The Bahamas

4 May 2003

The Bahamas - where we sweltered, swam and drank a lot of rum.

At this point, we cruised for some weeks right on the inside edge of the infamous Bermuda Triangle - fortunately, we didn't disappear!

We stopped at Betsy Bay on Mayaguano Island and West Plana Cay for one night only and then moved to Rum Cay where we stopped for a few days.

Typical Bahamian sailboat

The anchorage at Rum Cay was rolly, it was still broilingly hot and we now had the added joy of mosquitoes. However, it was a friendly place and we met a few other cruisers. The water in the Bahamas is very shallow, with coral heads dotted all over the place, and therefore the most beautiful colour. The snorkelling was amazing so one day we went out spear fishing in the dinghy, hoping to snag a lobster. Fortunately, we caught nothing, as we later discovered it was not lobster season, and therefore illegal!


We spent one night at Concepcion Island (considered one of the most beautiful in the Bahamas) and reached Georgetown on 9 May, anchoring off Stocking Island. We did our check in here. We were moving further and further north and with the onset of summer in the northern hemisphere (! – Africa was never this hot!) the days were getting longer – it was still light at 7.45pm.

Had a 'hog roast' bbq up this creek near Georgetown

I managed to find an internet cafe here so could finally catch up on our mail – yay.  This was a very crowded anchorage, though we were told it was less crowded than usual with a lot of boats having left the previous week.  We heard that a lot of American boats sail down to the Bahamas and get no further than this anchorage because is very sociable and everyone has a good time – they hunker down waiting for a ‘weather window’ which is never quite wide enough for them.  Beer is cheap, life is slow and easy, so they lose interest in the idea of sailing further down into more dangerous and ‘foreign’ waters. 

Although it was nice here we didn’t linger as we wanted to get to Florida before the onset of the hurricane season (not that Florida is a safe haven, actually) so we moved on via Little Farmer’s Cay and Black Point to Highborne Cay.  We went out one night for dinner with a bunch of yachties and I sat next to a man who told me about Zimbabwean sailors Liz and Pete Fordred.  Paraplegics both, Pete and Liz had sailed their yacht across the Atlantic from Cape Town to Fort Lauderdale in the 80s and Liz had written a book about their incredible journey – An Ocean to Cross - you can find it on Amazon.  My neighbour told me they had given a presentation at the Fort Lauderdale Sailing Club and he said it was the most amazing and moving presentation he had ever been to and they were given a standing ovation at the end.  We didn’t know it then, but Pete and Liz would soon become good friends. 

Two dolphins somehow got stuck in the harbour and entertained us for hours

We moved on to Nassau, a rather well developed town with high rise buildings, the most sophistication we had seen for some months, and we spent a number of steamy days there. Another reason to keep moving was that at least we got some lovely breeze blowing through the boat whilst sailing, and no bloody mosquitoes. Being at anchor on a breathless day could be very unpleasant.

 Nassau Town

Coming in to Nassau Harbour

We also visited the extraordinarily ornate and pinkly plush Atlantis Casino Hotel – we particularly enjoyed the enormous aquarium built on the underground level.

22 May 2003

From Nassau we stopped two days at Chubb Cay, and then set off towards Florida. Crossing the Strait of Florida we had to contend with the Gulf Stream which was a new experience for us. The current was so strong the boat constantly dragged up off-course and we had to keep resetting our route. It was a 30 hour bumpy trip and we had to motor for most of it. It was very hot as usual and there were a lot of thunderstorms about – all in all a rather violent trip. We picked Fort Lauderdale because we knew two people who lived there and one of them was a sailor.



Puerto Rico and Turks & Caicos

Puerto Rico is oddly described as an ‘unincorporated territory of the United States’ which we couldn’t quite figure – it is, but it isn’t American.  Our US visas were not required here and in that sense we checked in as though they were a separate country.

20 April 2003


The islands of Vieques and Culebra make up the Spanish Virgin Islands and are part of Puerto Rico. We stopped at Sunbay in the centre of the southern coast of Vieques which is a wonderfully unspoilt and mostly uninhabited island. Refreshingly, we saw almost no other yachts.


After one night we crossed the Vieques Sound and anchored at Puerto Patillas, on the south coast of the main island of Puerto Rico and then moved straight on to Ponce where we could check in. Once again, this was expensive, $19 for a sailing permit, but the short handsome gentleman who processed our papers was so charming and courteous we didn’t mind at all.

