Is the Caribbean getting too hot to hold?
Oriole
Tue 27 Apr 2010 17:29
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Monos Island, Trinidad. 10:41.863N
61:40.581W
The passage from Grenada to Trinidad
(about 80 miles) has always been seen as a bit of an obstacle to yachtsmen who
lay up their boats in Trinidad. You are often hard on the wind, the
currents are often strong and contrary and always unpredictable and there is now
an increasing threat from Venezuelan pirates at the southern end where the
course takes you close to the notorious Paria Peninsula. Several of our
friends have decided this year to lay-up in Grenada. In December three days
after we had come north a much larger yacht was stopped and boarded by gun
toting Spanish speaking men who disabled the crew and stripped the
boat of everything of value. This was within 30 miles of the north coast
of Trinidad and within sight of one of the gas production platforms.
Sadly the Trinidad authorities have done little to protect their territorial
waters from this threat and although they have a fleet of modern sophisticated
fast patrol boats with deep sea capability we have never seen one at sea and
they appear to be beautifully polished and tied to the dock at
Coastguard H.Q. and doing little to protect approaching or departing sea
traffic. After a lot of thought and discussion with other yachties
we made the passage at night in company with two other
yachts keeping them in sight all the time. All the reported
incidents have been during the day and it would certainly be a very brave rogue
boat which approached its quarry at night without being able to assess its
capability. In the event we had a totally uneventful and idyllic passage
which we thoroughly enjoyed. This contasts with a Trinidadian friend
who had to exhibit his firearms very recently to get a an threateningly
inquisitive boat to go away and another who was followed closely by two boats at
night without lights which he could track on radar. Both events came to
nothing but certainly spooked those on the receiving end. However there
are hundreds of yachts transiting these waters and the numbers of incidents
are very small in comparison. More worrying is a report, as yet not fully
investigated and reported, of a woman picked out of a liferaft last week by a
cargo boat 100 miles north of Curacao. She had been drifting for 13 days
and her husband had been killed. The Curacao authorities are not giving
out any more information until they have thoroughly investigated this incident.
We await developments but she could have drifted from this area.
We are just listening to the
Trinidad Cruisers Radio net and are hearing that a yacht arriving
yesterday called the Coastguard twenty times on VHF Channel 16 (the
emergency calling channel) to report their safe arrival and got no
response!! We did not bother and had no probem!! HEJ MON
DIS IS DE CARIBBEAN!!
 Oriole resting at
Monos
Meanwhile we are having a quiet
weekend tied to the dock at our friends' house on Monos Island off the
western exremity of Trinidad, before we start the laying up process on Monday.
It will be hot - the outside temperature at 0800 this morning is
31C. Oriole is scheduled to be lifted out of the water in a
weeks's time and ash permitting we fly home on May 12th. If you have been
reading our blog thank you very much for being with us and we will be planning
for more hopefully uneventful cruising next winter. In spite of the
threats to security we have had a wonderful time and made many new
friends.
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