On the evening of the 11th, Aaron and I set out for Trinidad with high hopes and tempered sails. A 15-20 knot wind made the close reach brisk but uncomfortable, and we got little sleep on our first shifts off. The monotony of my 12am-2am watch was broken by the sudden sound of cellophane at my feet. Closer inspection revealed the noise to be a flying fish that, with utter disdain for the 6 feet of windward hull blocking its path, had catapulted itself directly into the cockpit.
For once, one of Street’s cruising guides came in handy, as I caught the suderific swimmer on the smug photograph of the author and shoveled it back into the black water. Even at that early hour, I couldn’t resist the flick of the wrist that sent it higher than it probably cared to go. We spent the rest of the night dodging sailboats and oil-drilling platforms, until 4:30am.
Suddenly encountering breaking water and a depth gauge going haywire, all hands were called on deck and we turned back the way we came. Our GPS(global positioning system) indicated that the sea was 400 feet deep. Our depth sounder said it was 12, then over 300, then 8. Blindly, we tried to steer away from the sounds of waves crashing over something, going opposite our destination for an hour waiting for sunlight and the nerve to resume our course. Finally we did, and passed safely the rest of the way.
Flotsam and jetsom abound in the waters outside Trinidad, however, and we had to carefully pick our way around logs, plastic, and pallets. Tentatively, we are attributing the depth scare to a rip tide, but this is speculation. At 10:30 am, we dropped anchor outside Chaguaramas, Trinidad, and went ashore to clear customs. Having done that, we treated ourselves to a large, delicious, and relatively cheap pizza at Joe’s before returning to the boat to sleep until the evening. After briefly getting up in the evening, we promptly went back to sleep until the next morning.
The next couple of days were spent traipsing around Chaguaramas, the place for cheap and efficient repairs in the Caribbean. On the strength of some recommendations from other sailors, we got quotes on work, checked out the facilities, and had another pizza at Joe’s, which was screening the F.A. Cup match between Everton and Plymouth Argyle as an added bonus.
Friday, we ran some errands in the morning(including the addition of pictures to the website) and had a strange but tasty curry dish at Curry-bien, a roti joint not far from the dinghy dock. In the afternoon, we caught a maxi taxi into Port-of-Spain, the capital of Trinidad. Thanks to the strength of the American dollar(or the weakness of the Trinidad & Tobago dollar), we were able to purchase “The Life Aquatic” from a streetside vendor for about US$6. Still full from our huge lunch of curry, we took the movie back to the boat and watched it in lieu of eating dinner.
Current plans call for the boat to be hauled out of the water on Monday, when we will commence living in a boatyard for the first time since Fort Pierce. But with a pizza shop, a roti place, and free showers nearby, don’t expect us to be flipping Chaguaramas the bird anytime soon.