Happy Halloween from Trinidad

Happy Halloween from lovely Chaguaramas, Trinidad. This year, I am dressing up as poor, smelly, sunburned sailor. My costume requires about a month of exposure to the tropical sun, sweating constantly with irregular showers, rotating through three t-shirts that are laundered only when the dampness and smell becomes unbearable, and allowing my beard to grow to the same length as my hair. Luckily, this is a role that I have played to some acclaim in the past and I’ve spent the last month preparing to fully realize my character.

Considering their love of pagan rituals, I was a bit surprised that the Trini’s did not embrace the Halloween holiday. Nary a trick-or-treater came a knocking on the hull of my boat. Maybe they were frightened away by the house of horrors that is my home or by the haggard recluse living aboard. Or, perhaps they were simply too focused on Dewali, the Indian festival of lights, to notice a chance for free candy. Whatever the reason, about the only noticeable result of the coming of Halloween is that it seems to have officially ushered in the Christmas season. Instead of playing the same five crappy Soca songs, the radio stations have started playing the same five Christmas songs. Although it is a nice change to hear some new music, it is easy to imagine that the calypso version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” will grow annoying long before Christmas.

Work on the boat proceeds. The main goal of the week – to install the new roller furling – was not completed. However, instead of the failure resulting from my own incompetence, I never even got a chance to botch up the installation since the new furling system has not yet arrived. It is a long story with lots of twists and turns, a few unlikely heroes and plenty of villains, but suffice it to say that I’m still sweating like a red-assed baboon in the boatyard and I will probably continue doing so for some time.

Happily, there was a success this week: I managed to mount and install two solar panels. Based solely on looking at the final product, the installation doesn’t look like much work. The two panels are secured to a couple of stainless steel tubes that are attached to the bimini and extend over the cockpit. Yet, to complete the installation I needed to engineer a frame that would hold the weight of the panels, buy the correct sized stainless steel tubes and appropriate fixtures, drill exact holes in the frame of the solar panels to attach them to the tubing, and run wires in parallel from the solar panels through a newly drilled hole in the cockpit to the battery bank in the engine room via a regulator requiring crimping, soldering, and the addition of fuses.

In all, the project took me about 20 hours to complete. Ideally, the addition of the two 80 watt solar panels should help me to better manage my power supply, reducing my reliance on the engine. It remains to be seen whether the panels will provide much power or if they will fly off the first time that the boat gets knocked around, but I am cautiously optimistic. The installation passed the first test on Friday evening, when a small earthquake (5.1 on the Richter scale) hit Trinidad, shaking the boat violently twice within a minute. At the time, I was more concerned about the stands supporting the boat holding than the solar panels, but I was relieved that both stood up to the tremors.

The exodus of boats from Trinidad has begun in earnest as this brutal hurricane season winds down. Watching boats launch and head out is difficult and I am itching to get moving. Already, several boats have left for Venezuela and I was disappointed not to be accompanying them. Despite my impatience, I am happy with the progress that has been made over the past month and I’m confident that the time and money will have been well-spent as I reap the benefits while hopping from one idyllic island to another.

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