Thursday 17^th January 2013 10:40.78N 61:37.88W

After frustrating delays waiting for sail repairs at Prickly Bay (necessitated by poor work at Westaway Marine requiring reefing blocks to have new attachment straps fitted) we sailed overnight on 16th/17th to Trinidad.  It was a lovely night for a sail with a clear starry night and a steady breeze on the beam which allowed us to arrive off Trinidad a couple of hours before dawn.  There was a lot of shipping traffic as the waters between Trinidad and Grenada include an important gas field and there were many maintenance vessels and ferries crisscrossing the water. In the clear conditions and moderate seas there was little danger, though Gill found it stressful to be confronted by so many “targets”.

We cruised slowly west along the north coast of Trinidad to the relatively narrow but deep channel of Bocadelmonos, allowing us to turn south into the channel just as the sun started to clear the horizon.  Both the Trinidad mainland, on our left, and the island of Monos, on our right, were hilly and densely wooded with apparently virgin forest.  As we progressed down the channel, we encountered groups of pelicans heading out from their roosts in the now calm air, with small black vultures (wingspans of about 1 metre, and known locally as Corbeau) struggling to gain altitude around them.  We later discovered that the pelicans and vultures commonly share the same trees for roosting.  Frigate birds cruised among them looking for any opportunity to snatch a meal.

Turning East again at the end of the channel, we entered Chagaramas Bay which is a hotspot for boat repairs, with several large boatyards and independent specialists which have developed a reputation for good work at reasonable prices. It also hosts the local Coastguard station and is an anchorage for vessels supporting the oil and gas industry.

The hilly peninsula around which we had motored to reach Chaguramas bay is a nature reserve with little human intrusion and a considerable percentage of virgin forest.  Inevitably, the large concentration of work in Chagaramas bay results in pollution sufficient to make swimming unattractive, although this is not the case around the peninsula.

Our early arrival was planned to take advantage of an e-mail offer to haul Tucanon out the same day at Peake’s Yacht Services.  After trying unsuccessfully to contact anyone there between 0800 and 0830, we went further down the bay to go through the Customs and Immigration formalities.  The staff were as friendly and helpful as any bureaucracy can be.  Armed with our now legitimate status, I dinghied over to Peakes to ascertain what was going on. Oh dear, terribly busy; no haul until a week’s time! (Note: ALL leisure marine activities are delayed, expensive and over budget – almost everywhere!).

During the afternoon we were visited by Fred VerPlanck (“Fast Fred”), a retired US Coast Guard captain who spends a lot of his time with his wife in Chaguramas on their boat “Liberty”and provides a very helpful service to fellow boaters collating both recommendations and notes of poor service to share with other boaters, as well as being a fund of practical local knowledge for cruisers.  Despite many on-line reports of piracy in the area, attributed to Venezuelans, Fred suggests that incidents are now few and far between and represent little more than a bad example of the casual thefts that, unfortunately, can be found in many places.