The Yacht Club at Ponce

Ponce wasn’t a good anchorage and we’d snucked in illegally at the yacht club, so after two days we moved to Boqueron on the west coast.  There were a lot of yachts here and we met some old friends and made a few new acquaintances. The Puerto Rican people were casual and friendly and time passed pleasantly enough.  Despite the intense heat, there were portable little stands on every street corner selling inexpensive fresh oysters by the dozen.  I’d never plucked up sufficient nerve to eat a fresh oyster before, but this seemed a good spot to give it a go, so I did and they were good.  Mike adores them and tucked into a dozen every time we went ashore. 

Oyster Stand in Boqueron

29 April 2003
We left Puerto Rico and set off northwest on a four day sail, to the Turks & Caicos group. Still in Puerto Rican (U.S.) waters at 6.00pm that evening, just as I was cooking dinner (we liked to eat and get the dishes done before nightfall) we spotted a large motor launch to starboard which seemed to be ‘lingering’ alongside us. Sure enough, they hailed us on the radio – identifying themselves as the US Coast Guard – and enquired where were we heading? Unable to curb my habit of giving too much information, I advised that we were heading for the Bahamas and thereafter, Florida. After a short break the man politely requested permission to board. Very startled we were! Of course, I said. It seemed pointless to refuse. It took ages for them to get organised, (I had to take dinner off the stove and store it) but eventually they brought a substantial dinghy alongside and SIX large young men in very military-looking heavy duty dark navy outfits climbed aboard, followed by a seventh who was obviously their leader. Forever nearly sank. The leader sat in the cockpit with us whilst the other six, sweating profusely, poor lambs, went through our little boat with a fine tooth comb. Eventually, when his six underlings had returned to the cockpit, empty handed and puce in the face, the top dog radioed his superior officer on the mother ship to announce that the captain and his wife had been obliging and helpful and that nothing of concern had been found. Bewildered, we asked him what he might be looking for. He answered, rather pompously, “Anything that might harm the United States of America”. I’m sorry to say we weren’t very appreciative of their concern. A year and a half at sea and we had all but forgotten awful things like terrorism, but the ‘9/11’ tragedy still hung heavily over the American people. He then stood up, lifting his generous backside off the lid to our cockpit locker, the largest storage area on the yacht into which no one had looked and in which we could have stashed great quantities of all sorts of contraband – refugees, guns, drugs. Ushering them off the boat in the near dark I asked if they subjected all yachts to this sort of treatment and he said no, of course not. He apologised for the inconvenience and then admitted that his men were in training so this had been a ‘good exercise’ for them. Ha. We had a good laugh about it over a very late dinner. We would have a less laughable run-in with the US authorities later in the year.


We soldiered on through gale force winds for four more days, skipping past the Dominican Republic, and arrived at French Cay in Turks & Caicos on 2 May.  There were FOUR wrecks dotted around the island, so we were very careful anchoring!  There was a U.S. police boat anchored next to us which gave us the jitters after our last encounter, but we were left in peace.  Then we spent another night on an excellent government mooring buoy at West Caicos with nothing but one large barracuda for company. Next stop, the Bahamas.

The Virgin Islands

The Virgin Islands are divided into the British Virgins (BVI) and the United States Virgins, map below. Further west, there are also the Spanish Virgins, which are actually the easternmost islands of Puerto Rico.

14 April 2003

The BVI comprise nearly 60 islands (most not inhabited) of which the main ones are Virgin Gorda, Anegada, Tortola and Jost Van Dyke. We started our journey at Virgin Gorda, the ‘fat’ virgin, so called because Columbus thought that the island's profile on the horizon looks like a fat woman lying on her side. The Virgin Islands generally are swarming with tourists and the spot we chose, The Baths, was particularly crowded. We managed to find a spot to anchor and then, miraculously, late afternoon, all the other boats disappeared, leaving us in solitary splendour in this magnificent spot. We promptly moved onto a mooring buoy and then went for a fabulous bit of snorkelling amongst the beautiful grottoes that have been formed by huge volcanic granite boulders lying in scenic piles along the beach.

