February 2003
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.
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.
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.
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.
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