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Larry's LogThe following week was filled with working on the boat (sound familiar?). I had decided to move the watermaker to the bulkhead of the forward head to free up the space under the port settee and to make servicing and operating the unit easier. To use it where I originally installed it required that I take up the settee cushions, open the lockers and then leave it that way until we were finished. It also took up some of the best storage space on the boat. It took some work and extra supplies, like 4AWG wire and more lengths of water hose, but I finished and it worked OK with fresh water. We would have to wait to find out how it worked actually making fresh water. The water in Chaguaramas is too dirty to run the watermaker, so the final test would have to wait. The night before we were due to leave, we had Ken and Vesta over for dinner. They had just come back from Margarita where they had worked for some friends, helping them get their new bar/restaurant going. The experience was really a good one for them, but they did give us some hints about the place in general and helped us make the final decision not to head for Venezuela now but to wait. Along with other advice that was very similar, we decided to wait until next summer to see the mainland of Venezuela and the offshore islands. During the winter, starting around Christmas there is a period of reinforced trade winds, called the Christmas Winds, in which the normal 15 to 20 knot trades start to blow at 25 to 30 knots. This makes for very uncomfortable conditions trying to sail anywhere, even downwind, but trying to go to windward is almost impossible, or at least very dumb. It can be done, but requires careful planning and taking advantage of every little weather window. We decided that we didn't want to be "stuck" downwind in Venezuela for the winter so we would see it next year. Hmm, that means we'll be cruising for another year - oh well!! The only thing that we really needed to be home for was the house rental that is up in early August of 2002 but we could fly home to take care of that. So, on Thursday, 12/6/01, we checked out of the marina, topped up the water tanks, and checked out of the country. We got our duty free liquor and beer, which was fortunately right on the same dock as the boat since we got 4 cases of beer and a case of assorted liquor (mostly rum). We managed to leave the dock at around 2pm and went to get fuel. Naturally, it started to rain and we had to wait to get to the dock since there were 2 boats already there, but after about 20 minutes of circling in the rain, we got to the dock and it stopped raining. Since Trinidad is an oil and gas producing country (a member of OPEC), fuel was pretty cheap, a little less than $1 USD per gallon. I filled the tank and then the 4 jerry jugs. I always filter the fuel that goes into the tank, but had forgotten and put in about 15 liters before Diane called it to my attention. Luckily, the fuel was very clean. After filling the tank (about 40 gallons) and the jugs (another 20 gallons), the fuel left in the filter only had some very small particles. After getting fuel, we motored between Gasparillo Island and the "mainland" of Trinidad on our way to Scotland Bay, which is a small beautiful little bay between the Gulf of Paria and the Caribbean, just on the way out of the Boca de Monos. There were several boats there, including Jacobite and we motored past them and waved hello. They had left the day before and were just getting ready to go to Los Testigos. We were originally going to go with them, but we were now going north and would see Venezuela next summer. So we anchored in Scotland Bay next to Jacobite and after we had gotten the boat straightened out a bit, Ron called over that he would pick us up and invited us over for a drink. OK. We went over and Ron pointed out that this was also a good birding spot and he was right. There were several small birds flying over the water and then a large one that landed in a tree. Ron loaned me his binoculars and I recognized it as a type of hawk, but was unsure of the species. Regardless, we had a good time with them. Ron brought us back to Destiny and we had dinner and went to bed early. It would be a long day tomorrow. I did finally though, find my bird book of the Caribbean and found that it was a Black Snail Kite. We finished preparing the boat the next day and raised the anchor at 5:15pm for Mt. Hartman Bay in Grenada. We had listened to the weather and it wasn't great, but Diane wanted to get going and so we left, waving goodbye to Ron and Lena and raising the mainsail with 1 reef tucked in while still in the bay. We motored out into the Caribbean and headed just a little east of north, where we had come from about 5 months prior. |