The Baths, Virgin Gorda

We moved along next morning before the daily swarm arrived and sailed on to Road Harbour on the island of Tortola to do our check-in. The water was so crowded with yachts it felt like we were in the middle of a regatta! The anchorage at Road Harbour was crowded and the holding was very poor. I stayed on board to watch the boat whilst Mike went in to do formalities and a bit of shopping. He returned some hours later with steam coming out of his ears; check-in had been rather expensive! Very unhappy with the anchorage, we moved straight away to the beautiful, and much less crowded, White Bay on the island of Jost Van Dyke. We spent two nights there and managed to collect a decent amount of water during a hefty downpour. We took a long walk to the next bay and visited the famous ‘Foxys’ bar. Saw no one famous, needless to say.

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke

The USVI comprises four main islands – St Croix, St John, St Thomas and Water Island, as well as several dozen smaller islands. The US Virgins are considerably more sophisticated than the BVI and check-in was free – we liked it better there!

17 April 2003

Our first port of call was Cruz Bay on St John and we arrived on the morning of Good Friday. Once we’d done our check-in and bought some extremely expensive pills for Mike ($12 for 10 days worth!), we went off to get something to eat. I ordered a glass of wine and was taken aback to be told no alcohol could be obtained anywhere on the island until after 4pm – because it was Good Friday. Most young English now refer to it as ‘Bank Holiday Friday’ but Americans are apparently made of sterner stuff. After lunch we took a long, hot, tour of the place, ending up at a beach bar where we waited, along with a large crowd of thirsty locals, till four o’clock for their advertised house special of ‘Painkillers’ – rum, coconut, pineapple and orange juice. We had two each and they were worth the wait.

Cruz Bay, St John Island

That night we had heavy rain again accompanied by hard winds. Our anchor dragged and we had to re-anchor, but on the up-side we did manage to collect more water. It was extremely hot by now and the rain brought a welcome relief, albeit short lived.
We moved on and anchored at Honeymoon Bay on Water Island, off St Thomas. It was nice there, but very crowded and hot so we didn’t linger - at this point it was cooler to sail, at least you got a bit of a breeze! Leaving the area, we passed a smallish, obviously uninhabited, island sporting a large ‘For Sale $20 million’ banner. Buy that and be neighbours with Richard Branson!

The Leeward Islands

The islands from Dominica in the south to Anguilla in the north comprise the group called the Leeward Islands. They are called "leeward" because the prevailing (trade) winds in the area blow from the east. Thus these islands are downwind from, or leeward of, the Windwards.

(The Virgins are officially included in the Leewards, but for my purposes I am treating them separately.)





28 March 2003

We stopped only one night on the island of Dominica, at the interestingly named Castaway Bay. It was a pleasant anchorage but as we’d decided against checking in to Dominica we didn’t even go ashore. The next morning we sailed to Guadeloupe, making our first stop at the delightful little group of islands, Les Saintes. We anchored in a bay called ‘Pain de Sucre’ (Sugar Loaf) and did some great snorkelling. Then Mike hauled me, in the heat of the day, (huffing and puffing, whingeing and whining all the way) 309 metres up Le Chameau – great views at the top however.




















Further on, on the main island of Guadeloupe we stopped at the dear little village of Deshaies, saw some circus animals (incongruously) and took a long walk in a forest where Mike scavenged a rucksack full of delicious mangoes. Guadeloupe, once again, was beautiful, green and fertile.

Leaving Guadeloupe on the 2nd of April we sailed past Montserrat which was erupting rather spectacularly. Deeply impressed at the time, we found out later that it is more or less continuously erupting. This started out as a great sail and then went all pear shaped when the wind changed, with me gybing the boat accidentally, snarling up Mike’s fishing line. Then he lost his hat overboard. Real dog’s breakfast and Mike was livid – all my fault as usual. Ha ha. I figured it was a good opportunity for a ‘man overboard’ manoeuvre, so we did and successfully managed to retrieve the hat. Next stop, very briefly, was a disastrous stay in Jolly Harbour in Antigua. We anchored and then a nasty swell set in making it very uncomfortable for the night and we had to put down two anchors. Next morning we moved and tied up to a buoy which they wanted to charge US$10 per day for – the marina was $18 per day. We bought fuel and wanted to get water but their charge was ludicrously high, so we did without.

Not so 'Jolly' Harbour at Antigua

Water was a problem throughout the Caribbean actually, difficult to find and almost always expensive. This was a bit of a shock to us as prior to this water had always been free and we resented paying for it. We never bought drinking water either (till we got to Thailand), always making do, with no ill effects, with tap or rain water. Whenever it rained we hung bits of canvas all over the deck with down funnels into our rubber buckets in an attempt to catch water. Unfortunately rain was invariably accompanied by a stiff wind so these attempts were not always successful.

