On to Grenada!

After almost 3 weeks of boat preparation, we were ready to head off to our first port of call for the season, except Andrew came down with a severe sore throat and we had to spend the next few days getting him back into shape. One of Jesse James’ drivers took us to the local clinic at West Shore where, with great efficiency, the on call doctor declared it a virus and gave Andrew scripts for pain meds and antibiotics (just in case it wasn’t).

While Andrew was recuperating, I took the opportunity to get to know more about Trinidad and the community. I met Chickie, who sets up her tent outside of Powerboats every weekday and makes the best chicken and roast beef sandwiches ever, enhanced with her homemade cheese, pumpkin or spinach spread, salad and tamarind & other hot sauces. They are so popular, she sells out for lunch by 10:30-11am. It took me another few days to get that right once I learned to pick up my sandwiches at 9:30 in the morning!

On Nov. 12th, the Hindu community in Trinidad celebrated Diwali, a Festival of Lights honoring the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. Jesse James organized 3 bus loads of yachties to go to the village of Felicity, where local families gathered to light candles, create sand art in the streets, dress up in their finest and enjoy a meal together. We were greeted at the local school by 3 musicians beating out a persistent thud with their drums & cymbal, in order to welcome us. Then we walked around the corner and took off our shoes to enter the nearby Hindu temple, adorned with elaborately decorated elephants, monkeys and painted ladies, set up as tributes to the various gods.

After snacking on roti and drinks provided by Jesse, we walked around town in the rain, visiting with locals that were handing out treats, and singing & dancing in the streets while the children set off fire crackers. Even Jesse’s family joined us to participate in the celebration. 

Once Andrew was fully mended, we were watching the weather and looking for our next window to leave. It eventually came down to leaving on a Sunday, with a better weather window but requiring overtime payments at Customs and no opportunity to buy duty free rum vs. waiting till Monday, with slightly lighter breeze but avoiding fees and having more rum! What would you do? Well, once our dock neighbors (s/v Zola and s/v Felicity) confirmed that they were leaving Monday, we opted to make it a convoy!

On 11/20 at 11am, we left the dock at Power Boats and headed for Scotland Bay, on the northwestern end of Trinidad, where we anchored and went for a swim, had some lunch and lay down for a nap while we waited for our convoy to convene. Felicity arrived around 2:30 and eventually Zola motored by at our intended departure time of 4pm, enabling us to avoid overtime fees and make an overnight passage to Grenada that had us arriving at daylight. The passage was thankfully uneventful and a beautiful moonlit evening sail, cruising along at 7-7.5 knots in a steady 15 - 20 breeze. Except for being a little lumpy and stirring up my stomach, it was an easy crossing. We slowed ourselves down, picked up a mooring around 7am and took a nap. We were up around lunchtime to blow up and launch the dinghy, check in with Customs, do a little provisioning and go back to the boat for another nap.

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, we are grateful to be her, mooring off of St. George’s and Grande Anse beach in Grenada and planning some adventures before we fly home for Christmas. We’ll keep you posted…

Hello season 5!

Since my last blog on June 5, 2023, we have had a busy summer, hanging out in Devon, Pa., cleaning out & selling my mom’s house and visiting friends & family in Newport, RI, S. Dartmouth, MA and Vail, CO. It was great to be home and catch up with everyone but the adventure bug always beckons and by Oct. 19th, we were up at 3am to board a 5:30am flight to Miami that connected with our flight to Trinidad, landing us in Port of Spain at 2pm. Just like that, we kicked off our 5th season of adventure on Billy Ruff’n Sailing!

Of course, most of the adventure at first (for Andrew anyway) is identifying, following up on or working on projects! He was neck deep in it by the following day, toiling in 100 degree heat. Fortunately, we had a cool, air conditioned apartment to take respite in after the long days of cleaning, lubing and loading stuff back on the boat. 

