Position 10°40’614N 061°38’4184W
At anchor, Chaguaramas, Trinidad.
Hi dear friends, thank you for following my journey. Here is this week’s update.
Well the time is flying by this week, although my replacement bank cards have arrived I now have to wait for the dreaded pin numbers. that and I am still waiting for the upgrade parts, they should be here next week.
Therefore, I spent most of the week touching up the interior varnish work so Pinta is looking like new below decks. I also managed to fit the water maker control panel, this I have recessed on the side of the sink unit so to make it easy assessable but yet one cannot get caught on the pressure control valve, photo attached. It will look a lot better once I have fitted a teak finish to the edges and made the door / cover. I have also been working on the photo albums from Reciefe and Trinidad. I hope to upload these very soon. I will let you know via the Weekly Update once this has been completed so you can check it out.
It is amazing how you get acclimatised to the heat, especially during the night. It is too hot at bedtime to use any bedding at around 29°C but it starts cooling down to around 25°C during the night (between 03:00 – 06:00hrs). I often find myself wrapped up in my 13-tog duvet when I wake up, strange eh…
I thought I would enlighten the sailors back home as to just one way in which it is slightly different out here;
yachties (as we are called) use channel 68 as the calling channel, 16 is not really used so whenever you leave your boat you always take your portable radio with you;
* You can call the water taxi.
* You can order a taxi to take you to town.
* You can contact most business out here, say to organise a tour of the Nariva swamp, the town or to the fresh fruit market.
* You can call the super market; they will get your order ready for you.
* Perhaps your getting hungry after a night out so why don’t you order a pizza, they will deliver it to your boat just as you arrive back onboard.
While walking around ashore as a means of communication should need directions or assistance.
For any safety or security issues as the most yachts people monitor 24/7 (including the coastguard)
There are just too many to mention but I think you get the idea.
Life on board:
It has been a quite week; I have spent most of the daytime going through everything that can be washed is washed. A spring clean if you like.
The Boat:
Apart from the above-mentioned varnishing and tidying up of the water maker installation I been tidying up, sawdust everywhere! It has also been nearly six months since I left Abidjan and that lovely lagoon water (which killed the engine impeller and not only the weed growing on the bottom of the boat but also the antifouling paint as well.) and only now has the hull got growth on it (barnacles). So, Leon, Mike and Jo, a little money earner for you for if you could bottle that stuff, ok you will need to be completely covered in bio hazard suits but you could sell that stuff for a fortune on Ebay.
Because of the environment here I do not plan to lift her out of the water this year as it would be a total waist of time for I will not be sailing much, just moving from Island to Island, then anchoring. The barnacles would soon return. I plan to have her lifted, her bottom washed and scrapped next year at about this time. The cost here is amazingly different to that in the UK, In Ramsgate it would cost me over £400 but here, to have her lifted, cleaned and five days on the hard, then put back in. The cost just over $80!
Well that’s it for another week, I hope you are all fine and enjoying the English spring weather.
Fair winds and calm seas.
David.