Thoroughly fed up with Antigua, we headed north, leaving the island group of Nevis, St Kitts and Statia to port and sailed directly for St Barthelemy, another French island like Martinique and Guadeloupe. Once again, we started out with a good sail, hurtling along in a strong wind with big following waves but, predictably, it got too feisty. Foolishly we were trailing our dinghy behind the boat and it flipped right over. Real bugger to straighten but we eventually managed, giving it a good clean in the process - there had been a lot of horrid grey mud back at Deshaies.

Trying to get into the port of Gustavia at St Barts was a nightmare. We arrived late in the evening, very dark with only a small sliver of moon, the leading lights into the harbour weren’t working (though we didn’t know that at the time) and the harbour was full of large yachts with red lights running up their masts; we found out the next day there was a regatta that weekend – the St Barts Bucket. Unable to figure out where the entrance to the port was, we took the safe option and anchored outside that night. The holding was good and we spent a quiet night, but it was a long dinghy ride into town so the next morning, we moved the boat into the crowded harbour.

Gustavia Port at St Barts (photo from Google)

That night we dined with Frank and Virginnie, friends of some French friends in Martinique and they were friendly and encouraging about work prospects. Later on there was a horrible storm and we spent most of the night on deck worrying about our anchor – shouting commiserations to Frank and Virginnie on the deck of their boat across the waves – and the next day we moved back out of the harbour. Not only was it too crowded, particularly in a storm, but also very expensive – just to drop an anchor in the harbour!

Mike and I both loved St Barts, a tiny little island, sophisticated and cosmopolitan which boasted no crime. We were told they have no prison; if someone acted in a manner considered unsociable or criminal they were simply thrown off the island. We didn’t see any celebrities but were later told that the island is a haven for the rich, famous and beautiful. Though French, many of the people spoke English so it wouldn’t have been difficult for us to live there.

Mike’s dream to sail right around world remained undimmed, but we were both actively looking for an alternative place to settle, either temporarily or permanently. Whichever way it happened, we were keen to find some kind of paid work as our already very limited funds were diminishing fast. We gave St Barts some serious consideration but finally discarded it as a possibility, mostly because it is right in the middle of the hurricane zone and the season loomed only a few months away. If we did manage to find work in the next few weeks, or months, we would have to either move the boat, probably down to Trinidad (and we didn’t fancy making that trip against the wind – coming upwards had been hard enough!) then leave the boat there and fly back or stay ourselves in Trinidad for the season, or sell the boat which we weren’t keen to do just yet. It was all too complicated. Then there was the celebrity status of the island which didn’t appeal, and to be frank it was just too small. Everyone knew everyone else (and their business too!) and newcomers like us would probably never quite fit in.

So after one more night anchored outside Port Gustavia, we day sailed to the northern tip of the island and took a free mooring buoy (an almost unheard of luxury in this part of the world) at Anse Colombier, and then day sailed over to the island of St. Maarten/St Martin. Though the wind was not always ideal and the sailing could be hard in the Caribbean, I did like this business of day sailing. You could usually see the next island you were heading for, or you could hop up an island in day sails and then see the next one. I never really got to like the night sailing.

Sint Maarten is the Dutch southern half and Saint Martin the French northern half of this island and both are duty free ports. We anchored in Simpsons Lagoon on the Dutch side where everyone spoke English and, delightfully, we bumped into our old friends Dirk and Linda on Jade who we’d last seen in Trinidad.

Simpsons Lagoon at St Maarten

St Maarten was sociable, pleasant and bustling but less beautiful, less charming somehow than the islands we’d already visited and we didn’t like it as much. However, the lagoon was comfortable and well protected so we stayed five days and managed to stock up on water. And then we headed for the Virgins.

The Caribbean - Windwards 2

Martinique

12 March 2003

We had a horrible sail northwards, heading for the island of St Lucia, with both strong wind and current against us. Realising that we would not get to a decent anchorage before dark, we decided to skip St Lucia altogether, and struggled on through the night to make landfall at Martinique. We anchored at the anchorage of Le Marin in St Anne’s bay in the south of the island. There were hundreds of boats here.

