Store Bay, still on Tobago
Gaviota
Sun 27 Jan 2008 16:11
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11.09N 60.50W
Ooh dear, sorry folks, I see we haven't written a
diary entry for over a week ! Ah well, we've been busy as
usual....
We enjoyed swimming etc at Charlotteville until
last Monday, when we decided to set off in the direction of Trinidad. Went
into the village to clear customs in the morning, but the immigration guy
wouldn't be there until after 1pm (it was then 11am) so we decided to go for a
stroll up the hill at the back of the village - very steep hill through the
houses, grass road a times, turned into a nice grass track into the forest up
the hill....which we followed for 1.5 hours !! The first bit seemed quite
well used with landrover tracks and footprints in the mud and we enjoyed views
back down to Charlotteville bay far below and spotted one or two interesting
birds. Then the landrover tracks stopped suddenly and there was a bit of
litter around as if this was the end of the trail for most people, but we
carried on down a slightly overgrown track to find a large fallen tree blocking
the way for even landrovers. Undaunted, we carried on (Syd still carrying
his 'briefcase' and neither of us with any water, but it was mostly shady so we
were quite comfortable), following one set of cow hoofprints and the occasional
human footprint, still on an open track, round the hill, with views of the sea
and rocks down below, now on the other side of the hill to Charlotteville;
we thought we might end up down in Speyside and get a taxi or bus back. We
came to a junction in the tracks and decided to go uphill back towards
Charlotteville and were soon rewarded with more cows, tethered (a good sign of
being near or in civilization) and came out beside a fantastic house right on
the top of the hill above the village, with a tarmac road leading to the aerial
masts that we'd been aiming for. We walked up the road a bit, Syd keeping
well away from the edge which had often partially collapsed, in spite of it
appearing quite a new road, but decided it was just going up to the masts and
turned round and back down to the first point where Syd had waited for Annabel
at the top of a hill on the main road between Charlotteville and Speyside on the
bike ride. Then walked back down the road, fortunately only the occasional
car, to arrive back at the immigration office about 2pm then waited whilst the
officer was woken in his car and found the keys to his desk, worked out which
forms we had to fill in etc etc.
So then it was a quick lunch, dinghy engine
aboard and sail off - we'd planned to visit one or two bays in Tobago and one in
Trinidad on our way to Chaguaramas by the end of the week. We had an
interesting sail along the coast trying to see the road we'd cycled on Thursday,
but could only identify the mast at the top of the mountain. We were going
to anchor in Parlatuvier but the sea was quite lively and the bay was full of
fishing boats so we pushed on to Englishman's bay, where there was only one
other yacht, unoccupied and apparantly on a permenant mooring. We anchored
quite close to the rocks where it was slightly sheltered from the largish
waves blowing in and enjoyed views of this empty and unpopulated bay.
Unfortunately it was really rolly and worries about hitting the rocks kept us
awake most of the night.
Tuesday we sailed on to Plymouth, a big wide bay
which we hoped would be less rolly (but it wasn't). The sailing, as the
day before, was good, with the wind averaging 20kts mostly astern, so we just
put the Genoa up, sometimes not all of it. We nearly lost the
dinghy because it was bouncing around so much in the waves, so it was
tied down accross the transom - fine for short passages but we have been
hoping to get a gantry and davits to hoist it up off the stern to keep locker
and swimming access. Plymouth was also very quiet, with only one hotel on
the very long beach, which was very steep with waves breaking on it quite
violently. Wanting to explore, we dinghey'd over to the very high, falling
apart concrete jetty and scrambled up, but the village didn't seem very
interesting and we had run out of local money. We identified a bit of
beach where the breakers weren't quite so violent and managed to land the dinghy
and walked along the beach. All very quiet and again we were the only
yacht anchored. Unfortunately we weren't so successful launching the
dinghy and suffered a major capsize with water and sand getting into the
outboard, so Syd dried out as much as he could when we got back to the boat, but
spent the next 2 days changing oil, petrol and cleaning the carbouretta - as
always the engineer succeeded in fixing the problem ! Another rolly night
struggling to sleep so we looked hard at the charts and read between the lines
in the crusing guide and decided to try Crown Point, although we thought it
might be really busy with hotels etc and Tobago airport is just behind the
beaches there.
