21 October 2011 Spanish Water, Curacao to Trinidad (Day 2)
Dawn found us near the north of Los Roques. I managed to turn the engine off and sail for an hour which was a relief, but by seven o’clock, the wind dropped and we had to motor sail again. A couple of hours later, we picked up a nice 12 knot breeze and were able to sail at about five knots for six hours.
I hooked a SAILFISH just before breakfast. The line screamed from the reel as the fish made spectacular jumps into the air, it’s big sword and fin clearly visible. I started to put tension on the reel clutch, but the fish was still pulling line out and leaping. I started to worry about how much of the 475 metres of fishing line I had left, so I applied more pressure to the clutch too soon and the fish got off – the hook snapped in half. I think that the sail fish had taken 300m of line when it escaped. I was gutted…
Two hours later, I hooked another fish, but it also managed to get away. I think that I’m putting too much pressure on too soon. I’m hooking bigger fish out here and obviously need to “play” them more.
Later in the afternoon, the wind became more variable, so we motor-sailed whenever our boat speed dropped below 3 knots. The wind dropped at dusk and we resigned ourselves to motor sailing over night. Another pod of Common Dolphin came to visit us as the sun went down.
We’ve had a very pleasant day and we’ve relaxed into the routine of being at sea again – we were both pretty tense yesterday especially while sailing between Les Aves and Los Roches at night.
22 October 2011 Spanish Water, Curacao to Trinidad (Day 3)
We motor sailed for most of the night, with a couple of brief spells of sailing near big Cumulus cloud systems. There are more ships around this area, which kept us attentive during the night.
At dawn, we were just north of La Banquilla – over half way. We’d done 256 miles in 48 hours - an average of 5.3 knots which is pretty good against the prevailing east wind and current. We had 165 miles left to go, but the wind disappeared and we have encountered a 1 - 1½ knot current against us. We are managing 5½ knots boat speed by motor-sailing in the calm seas, but our speed over ground is reduced to between 4 to 4½ knots. It looks like another two nights at sea before we get to Grenada.
Following my disastrous fishing episodes yesterday, I decided to beef up my arsenal. I now have three lures trailing behind us - a sinking lure on the on the fishing rod, a skimming lure on a hand line and a small squid on the end of my string of “birds”. I’ve fitted stronger hooks onto stainless steel leaders.
The wind died completely at ten o’clock and we motored all day in calm seas. The lack of wind made the sea into a mirror and the lack of wind made it very hot. A pod of Pan-tropical Spotted Dolphins played in our bow wave for ten minutes in the afternoon providing a bit of light relief.
We are trying to conserve diesel as we only carry 440 litres and we’re not sure how much diesel the engine uses per hour. We’ve decided that 2000 rpm seems to be the right engine speed allowing us to motor at 5.5 knots in these flat seas. According to the engine manual this should only use 3-4 litres of fuel per hour. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the engine had been running for 45 hours, so I estimated that we’d used 30% to 40% of our fuel. The current seemed to die off to ½ knot as we cleared La Blanquilla and the Los Hermanos islands, which improved our progress east.
As the sun went down, I pulled in my three fishing lures having caught no fish.
23 October 2011 Spanish Water, Curacao to Trinidad (Day 4)
It was a very boring night, motoring with hardly any wind – we even had to roll away the jib because it kept backing.
During my 10-1 “midnight” watch, I checked our progress and it looked like we could possibly make landfall in Grenada by late afternoon today. We had a couple of options, we could stop in Grenada for a day’s rest and then set off tomorrow evening to sail overnight to Trinidad or we could head directly for Trinidad and arrive tomorrow morning. When we changed watches, Glenys agreed that we get it over with and go straight to Trinidad.
The Peninsula de Paria on the Venezuelan coast is a high risk area for attacks by Venezuelan “pirates”, so I plotted a course which continues towards Grenada and then heads for a point half way between Grenada and Trinidad to keep out of the more dangerous region. There is a danger that we will arrive at the Boca de Monos in Trinidad while it is still dark, so we need to keep our average speed down to 4.5 knots, which should get us there at dawn tomorrow.
We turned towards our Trinidad waypoint at dawn and the wind picked up enough that we could sail at four knots for five hours which was very pleasant. I put out all three fishing lures and was rewarded by catching a small Jack on a small lure towed behind my “Birds”. We had it for lunch – from fish to dish in two hours…
In the afternoon, I spotted a big flock of sea birds diving into the sea. This normally indicates that smaller fish are being driven to the surface by tuna and other pelagic fish. We weren’t under any time pressure and the seas were very calm, so we spent a fun hour trolling around and through the diving birds. Unfortunately, we still didn’t catch anything.