Forever at St Anne's Bay

We loved Martinique which stood out like a little gem of civilisation and sophistication in the Windwards. We had such a good time here we stayed for 10 days and met a number of friendly yachts with whom we shared sundowners or dinner. The weather was generally wonderful, perhaps a bit hot, but not as bad as Trinidad had been. We were both very tanned; Mike’s hair was almost white blond by now and even mine was turning golden at the tips. One day we hired a car and took a tour of the hills in the south.

The view from Trois Ilets

At some point, around here, the fridge died - again. So sad. Personally, I was convinced that it was due to the fact that we did not charge it properly. Mike hated to run his engine so it went for days without charging, and other times, we connected it for perhaps much too long and at too many revs. (I sound like I know what I am talking about, but I don’t really.) Anyway, it stopped working and we never got it fixed again. This particular system used a gas called R12 which was no longer available in most countries so it seemed pointless to try and repair it. Back to bags of ice – when we could get them.

We hopped further up the western coast of Martinique, stopping at Anse Mitan for four days and took a ferry ride across the bay to visit the capital city of Fort de France – a big thriving metropolis compared to everywhere else. Last stop on Martinique (it’s a large island and I insisted on day sailing when possible) was St Pierre in the north; there’s an active volcano at St Pierre on the Montagne Pelee which erupted in 1902, completely flattening the city and killing all but two of the original inhabitants. We wandered around the impressive and eerie ruins. The city has now been rebuilt, but is a shadow of its former self. We were advised that the volcano could erupt again at any moment – why, I ask, would anyone want to live there?

The 400 year old Depaz sugar plantation and distillery, beautifully situated at the foot of the Montagne Pelee, was replanted and rebuilt after the 1902 eruption. Assured that this was the finest rum in the Caribbean, we took a tour and bought a couple of bottles. Rum is the drink in the Caribbean so we felt compelled to drink it - the Martinique French drink it with ice, a squeeze of lime and a dash of sugar cane syrup. Delicious.

Depaz distillery with Pelee mountain in the background

A note about the dinghy

Living on board a yacht obliges the crew to do almost everything together. As Mike and I were usually at anchor rather than in a marina, if one of us wanted to go ashore we both had to, there being only the dinghy as transport. In the early days when we didn’t have an outboard it was even worse. With an outboard, one could always run the other person into shore and then come back later and collect them. Having to row in and out made that a bit less feasible. Though we now had an outboard – with the smallest engine in the world - it spent most of its life bolted to the back of the boat as Mike did like to row everywhere.

So, we went everywhere and did everything together. At times it felt like we were joined at the hip and even when we got to shore, we still tended to stick together. No longer having even one phone between us we were always worried we’d lose each other in a strange place and the idea of sitting around for hours in the harbour waiting for the other was not appealing. Most of the cruising couples are like this – and it’s a measure of how well most of them get on with each other.

The Caribbean - Windward Islands

Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines

The water in the Caribbean is the most fabulous colour, particularly around the Windward Islands, and then again in the Bahamas, which have the added advantage of beautiful white beaches. If you think the colour in the photos produced by those professionals employed by travel guides is exaggerated, you are wrong. It is exactly that utterly brilliant, translucent, pale turquoise colour. Never again, in all our travels did we see water that quite matched that gorgeous colour.

The Caribbean islands are very beautiful, and it would be boring for me to keep describing each island and each anchorage – frankly, one runs out of superlatives. Fertile, sun drenched islands, picturesque bays, quaint villages and sparkling white beaches are not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but the colours and contrasts are incredible. Our guide books had warned of irritating boat boys trying to sell stuff and children begging, but that wasn’t our experience, and the people we met were friendly and mostly charming. The down side from our point of view was that the anchorages tended to be very crowded and everything catering to tourists was expensive, unreasonably so. It is ridiculous, I know, but because we were living on our boat we never felt like we were actually tourists; we were, of course.

The islands from Grenada in the south to Martinique in the north comprise the Windward Islands. The Windward Islands are so called because they were more windward to sailing ships arriving in the New World than the Leeward Islands, given that the prevailing trade winds in the West Indies blow east to west.

Up till now, check-in formalities at different countries had been just that – formalities. Now we were out of the EU, things were a little different; check in was more complicated and could be very costly. We’d heard that Grenada was particularly expensive, so we skimmed through stopping for a couple of nights at Tyrrell Bay on the the lesser island of Cariacou and then moved on to Union Island, a check-in point of the Saint Vincent and Grenadines group. We anchored at the town of Clifton which was extremely picturesque from the little port, and the water was stunning, but up close the town was dilapidated and run down, the people seemed very poor and provisions were expensive. Customs and Immigration were a long, hot and inconvenient walk away from the centre and the process was lengthy and expensive.

