May 6 through May 28, 2010

During this and the next day, I also engaged a professional surveyor to inspect Wight Skye, in connection with our lifetime guarantee against blisters and hull integrity. I also engaged a rigger to inspect the mast and standing rigging aloft, and to help me bend on the sails after we had left the yard and were afloat. The surveyor came at about noon on Thursday, as the yard was getting ready to launch us. By mid-afternoon, we were in the water and had moved over to CrewsInn Marina. Nice to have water, power, and air conditioning. As soon as we were fast in our berth, I ran up the national ensign as well as the Trinidad and Tobago courtesy flag.

Over the next couple of days, my helpers came to the marina and worked on cleaning and polishing. Joan and I deployed the bimini canvas and our deck tents. On Saturday, May 8^th, the rigger came with a helper.  He climbed the mast, inspecting as he went. Before he descended, he rove the upper ends of the lazy jacks through their blocks on the mast cheeks. Then he, the helper, and I bent on the jib, stays’l, and mains’l. We were lucky to have a nearly calm day. This is not easy work. The jib is a really large sail and difficult to handle. The main must have the battens installed as it is raised, and also have the three sets of reefing lines rove through the reef points and tackle, all very difficult in a fresh wind.

After about a week in Trinidad, business from home began arriving via e-mail, and I had to take some time off boat work to do some farm business. I also spent a miserable half day standing in line to buy local SIM cards for our cell phones. We also took time to provision and do laundry. Then, I spent another miserable half day waiting in the local chandler, Budget Marine, for the Trinidad Customs agent to arrive with a pad of paperwork required for me to take delivery on a new dinghy. After the episode in the store, we had to drive to the nearest Customs Office, hire a broker, and have him pass my purchase documents, my ship’s papers, my passport through the window to another Customs agent. Finally, they let me have my dinghy. Let me say that if you think bureaucracy is bad in the US, you need to travel abroad more.

The new dinghy leaked. The dealer arranged to have it fixed under warranty. Upon getting it back the second time, we mounted our old Mercury 9.9 outboard with some trepidation. In July of 2009, while we were anchored in Admiralty Bay, Bequia, a terrible squall struck and flipped our old dinghy upside down, wetting the outboard motor with seawater. Even though we immediately took it to a mechanic and flushed, drained, cleaned, and oiled it, it never ran properly after that incident. As we feared, it didn’t run right this time, either. It seems the jets in the little carburator continue to grow or collect salt scale or corrosion and clog up repeatedly. We determined not to put any more money into this but to buy a new outboard. We chose a new 18 hp Tohatsu. We were lucky to be shopping outside the US and to be able to buy a 2-cycle outboard. Environmentally incorrect as they may be, you just get so much more power per unit cost and per unit weight.

During these first three weeks in Trinidad, we got to witness an historic national election. The deeply entrenched People’s National Movement Party (PNM) and it’s corrupt Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, were voted out of office and replaced by the United National Coalition Party (UNC) and a new female Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bessessar. It was carried out with no violence and apparently little or no voter fraud or ballot stuffing. There was the potential for racial tension too, since the PNM tends to be the party of Black Trinis and the UNC the party of Indian Trinis, but that didn’t surface either. We were very pleased and proud of our Trini friends. Also during our time in Trinidad, it rained every day, sometimes several times each day. 

By about the 25^th of May, we were thinking it was time to leave Trinidad for Grenada. We worked to get new jugs of extra diesel fuel on deck, along with our jugs of water and outboard gasoline. I re-checked all of the service points on the engine. Since a couple of incidents of piracy off Trinidad earlier this year, it’s gotten to be popular practice to find other folks wanting to make the trip and go in company with them for mutual protection as an impromptu convoy. We found a couple, Phil and Norma of S/V Minnie B who wanted to go, so we made our plans to leave, sailing in company with them.