The wind remained light all afternoon. I was expecting to encounter a stronger current against us as we passed to the south west of Grenada, but there seemed to be very little current if any. We had to reduce our engine revs down to 1500 rpm, so that we could maintain 4.5 knots to get our landfall at dawn. There was nothing to do except read books and sleep through the afternoon.
As night approached, we ran into a group of huge thunder clouds just south of Grenada. As darkness fell, we were getting 20+ knot winds and heavy rain. I didn’t know if it was going to get any worse, and we needed to slow down, so I completely rolled away the main and we sailed with a heavily reefed jib only.
24 October 2011 Spanish Water, Curacao to Trinidad (Day 5)
It was a varied night with patches of light winds and stronger squalls with some rain. The wind was veering about in the squalls, so it was a tiring night, constantly adjusting the sails and turning the engine on and off.
We passed the gas rigs just after midnight and made a perfect land fall just as the sun came up. A school of Bottlenose Dolphins came and swam in our bow wave and stayed all the way through the Boca de Monos channel. I love the way that dolphins turn on their sides and look at us – they are almost as interested in us as we are in them. We’ve found that if we stand on the bow and wave and shout hello at the dolphins, they seem to get more excited, jumping out of the water more.
We picked up a mooring just off Power Boats at seven o’clock. It was a very pleasant four day passage with very varied conditions. We had to motor-sail ¾ of the time, but we averaged 5 knots, which is not bad against the prevailing wind and current. We were hoping to stay in the ABC area for a few more weeks, but in retrospect, I’m glad that we took the opportunity of the weather window - Curacao now has a big low sitting over it with heavy rain.
Glenys rustled up bacon and eggs for breakfast and we’d cleared in by half past ten. The main reason that we are here in Trinidad is to get our US Visas, so we submitted our on-line applications and caught a bus into Port of Spain and went to the Post Office to pay $140 each, for the privilege of applying for a visa. Once that small task was done, we were starting to feel pretty weary, so we ate a roti on a bench in Independence Square and caught the bus back to Chaguaramas.
We were back on the boat at two o’clock. I logged onto the Internet and arranged our appointments at the US Embassy for next Thursday. We then slept and chilled out for the rest of the afternoon, before going to the “Pot Luck” barbeque at TTSA. It was like coming home – we knew about half of the people there and had a great time catching up with everyone (and drinking our first beers for four days.)
25 October 2011 Chaguaramas, Trinidad
I spent most of the day on administration. We have all of our remaining possessions stored in the UK at Glenys’s brother’s house. Gareth has sold his house and is moving out at the end of next week. This is a bit of a logistical nightmare because our sons (Brett & Craig) are living in rented flats and don’t have anywhere to store our things. Brett is moving into a three bedroom house in a month, so I’m organising a lock-up store near where Brett lives and then will need to get the stuff moved from Lymington to Stevenage. Thank God for the Internet and email.
We had a little walk-about in the afternoon, trying to get a few things sorted out. We didn’t have much luck, because tomorrow is the Diwali holiday and most places had already started to shut down. Glenys managed to get a load of washing done in the launderette in Power Boats.
We had a quiet night in and went to bed early.
26 October 2011 Chaguaramas, Trinidad
It was the Hindu festival of Diwali today, so most of Trinidad was shut down. We had a quiet morning, doing admin and other things on the boat.
In the afternoon, we went on a trip that Jesse James, a local taxi driver, had organised to a Hindu community to take part in the Diwali celebrations. It was a big turnout with fifty or so cruisers packed in three buses. When we arrived, we were shown into a Hindu temple which had an impressive display of statues an paintings of the Hindu gods worshipped in this festival. One of the temple officials explained that although it’s a Hindu festival, Trinidad is one of the few places in the world where Diwali is a public holiday observed by people of all denominations.
We had a demonstration of Tassa drums, performed by a small band of three guys. Tassa is a traditional form of Indian music brought into Trinidad by “indentured” Indians in the 19th century. In a typical Caribbean way, Tassa ensembles have flourished in Trinidad and have the same sort of following in the Indian community as the Carnival Pan Bands have - it’s very loud. We then had a traditional meal of vegetable curries, served on banana leaves and eaten with roti bread.
After the meal, we walked around the streets. Diwali is the “Festival of Lights” and is held on the night with a new moon between mid-October and mid-November – this is supposed to be the darkest night. The locals set out lamps and candles on bamboo frames or lay out intricate patterns on the floor outside their houses. The traditional lamp is a small bowl filled with coconut oil and a wick. There are also big statues erected showing the various gods and demons that feature in the Diwali festivities.
It’s a fun, family oriented festival. We walked along the main street looking at the lights, accepting small gifts of sweets and dodging the firecrackers thrown by children.