The anchorage off Clifton at Union Island

Discouraged by our first contact, and having been nearly run down by an abandoned wreck in the bay which had floated free of its mooring, we upped anchor and moved on to Saline Bay on the island of Mayreau which was lovely. We swam in the clear water and went exploring on the beach. After two relaxing days, we sailed off our anchor without the motor - for the first time ever. Admittedly, the conditions were perfect, but we were dead proud of ourselves.

We now zipped through the extremely beautiful and deservedly famous Tobago Cays. We zipped because the area was absolutely heaving with tourist boats and it was almost impossible to find a decent spot to anchor.

We passed through Bequia, anchoring in a couple of nice spots and then went on to the main island of St.Vincent. We’d heard about and had planned to stop at Wallilabou Bay, where there is an eighteenth century fishing village which had been specially built for the recently completed filming of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Wallilabou

However, Wallilabou was theoretically closed to the public so we went into Cumberland Bay, a small and snug little bay and dined on barbequed lobster in the only restaurant on shore – Beni’s – where we were served by Beni’s cousin (who else?).

The next day our waiter took us and another yachting couple for a walk through the forest to their village, and now I just have to gush. Talk about paradise on earth! The forest was cool, thick and fertile. The village was charming; solid, well-built little houses with well tended gardens full of flowers and vegetables. Everything seemed to grow so well - no shortage of water here. Our guide took us to the local school, interrupted classes and brought his two daughters out to meet us, who were shy but polite. The teachers weren’t remotely put out by this disruption and seemed as delighted to meet us as we were to meet them. The children and teachers were all so happy. It was a different and rather special experience for us.

The water pipe to the village

Village in Paradise

I appreciate that whilst it seemed absolutely idyllic and perfect in our eyes, it might be dead boring for any young – and possibly older - people living there. There wasn’t a lot to do, in the modern sense of the word.

Trinidad

February 2003

Trinidad, like Tobago, was very green and lush. There were literally hundreds of boats at Chaguaramas Bay, either anchored or in a half dozen marinas and as many boat yards.

Mike wanted to lift the boat out of the water so we went into the Power Boats marina. Upon arrival we were tied up for a couple of days between two boats that had spent some months sailing together - Dirk and Linda on Jade and Geoff and Evie on Eclipse. After two days Forever was lifted out of the water and we spent a month on the hard, but we remained good friends with these two boats and spent a lot of time socialising together during the next six weeks. Dirk and Geoff gave Mike lots of help and advice with the work he had to do on the boat.

Lifting out for the first time was exciting and very scary - a slip of the pulley would cause irretrievable damage. We spent the next week scraping away at Forever’s hull - a wondrous little farm of barnacles had sprung up – in the blazing heat. The day time temperature was usually over 30 degrees centigrade and our canny Mike refused to pay anyone else to do the work. Hair standing on end and usually bare-chested, he was quickly nick-named ‘the wild man from Borneo’ by the other sailors in the yard. It was great to be amongst English speaking people again - so much easier to get things done. Generally we found the Trinidadian people pleasant, laid back and efficient. We took a bus into the main city Port of Spain a couple of times, more sophisticated than Scarborough but not much! Most importantly, we got our US visas at a cost of US$100 each, valid for 10 years.

Living in a boat yard is tiresome - the concrete makes it hot, the ladder is dangerous, and the ablution block is always a long walk away. We were ‘on the hard’ for about 4 weeks during which we anti-fouled the hull, varnished the cockpit, repaired sails, serviced the engine, and replaced some of the rigging and lifelines. We also had an electrician repair the alternator and sort out the whole charging system, Geoff (temporarily) fixed the autopilot, a carpenter widened our berth in the aft cabin, and a technician repaired the fridge. We cleaned and polished everything and, when all the work was finished, went gratefully back into the water, anchoring out in the bay. Being in the water with a cool breeze blowing through was such a relief!

The Trinidad Carnival was held at the end of February though the build up went on for weeks before-hand, with steel bands performing loudly at the marina pubs almost every night. Just before Carnival, a local hotel arranged ‘A Taste of Carnival’ for all the yachties one evening. A whole bunch of us went along and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There were some fabulous costumes which my video camera doesn’t do justice to so I won’t include them.