One of my first jobs was to clean the moldy anchor locker. I neglected to get a before pic but here’s the after pic, complete with all the dirty rags it took to change the grayish-brown interior to a relatively, sparkling white!

It’s hard work but we try to enjoy the fabulous local food and fun community of sailors at Power Boats Marina, where we have been on the hard all summer. One of our favorite breakfast treats is Doubles (a humble sandwich of curried chickpeas stuffed into fried flat bread and drizzled with tamarind & coriander sauces, mango chutney and cucumber) and Saheena (spinach fritter made as hot as you can take it with split peas, spices & hot sauce). Not much to look at but as tasty as it gets!!

On Thursday nights, the sailors from Power Boats and other nearby marinas, gather at the Roti Hut for a barbecue. Everyone brings their own meat or fish for the grill and makes a dish to share. There are all sorts of salads, appetizers & desserts representing each boats attempt at a local delicacy or family favorite. I’ve made Trini Potato Salad twice now, which seems to go over well given how fast it disappears!

Meanwhile, our favorite painter, Rawle works steadily on the finishing touches of our bottom paint and Andrew sands and polishes the prop.

Most Friday nights, Jesse James, the local cruisers ambassador,  organizes a group to go to the Fish Fry, an open air market where multiple vendors sell all sorts of (you guessed it) fried fish, shrimp, conch fritters, potato’s, etc. We buy whatever looks good and share it with the table so you get a good sampling of what’s available, along with plenty of beer!

Andrew finds it difficult to tear himself away from the boat projects while I take every opportunity to enjoy the tours that Jesse James offers as a way to get to know the island. On the Taste of Trini Tour, eleven other cruisers and I joined Jesse for 12 hours of bumping around the country in his van, stopping at every roadside stand or shop as well as all his cousins houses and sampling over 60 different local foods, including cow heel soup, BBQ pigs snout, blood sausage, chicken feet and other gruesome sounding things, most of which tasted delicious!! Here’s Jesse introducing our first course and a few other pictures from the day…

One evening, Jesse took a group of us to a local pan drum 70th birthday party for one of the most famous pan drummers named Boogsie. The locals get dressed in their finest and dance to the beats of 4 different bands set up outside on four stages, until the wee hours of dawn. Andrew managed to get a selfie with the guest of honor before we left the party well past sailors midnight (at 11am).

Looking out over a sea of masts and plastic boat covers, I marvel at how the landscape will change over the next few days and weeks. Covers come off, boats are launched and soon the yard will look almost empty. The day before we were to go in the water, our friends’ boat (Roxy) was on the travel lift when it got a flat tire! The process to secure the boat back on stands, raise the lift (with a small jack mounted on a 3-legged metal stool), remove the 4 foot diameter tire and support the damaged appendage on a stack of blocks, was quite a hair-raising undertaking that took the rest of the day!!

Amazingly, we still got launched by 11am the next morning and continued to load & stowe all the stuff we had put in storage. We had a 3 foot high pile of treasures from the bilge that we had already given away but somehow we still had a cockpit full of lines, buckets, brushes, etc. to be stored somewhere on board!

I took another break to go on the Caroni Swamp Tour. Of course, it was the rainiest day so far for motoring thru a swamp looking for red & blue ibis, other birds, snakes and crabs, but we managed to see a lot! The most spectacular part was witnessing the evening ritual of thousands of Ibis flying in flocks by the hundreds to land on this one island, lighting it up like a Christmas tree with bright red ornaments.

Another unplanned highlight on the swamp tour was being treated to a performance by an up-and-coming rap star, Keem Fazo, who ending up sitting right next to me on our boat. The film crew with him wanted a video with Keem delivering his message of peace & love in the midst of “all these lovely white people”. I got a starring role in the video and got to chat with the young man afterward.

This week we are replacing our engine mounts in hopes of resolving the knocking sound we heard when we first fired her up after the long, hot summer. The plan is to head off to Grenada as soon as we are able to start the real sailing stories for the season. Stay posted!