TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Alright! This seems to be not only the greeting here in T&T, but also the general mind set- Everything is absolutely all right with the world! Its been a real treat being here- the marina that we are staying in is very luxurious with a delicious pool- lots of evening sundowners and lurking in the warm water until way after dark! We have managed to get done some major work- fixing the watermaker, the auto pilot, the rigging, the leaks, the water in the engine problem and some other minor stuff. Whew! The facilities for repairs are amazing, so many sighs of relief on all sides!

We have done some very cool missioning round Trini- driven to Maracas Bay to have Shark ‘n Bake, delicious deep fried shark in deep fried bread… (healthy!), as well as numerous expiditions to find a waterfall (R & I have just come back form ANOTHER sortie… unsuccessful! Everyone else has found at least one, but us, no!). The main occupation of t&t’ers is ‘limin’, which effectively means chillin/ hanging out. And boy do they lime! They lime on the sides of near impassable mountain potholes, they lime on the beach, on the pavement, in the water- wherever there is space for more than one person to sit or stand, thats a good place for limin! Perfect! We have gone limin at night a few times- we hooked up with some canadians from another boat ‘Oceangybe’ and headed into Port of Spain (capital of Trinidad) for a look see. Inness found a touch rugby game and unable to restarin himself, ran onto the field in the twilight and had a good 15 minute run around. We were then invited to lime with what turned out to be an old Boys Club…. we followed them to their club house behind a Zoo and sat drinking icy beers for a good hour or two. There is a huge Indian population here, as well as Chinese and African so we were, at one point, chatting to a Chinese man, an  Indian, a huge black guy, a white Trini and an English expat. All talking in the lilting patois of Trinidad Tobago. Beautiful! And then we limed with some locals in street food alley! We were all like little children trying to decide what to have.. everyone had ‘doubles’ which are indian flat bread with chickpeas and curry and coriander sauce, i had Chinese corn soup with dumplings, Rijk had jerk chicken, we shared some delicious dumplings that came with sauce in a jiffy bag, and then we made our own juices with the juice man, mostly of fruits that i have never heard of!

On one of our unsuccesful waterfall missions, we ended up walking through the jungle for ages and then finding the absolutely stunning little beach that is in the pictures. We literally followed a fresh stream down the mountain and then walked out onto the beach. We could lie drinking out the river, with the sea lapping at our feet. As good as a waterfall I say! The driving round the island is spectacular- the roads all carve into the rain forest and the views are breathtaking. There is more pothole than road however, and the driving is something special! We are renting a car (tinted windows, no speedo, broken window, broken boot) that loks like a locals car, which unfortunately has no petrol guage.. luckily the only running out of petrol has been done within walking distance of a gas station, and the tire got a puncture on a very chilled road!

Good news (for Inness), bad news (for us!) is that Inn found himself a really lovely, huge (139ft!) yacht to take him to Lisbon, from where he is heading to Palma for a Med season. We are sure going to miss him!!!! :(

We decided to take trhe car on the ferry over to Tobago while we were waiting for the repairs. Tobago is a sleepy, much smaller island, where the main aim was to kitesurf! The ferry was really lux and quick, and then we were driving to our pretty hilarious accommodation in Crown point (why do you need windows???? Air con good enough!) Rijk got some good kiting in, jay narrowly missed scraping his chest on the fire-coral (OW!) and I got through quite a few romances! Then it was on to Charlotteville (thanks Duncs!) which was GLORIOUS! We stayed at the most charming chalet which was a whisper from the sea (lots of photos- checkout the distance of the beach to our door!) Charlotteville is tiny, and so quaint- everyone knows everyone and everyone has the time to say hi and introduce thermselves if they don’t! There was a tiny ‘speedbump’ outside our patio door, so every car that drove by had to slow down, they checked us out, said “al-right, mon” and drove on. The most beautiful old rasta guy came to lime a bit with us, and, as we sat there, drinking our rum and coke, watching the sun setting over the fishing boats and an island in the distance, he turned to us and said “So, what’s flashing in your mind?”.

I love this country!