First Trinidad impression

We feel pretty lucky we arrived when we did as there was a nasty weather system headed from the US coast south and 30 foot waves in the north Atlantic, resulting in damaging 9 to 10 foot waves breaking ashore in all the Caribbean islands. We were on the safe side of the island but did get some surge as a result of the high waves.

We had a lot of clean up and fixing to do, poor Sid was in the bilge for days and also had some extra work to do on the engine and exchanging the sump pump which by now was corroded and refused to work. It took us four solid days to get back to normal and barely left the boat other than to take showers or take a dip in the pool. This is a first ever that we didn’t explore our new surrounding, not until about the 7^th day.

The Crews Inn Marina is a top notch marina and fairly expensive, at least for us, about 2/3 more than in Venezuela. The slip charge is for minimum length of 40 feet which means if you are a 36 foot boat like us you pay for 40 feet.

1 – 7 nights 0.87 / ft $ 34.80 per day 243.60 week

8 -30 nights 0.76 / ft $ 30.40 per day 912.00 month

31-179 nights 0.63 / ft $ 25.29 per day 758.70 month

180 + nights 0.56 / ft $ 22.40 per day 672.00 month

If you arrange a 5 day stay then extend they will not adjust the days you’ve been here already, that will stay the more expensive price.

But it is the marina to be in as the others have to deal with surge and the wakes of the many fishing boats going in and out. It gets so bad that the boats are banging against the dock. Crews Inn is also the only marina with a pool and gym and the newspaper gets delivered on the boat every morning. Hi-Lo the best grocery store in town is located in our marina too and the restaurant has wonderful food. On Saturday they have the captain’s special breakfast, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash, baked beans, fruit, toast, juice of choice and coffee for $4.15. There is a bank with and ATM machine as well but won’t take our pin number. Neither does the bank over at Peake’s, so we have to go down town to the Scotia bank for money.

Chaguaramas is the biggest boating center we’ve ever seen and has as many as 11 well equipped yards and each yard has its own marine store, so you can get pretty much anything. What you can’t find here you can have shipped in duty free. The yards are all pretty impressive and they do good work from what we’ve observed. Our first excursion to check out all the yards we ended at Peake’s and one of the first boats we noticed in the yard is our sister ship, a rare find and of course we wanted to meet the owner and found out that he is the store manager. He was just as excited as we were and we swapped hints and tips about our boats. He promised to come over and look at Paradise and chat some more.

The Autohelm guy here told us that Max is beyond fixing and so we had to dip into our cruising kitty and buy a new one Raymarine S2G. Sid also sent the GPS in for repair and we were amazed that it arrived in the States the next morning already at 9.30 now that’s what I call good service, go FedEx.

In the mean time we’ve been here for almost 3 weeks and honestly can’t say yet that we like it. The marina is nice and the Trini's are super friendly it just does not feel homey for some reason. It’s a damper too knowing that it is not very safe to walk around as cruisers occasionally are getting robbed, so does the bank here. Trinidad has a huge crime problem the newspaper is filled with just robberies and murders. For as small as this island is the crime rate beats Los Angels.

Chaguaramas is a busy place during the day and it almost boggles your mind with all the boat yards and just across the street turns into a tropical scene with the screams of squawking parrots filing the air as they fly over the boats to their roost in the near by jungle. The bird life here is amazing, you see all kinds of birds and bugs I was doing laundry I saw a dried out leaf on the floor and tried to pick it up and it moved. Upon closer inspection I realized that it was a moth looking just like a dried up leaf, very interesting. A the dock there is an underwater light and attracts all kinds of fish at night, including parrot fish and get this a school of about 20 squid, dinner right under the house, no we let them live, but the thought was there. It’s nice to see clear and clean water in a marina for a change too. Weather is amazingly cool and it can rain daily for a brief time, so you need to keep an eye on open hatches.

On day 7 we finally had settled in hired a taxi for 5 hours to drive us around and through town, good idea as we now know where most things are and can take the public MaxiTaxi instead of the expensive taxis.