Crime increases considerably during the carnival period, and then a yachtswoman was knifed on a bus into town one day. Coming from Africa, we found neither the music nor the atmosphere as exotic as some of the other sailors and decided that the ‘taste’ we’d had was enough, so we left the mainland and sailed over to a small island group nearby called Chacachacare. What a joy it was to sail our lovely clean boat now – with POWER, REFRIGERATION and AUTOPILOT, plus a more spacious bed.

We spent the five days of Carnival drifting around the islands, parking off in various pretty anchorages, usually with one or two other boats who, like us, were looking for a quiet time. There was an extraordinary amount of phosphorescence in the water – an amazingly beautiful phenomenon which has to be seen to be believed. We anchored in a little bay one evening and took a line off the back of the boat to the shore to stop the boat swinging. Later that night I went to check the rope. The bay was calm, there was no moon and the water looked like black oil. The rope looked slack so I decided to tighten it, gave it a good tug which pulled it right out of the water and got the fright of my life as a spray of flashing lights lit up the entire area. I was so charmed that I sat out on the back of the boat for ages, just tweaking that rope every few seconds to get another flash.

From our last anchorage in Chacachacare we could see Venezuela in the far distance.

On the 5th of March we returned to Trinidad to check out, stocked up on provisions and duty-free booze, fuel and water, and headed north into the Caribbean.

Tobago

23 January 2003

The coastline of southern Tobago was lovely, green and lush, and a refreshing change from the black, volcanic barrenness of Southern Spain and the Canaries. We were told later that the north coast of Tobago is much nicer and provides a good cruising ground, but we were in a hurry at that point to get to Trinidad. There was no marina at Scarborough so we just anchored in the harbour and were the only yacht there.

After a cursory wash, we grabbed our papers and rowed into the port, found the authorities and did our check in. Formalities completed, we took a tour of the town. It was so good to be on solid land again, we felt like running all over the place like kids. The lack of motion was fine whilst walking but when I stopped for any length of time, the part of my brain that was still swaying made me feel slightly dizzy. It was quite funny, but didn’t last long. Scarborough was a scruffy little joint reminding me vividly of certain areas of my Zimbabwean home town, Harare. The pot holed roads and pavements were dotted with small street vendors selling all manner of fresh produce and the usual range of eclectic junk one finds in flea markets. Loud Reggae music blared discordantly from half a dozen sources, and people ambled about in leisurely, almost aimless fashion. We were the only white folk, but apart from a few polite nods, we were ignored. The buildings were mostly small, dirty and dilapidated - the most modern and clean-looking housing a clutch of government offices, painted lilac, pink and pale blue.

There wasn’t much to see, so after a short tour we went looking for a restaurant as we had promised ourselves a celebratory meal out at our first port of call. We were to be disappointed. There were no real restaurants to be found at all and eventually we found a small fast food joint which served depressingly unexotic American-type food – I had a burger and Mike had fried chicken, both with chips. The only drinks available were sodas – so we had a coke each, deliciously cold! There were bottles of chilli sauce available and Mike helped himself to the hottest one – so fiery it burned his sun-chapped lips. He loved it!

After dinner we did a little provision shopping, there wasn’t a great variety available though we did manage to buy a couple of bottles of that chilli sauce. We found a phone and put Pairose’s mind at rest, and then returned to the boat. Back on board I set about cleaning the interior (salt collects everywhere like dust) and changed the bed linen (which was beyond description by then), whilst Mike rowed back ashore and collected a few jerry cans of water. We fell into bed shortly after dark and slept for nearly twelve hours solid. Bliss! After an uneventful but restful weekend we left Tobago and set sail for Chaguaramas Bay, near Port of Spain, in Trinidad.

Sailing slowly along the north coast of Trinidad at about 4 am we passed a number of fishing boats coming out of the bay and heading for the open sea. Suddenly, Forever’s hull hit something and there was this continuous loud rattle under the boat, she listed over to one side and slowed right down. We were horrified and didn’t know what it was, but it passed and as the fishing boats also passed we realised, with considerable anger, that it had been a fishing net. Fortunately, we hadn’t had our engine on or we could have snagged our propeller – catastrophic both for us and the fishing net. We had our lights on and there was no way he couldn’t see us, but just couldn’t be bothered to wait till he’d passed us.