After resolving the problems which were immediately apparent after relaunch, we had hoped to be able to leave Crews' Inn marina with everything working but it was not to be. The engine rev counter decided not to regiister anymore and resisted Jean-Jacques efforts to find out what the problem was. Then, on the day before we planned to leave, I discovered that the sensor unit for the log was leaking and, to cap it all, 10 keys on my laptop keyboard stopped working! Eventually, we decided that we weren't going to be able to fix any of these things and so, on Nov 24 we finally left Chaguaramas, 3 months after flying back from England.
We wanted to try out the new anchor and renovated anchor windlass, so first we just motored round to Scotland Bay. What a difference those few miles made – instead of the bustle of Chaguaramas, we were now anchored in a very peaceful, jungle-fringed bay with just a handful of other yachts and hardly any signs of civilisation. All was well with the anchor and windlasss so, after a nice lunch, we set off again, towards Suriname. We had expected to have to motor the 40 miles or so along the north coast of Trinidad and that was indeed the case. Staying fairly close inshore to avoid the adverse current (and actually picking up favourable current!), there was just a gentle breeze from ahead and we didn't even bother putting the mainsail up until well along the coast. While there seemed to be plenty of showers over the island, only the occasional light one extended over the water and the seas were very slight, so it was a pleasant, relaxing first evening. Around midnight, as we rounded the NE corner of Trinidad, the seas became uncomfortable, even thought the wid was only Force 3-4; we had some sail up by now, mainly to steady the motion. Finally, in the early hours we turned the engine off and enjoyed a couple of hours of decent sailing on a close reach towards our destination. The wind soon dropped though, and changed from ENE to ESE. We could no longer sail in the direction we wanted to go, so started motorsailing. We passed a number of uncharted oilrigs, with support vessels buzzing around and also saw a couple of dolphins. While there were some moderately big showers around, on the whole they passed us by and brought no significant wind.. The breeze remained resolutely less than 10 knots from between ESE and SSE, so progress was very slow. In the first hours we only made about 100 miles towards Suriname and most of that progress was from motoring along the north coast of Trinidad. The next day followed the same pattern, with light winds from ahead. The weather was hot and sunny and while lighning was occasionally visible on the horizon, we had only a very occasional light shower. Just before sunset, there was a good display of tuna jumping, which was something new for us. In the early evening, a fishing boat passed within half a mileand later, the wind picked up to Force 4 and we reefed. In the early hours,the wind dropped back to Force 3-4and while we were occasionally able to get 'PIANO' sailing nicely, it never lasted long and the services of the engine were often engaged. Even so, we were only 89 miles closer to our destination by the end of the day. The painfully slow progress continued for the rest of the trip. The saving grace was that the weather was good – sunny, hot and dry. In the evenings, lots of lightning was visible on the horizon but the thundery activity was all confined to the distant land. Several seabirds accompanied us for varying distances and we had two large and several small flying fish on deck, as well as a tiny live crab. The only other excitement was having to tack in the middle of the night to avoid a cargo ship which was getting too close.
Eventually, on the evening of Nov 30, the wind gained a slight northerly component and we started making good progress towards our destination, some 30 miles away. It was time to try to engineer our arrival at the Safe Water Mark at the river entrance, in order to take the tide upstream. The ideal time appeared to be 0500 but in the event, our progress was a little slower than estimatedand we didn't get there until 0630. However, this still allowed us to carry favourable current all the way to Domburg and we were doing 7-8 knots over the ground most of the time. The estuary of the river only has a very narrow navigable channel but is well-buoyed, making the passage relatively uneventful. Apart, that is, from when the engine decided to splutter a few times just while we were in the narrowest part of the channel. Luckily, after a few minutes it cured itself and stress levels decreased again. We anchored off the small village of Domburg, some 8 miles above Paramaribo, the capital of Surinam, There were half a dozen other yachts of various nationalities in the anchorage – no Brits though. The passage of 440 miles had taken 160 hours at an average speed made good of just under 2.8 knots. The worst day's progress was just miles, making it our slowest ever passage by some margin!
