

We have prepared the maintenance list and are getting ready to take it to the yard to get the process started. It's kind of a daunting prospect to think of leaving her here for nearly three months anyway, and when I look at the list I am even more anxious. This has been the plan all along, but now that it is "real", it doesn't look so easy to do as it was to say all these months.

On a funnier and more positive note, a story. Years ago, my friend Joan gave me/us a copy of the book "An Embarrassment of Mangoes", by Ann VanderHoof. Ann and her husband, Steve Manley, are a Canadian couple who took a two year Caribbean sailing sabbatical (about 15 years ago) on their 42-foot sailboat Receta; she wrote about the adventure when they got back to Toronto, and I am sure one can find many a dog-eared copy of the book in the collections of many folks who have done or want to do the same thing - me included. They got back to the Caribbean on a more or less full time basis about five years ago, and last year, around the time we were getting ready to head out, she published a second book, focused almost exclusively on the food of the region, called Spice Necklace. (EOM had a lot of food stuff too, including a number of Island recipes and cooking stories). I have both on my Kindle.

It has become a running joke on Raconteur that I consult "Ahhhnnnn" the way other cruisers consult people like Van Sant, Street, Chris Parker, Herb Hilgenberg, et.al. "What does Ahhhnnn say?" "Ahhhhnnnn says...." "Ahhhnnnn and Steve said...." etc. Even our fishing technique borrows a (jokey)bit from them.

SO: maybe nine years from Joan's gift of the book, several charters, the purchase of Raconteur, the voyages to and from the Chesapeake and Lauderdale and the Bahamas, and the 3,200 miles of this cruise later....we pulled in to the dock at Crews Inn (I was struggling not to be sideways and not to hit Blue Horizons, the boat in the next slip), I looked up, and saw....Ann VanderHoof, walking down the dock toward Receta, in the slip opposite and two slips away.



Kind of a nice coda to this leg of the journey.