Trinidad at last

The wind didn’t lay down, so we decided to spend an extra day battling the flies, what a war (it took a lot of scrubbing and cleaning in Trinidad to get read of all the bodies), just good we had the netting which kept them mostly out, the ones that somehow found a way in got greeted with “Flytox” the best insect killer we’ve ever found the split second they get hit they fall straight down, that stuff works instantly. The wind finally slowed down after sunset and at 10 pm we lifted anchor and headed out into the dark night. Although we had a problem with the GPS, it could read the satellites but couldn’t come up with a position, so Sid finally hooked the handheld up with the computer, which worked just as well. We had a pretty calm crossing and arrived in Porlamar at 11 am. A couple hours into the trip Max the autopilot decided to quit as well and after we had anchored Sid tried to fix Max and thought he was successful. I jumped ship and raided the wonderful stores on Isla Margarita and loaded up on especially rum and wine, heard they were pricy in Trinidad. Imagine buying a case of wine, three cases of rum, 6 bottles of champagne, 2 Cuervo Gold Tequilla and 1 Camapari and spending less than 200 bucks. We even managed to get the diesel guy over and filled up four jugs of a total of 24 Gallons and paid 8 bucks and that’s the inflated price. He comes up in a boat full of big black jugs with a hand pump and a long hose and away he goes. The pump, pumps a liter every pump and that’s how he counts how much it is. What a busy afternoon that was, we were exhausted and finally could relax at 6pm, had a quick dinner and tried to get a nap until midnight. The Porlamar anchorage is always rather on the rolly side, especially that night so needless to say we didn’t get much sleep as the swell were on the beam tossing us from side to side. The wind was still making Maxine our wind generator scream but we pulled anchor anyway and headed out into an even darker night and fairly unsettled sea. We had to leave as there was two more days of a good weather window and God knows when the next one would be, besides our visa had run out so we had to go. There hasn’t been a good window since January 10^th and Chris Parker our weather guru said that this one will close in two days and that he didn’t see another opportunity for a long while. The sea was confused I guess Max did not like it more than we did and gave up the ghost for good, which meant manually steering the boat for the entire 146 miles or 36 hours. Besides that the GPS still couldn’t read the position, the two most crucial instruments we need were out. Max is like a third person and on a long crossing and even more so needed when it is rough, at least we have a backup GPS. About 3 miles out to sea the boat started to run sluggish. My watch was over and I had just settled in and started to doze off when I heard that alarm again. Sid went immediately down below to find the same mess I found a couple of weeks back, water was spewing up through the engine box. The bilge was filled to the rim again and this time came above the floor in the aft cabin and the carpets in the galley were soaked as well. NOT AGAIN!!!!! While looking for the problem I turned the boat around and started to head back towards Porlamar, just in case. Sid found another hose clamp that came off, all rusted out, this time on the engine. He fixed it the water pumped all out and we turned back in route to Trinidad. Wow, that was a close one again, not to mention the cleaning that lay ahead of us. As if that wasn’t enough the stress from this ordeal and the rough seas made me seasick, so Sid let me sleep it off for 4 hours. Then poor Tika missed her litter box, the smell of it was lingering inside the boat and it was too rough to even think about cleaning it up. Of course we found the counter current (1.5 Knots) which runs 1/3 of the way against us and so we steered our course a bit closer to the Araya Peninsula hoping to loose the current. It was a bumpy night but passed without any other problems. When daylight arrived we enjoyed seeing the beautiful coast line of the Araya and Paraya Peninsula, unfortunately this area is off limits for us cruisers as too many boaters in the past years had problems getting boarded and still are at risk. What a shame as this is by far the prettiest coastal area of Venezuela. The wind was blowing a steady 15 knots and of course on the nose, we had 6 foot swells with cross wind waves which gave it that washing machine effect. It was a bit uncomfortable but doable. When night came we hoped the wind would clock due south again and slow down a bit but that was just a nice wish that never happened. Instead the wind blew a steady 16 Knots and the sea was fairly unsettled. It was pitch dark and therefore it made it seem even rougher than it was.

Poor Sid developed a horrible migraine headache and we both were sleep deprived. Not to mention that it was too rough to cook so we lived off soups and didn’t even attempt to make tea. By sunrise we approached the end tip of the Paraya Peninsula and as the first sunrays warmed our faces we turned Paradise into the channel between Venezuela and the Trinidad islands. What awaited us there was rip currents, 8 foot swells and really churned up water, but the most beautiful thing was hundreds of small dolphins plaid in the wake of the giant swells; a picture that couldn’t have been captured by any camera. It was about an hour and a half in that chop inching our way closer to our destination while the dolphins accompanied us having more fun then we did as Sid still had a tremendous headache. Of course while heading towards the islands three huge freighters had to cross our path. Once around the island all was calm and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery of first three lush green islands and then the main island with rolling lush hills.

We headed into Chaguaramas and went straight to the custom dock as you have to check in right away. Keith on Tortuga waited for us and helped us tie up to the concrete dock. Check in was fairly easy especially clearing in Tika, as there is a quarantine time for pets. They simply told us that if she does not get off the boat she’s fine. Right after check in we took a slip in the Cruise Inn Marina, not what we had planned but under circumstances having almost sunk the boat again, we needed water to wash the bilge down and especially the batteries which this time were under saltwater. After all that rock n’rolling on the water I had a hard time being on land again. I guess they call it land sickness as I had the spins like the spins you get when you’re drunk I had to literally hold on to everything near not to fall over. That lasted for about an hour, it was really strange and too funny. After enjoying a beer with Keith and catching up on stories Sid went straight to bed to get read of his headache and I went to work emptying out the bilge and hosing the salt crust off the deck. Too tired to cook we went to the restaurant that belongs to the hotel and marina. We had most delicious meal and are realizing we are back to the prices of the US the reasonable life stile of Venezuela is over for a while. So we’re in Trinidad getting to know a new language, even though they speak English it’s a really tough dialect we cannot understand, or not yet. People are super friendly and we learned to “lime” already, actually this liming is called “bar liming”, there also is street liming, car liming, beach liming and in the morning you say: “morning morning” that’s the traditional way to great your neighbor. Keith took us to the bar restaurant (bar liming get it) at Power Boats Yard, we had a wonderful time. It’s good to see Keith again after 7 years when we said our “see you later” in Cartagena. He’ll be here another week before heading up islands.
As for us we’re not sure what the future holds as we have to buy a new autopilot and send in the GPS for repairs, but we’ll keep you up on that, so we may have to postpone the teak floor we came here for, but there is always next year. But for now the boat is all cleaned up and back to normal so it’s off to discover yet another beautiful tropical place. It shows again that cruising plans are written in sand at low tide and cruising is finding tropical places to work on your boat.