Also when you greet somebody it’s either “morning morning”, or “gooday gooday”, “evening evening” or just “hi hi” and when somebody asks you how you are you say “oh, goodish”. The most difficult thing is trying to understand what the Trinis are saying, it’s a totally different language as “thirty” is “tirtty”, thanks = ttanks, road = rod, “A”s are pronounce like a heavy NY accent, and they speak so fast it frankly doesn’t sound English anymore. You know the accent India people have just quadruple that, it’s a foreign language. It’s actually funny Sid he can only understand the first three words, then its gibberish, so he thought it was his hearing problem and let me do all the talking and dealing, well I had to tell him that I had the same hearing problem.

Trinidad has is cultural mixture but the India culture shows through most, you can tell by the delicate faces and beautiful almond shaped eyes. But this is also the land of the Rasta Man.

The food definitely has the India influence and is pretty darn good too; I doubt we’ll loose weight here. The main flavor is curry. The most traditional food is Roti kind of a tortilla wrap with chana (chickpeas) and meat, the other “Bake and shark”, bake is a deep fried bread, reminds me of the jelly filled donuts without the sugar or jelly, filled with breaded and fried shark and topped with cucumbers, tomatoes, salad, onions, garlic sauce, hot sauce and ketchup, very tasty. Oh, ketchup is a staple food here and is used on pizza, yes ketchup and mustard on pizza, they smother it so much you cannot recognize the slice of pizza anymore.

At the Crews Inn potluck which is held every Thursday we met Wendy and Lee on Word Wide Traveler a 47 foot Catana, we hit it off pretty good with them and next day when they came to inspect our canvas work they invited us for a sail to the leper island, Chacachacare. They had a rendezvous with a local charter boat and we rafted with them. It was fun for a couple of hours and when we were snorkeling we realized that the boats were dragging as they followed us into shore. We got out of the water just in time before WWTraveler hit on the underwater structure. We pulled anchor and headed to the next cove, set the hook, relaxed and enjoyed a wonderful dinner while the full moon came up over the tropical hill and many hours later we sailed back to Chaguaramas. What a beautiful way to spend a sail ending with a romantic dinner.

Sid was so excited to hear that they have Hash House Harriers here and of course we attended so did Wendy and Lee. Sid’s done two in Grenada for me this was the first one. Hash House Harrier is an international group of social, non-competitive running, social and drinking clubs or as they say “a drinking club with a running problem”.

The template for a hash run is loosely based on hare hunting. One or more hasher (the “hares”) lay out a running trail, that the rest of the club (pack or “hounds”, club is also called ”Kennel”) follows. The trail may include false trails, or short cuts, dead ends, but everybody knows at the end there is ice cold beer waiting for them. I was amazed over 100 people attended from young to old, kids and dogs. It was really fun and we are signed up for the next run already. What a better way to meet locals and get to see the island as the next one is going to be on the south end of the island.

It was actually funny out of four, Lee, Wendy, Sid and I, only one (Lee) heard the time right, we all said the Hash started at 8.30, while it started 15:30 so we headed to the Saturday open market instead. The market was huge but I must say I was pretty disappointed in the fruit selection as the only tropical fruits they sell here are pineapple, banana and papaya. Venezuela spoiled us that’s for sure. I’m also disappointed in the grocery stores; the veggies and meat selection are also just limited again Venezuela spoiled us. But they do have coconut water and is sold in a two liter bottle. This stuff is so yummy, I’m drinking a bottle a day, not just yummy it’s very healthy too.

So here we are in Trinidad, widening our horizon with a yet new culture. There are a lot of things to do so I know we will not get bored here. End of this coming week the carpenter is starting with the teak cabin sole, then right afterwards installing the new galley counter and he also is making us a cockpit table we never had. One way or another we’ll be busy. Ahhhh just another exotic place to work on the boat !!!!!!!

Please be patient for the next update, since we're remodeling the inside I may not have a table, room or time to play with my computer.