Position 10°40’614N 061°38’4184W
At anchor, Chaguaramas bay, Trinidad.
Hi dear friends, thank you for following our journey. Here is this week’s update.
Well what a week it has been here in Chaguaramas, following on from the exercise ‘April fools’ last week the Swiss boat returned late Sunday evening followed by the French boat which had to pass the three British yachts anchored in a line like a blockade.
Next on Tuesday night, we bumped into a friend we made while sailing around the Canaries. Klaus from onboard SV Olivia. He, like all of us out here sailing upon the blue oceans had a few tails to tell about his trip to Trinidad. Needless to say, we had a good night. Next, on Wednesday night their was a Beck’s & Stella promotion night at our local bar. The idea was that every time you bought 2 bears you received 1 free and an entry ticked into the raffle. Also collecting the bottle tops to exchange them for promotional gear. The ‘Beck’s’ girls would also be there.
Now, this turned out to be a great night and for whatever reason the beck’s girls spent most of the night at our table chatting away. They looked after us, promotional wise, for we ended up with some 25-raffle entry tickets as well as the waitresses collecting any unwanted tickets and bottle tops. What can I say, we apologised to those around us for they were not too happy us ‘hogging’ the night!
For our friends in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), a friendly warning. Be very careful if visiting the area when using the Ivorian hand for to use this at a vertical position means something totally, i.e. gay etc
So ‘spaceman’ be careful
Life onboard:
Cooking is the main problem this week, as I had to strip it down remove the thermocouple. A replacement would take around four weeks to be delivered. The cooker was rebuilt today so we can make tea and coffee as well as cooking the obligatory English breakfast tomorrow, ok the sausages are Canadian smoked sausages, the baked beans, bacon and eggs are also local other than that, an English breakfast. So on the menu tomorrow morning will be;
Per serving.
1 slice Fried bread
6 rasher’s of streaky bacon
2.5 sausages
Half tin of baked beans
2 eggs
2 slices of bread and butter (Anchor)
Tea or coffee
The boat:
It has been a long week running around finalising all the equipment needed onboard. Below Pinta is looking fine, like a new girl. We also fitted a new and more powerful alternator and a computerised battery charging system, the reason this was two fold, firstly to reduce the charging time and secondly to off set the power requirement of the water maker I will fit next week. During initial testing on Friday, instead of taking some >=8 hours to half charge the batteries they were safely half charged within two hours. This would represent a great saving on Diesel meaning I could not only charge the batteries efficiently but also run the water maker at the same time, which requires 38 amps an hour.
Fair winds and calm seas.
David.