Well October came first, and as I write here in the air-conditioner Commadores room at Crews Inn I can afford to tell you of the nitty gritty going on. Our fellow cruisers have just left on the Neirid Rally to Guyana, French Guyana and Suriname, the place seems empty with out their smiling faces.
HAWK MOTH, Pseudosphinx tetrio
Frangipani Caterpillar
This large dark silvery-gray moth pupates from the ground under the wild Frangipani Tree (Plumieria alba) and sometimes from under Allamandas (Yellow Bells), also belonging to the Apocynaceae family. The caterpillar is large, about 5 inches long, and as fat as a finger. They are very conspicuous with yellow bands on the black body and has a red head, presumably as a warning signal to birds. They feed on the poisonous sap, thus becoming poisonous to the birds that might be searching for food. After the leaves are stripped by the voracious caterpillars then bury into the ground to pupate. This cycle is said to be of much use to each party, so they thus live in a symbiotic relationship. The gardners' trimmed the empty stems , since they were unsightly, we just wait for the pupation to end
Falco (as efficient as ever) came to change the freshwater pump , even this took 2 working days as a gasket was not included so had to be sourced before he finished, and he was suffering the after effects of chikungunya the latest mosquito infection to hit the area.
Graham and the gel coat team arrived to remove then re-seat all the port-lights, which now hopefully will last another 15 years. We bumped into the expert gel coat man (Colin) to have a look at a few spots Malcolm is worried about but to date he has not managed to come and inspect them- so this will have to wait til next year. He is very busy on another yacht which must have priority.
Then of course Malcolm managed to drop his wallet which caused 3 weeks of trauma, having knock on affects while waiting for new cards to arrive. Many returning cruisers and their friends & family back in the UK were involved in helping and deserve our heartfelt THANKS. Still that meant the weekly BBQ was a welcome break from eating out.
which Malcolm fitted himself. This means that all the sailing kit is ready for our new cruising season yippee.
The next big event was the 'Barts Bash' a sailing event to get into the Guinness Book of Records. We crewed for 'Aeeshah', since 'Piano' was in no fit state to compete.
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| Thanks Bethany for this snap |
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| and this the happy team, Captain John, Jen, and their crew for the race |
We had a brilliant sail, aboard a fast boat, no bad language, and plenty of fun at TTSA in the party afterwards.
I'll leave you to look at Aeeshahs blog for the details Click here for our fun.
We finally took possession of the new main last week amid the heavy rain of a Tropical depression passing through. Instead of 2 hours it took closer to 3 days to fit and still requires some of the ropes to be sorted.
Jonas the rigger (who was asked to check the rig back in June choose the same day to do his check and found that we needed a new forestay, he does work fast and that was completed in record time.
Now for the fun items:
Another trip to Asa Wrights' Bird Sanctuary, where Barry the Warden remembered us from last time. The snap shows feeding time on the veranda, and you may just see the Great Kisskadees in the bush waiting their turn at the sugar trough.
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| A hike in Tropical rain to see various birds. |
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| A land crab enjoying the wet weather. |
The Tropical rain drenched the whole of Trinidad and we were lucky to even get there, getting home
.was more difficult when this tree fell into the road
Luckily someone had a machete in his car and made short work of clearing it, 20 minutes later we were traveling again.
Elsewhere, at TTSA some yachts were seriously damaged:
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| This yacht ended up on the shore leaning to starboard, so it will be full of water by now. |
,Our return to 'Piano' was to no shore power and flat batteries
The RCD had cut in when the power was resumed and left ‘Piano’ quite happily on batteries only, except that we had left the freezer and the fridge on (because I had defrosted said freezer that day) The rectification of shore power is on going and I’m not going to delay posting this blog for any
...longer. I’ll leave it as a cliff-hanger until the next episode.
Apologies are in order for the cranky full stops and exclamations at the beginning of the sentences, just another quirk to put up with
