Trinidad Arrival

Another wonderful evening/overnight sail! Plenty of wind and a few ships to avoid with AIS my watch 21.00-12.00 went smoothly, just a few Dolphins cavorting in the moonlight, then off to sleep and I’m called at 07.00 awake to the Trinidadian coastline.  We sign in with Customs/Immigration and Peakes Marina, then have a few hour more kip!
We have now been here just 10 days, two of them public holidays.
During which we unloaded the ‘cycles’ and went to The Trinidad & Tobago Yacht Club and around the coast here at Chaguaramas.
   Malcolm has now booked our flights home, earlier than we wanted due to lack of seats. Trinidad to Tobago on to Grenada then 9 hours to Gatwick.  A fraught day when we expected to land into a general strike, only time will tell.  Meanwhile, we organise a complete cover for the topsides to protect ’Piano’ from UV & sunlight.  Sam came to wash and put a layer of polish on the hull to protect it from the ravages of the atmosphere.  Richard has just fitted the air-conditioning and it is pleasantly cool down below for a change (26ºC and humidity only 48%).
The whole Peakes team has been to reposition ’Piano’ so that she is now level and has a rigid cradle to satisfy the insurers.
We have been loading gear from the outside lockers to a storage room so that we have a space to fill when we start doing work below decks and need to empty interior lockers.
  During an odd hour we give ‘Crescendo’ a well needed scrub and her outboard has been flushed through with fresh water ready for Hurricane storage in ashore.  The Bimini has been taken down ready for storing too.  It’s all going very well.

On the social side, we had Vicky and Porter ( Cinnamon Teal) over for sundowners. Vicky has a large hand in the Cruisers net here and knows all there is to about everything!  She organises Dominoes (afternoon) and a Cruisers BBQ on a Sunday evening we went along with our next door neighbours Penny and Chris last night.  About 30 people were there and we gained many more friends from various parts of the world.  It was a truly International event.
This evening we are able to have a farewell swim & drink with Mary & James who arrived yesterday while I was playing Dominoes.  They didn’t have such a good crossing from Grenada—I’ll get the details later.