Wednesday another good little sail with slightly
stronger winds to Store Bay on the Northen side of Crown Point at the end
of Tobago nearest Trinidad, arriving late afternoon. There were quite a
few yachts here - a good sign, we are learning! One lively-looking hotel facing
this beach, with a sea wall 'fencing' off it's own lagoon and coconut studded
beach. We spotted other dinghys landing at a small beach to one side and
although there were breakers around, that beach looked pretty calm and the
anchorage was hardly rolly, so we enjoyed a proper night's sleep at last !
The next day when Syd had finally got the outboard going again, we went ashore
and found the much needed launderette-cum-internet cafe, cashpoints and several
hotels and restaurants. We treated ourselves to a proper meal out that
night, even though Syd still isn't getting his required quantity and quality of
red meat ! Luckily we dont' suffer from airport noise here, just watch the
range of aeroplanes from small twin-props to holiday jumbos landing
occasionally.
We also got round to ringing the marinas on
Trinidad near Port of Spain, the capital and centre of Carnival activities but,
as expected really at this late stage, they were all full and as we didn't
really fancy anchoring there, which would also be busy and were concerned about
security issues, we decideed not to go to Trinidad for carnival. This also
means we won't get all the jobs and purchases done for the boat that we were
expecting to be good and cheap there, but we think we can manage without
them.
On Friday 25th Jan we set off to get the bus to
Scarborough, the capital of Tobago, but joined up with a couple of
English/Tobagoain girls to accept a lift from a passing car (normal practice
apparantly - you just need to agree a fare). We were hoping to be able to
buy fresh fish and/or meat in the market there, but arrived too late so nosey'd
round a few shops and gave up. We also looked at the anchorage there,
because we'd read that we could get our water tanks filled on the town dock, but
that was all too high and inaccessible for us, being set up for ferries and
cruise ships, so we were glad we hadn't sailed there. We may do so anyway
next week to clear customs, which we need to do, but water for washing is
now on short rations ! We think we'll probably go straight into a marina
on Grenada as our next stop, but there's a regatta there this weekend until next
Tuesday, so they'll be full too ! There are a few carnival activities here
next weekend, but we've been here long enough now, and there isn't a suitable
jetty for landing the bikes at this end of the island. There's a great
little bar on the beach here, which is advertising live music tonight so we'll
enjoy that over a few beers. The Carib local beer is pretty tasteless, but the
only slightly stronger Stag, brewed for men, is much better - so much so we got
a crate at the supermarket yesterday ! Of course Annabel's not too embarrassed
to ask for it in the bars, although she does get some strage looks - what's
new?!?
Oh yes, Fish. Well Syd went out with the
fisherman in Charlotteville last Sunday and bumped around in his little boat
with a large outboard powering it; the first fish they caught was a large
kingfish and landed so slickly that Syd hardly saw it. Then the man said
he'd done enough and they came back to Gaviota because petrol was short in the
village. So Syd only really learnt about the length of the line required and
that pink lures work well here. We haven't tried again ourselves
yet, mainly because on short sails we''re towing the dinghy which would
interfere with the line. Having failed to buy fish in the market the other
day, we walked along the road here to a part of the beach where the
fisherboats land and found a few people gutting and filletting huge and small
fish. Eventually found one which would sell us some(most of it is
pre-ordered for hotels etc) and Syd watched the chap scaling and cutting up a
large fish, of which we got a couple of pounds - a grouper apparantly - tasty
and good n meaty ! Next step: catch our own, hopefully not too big as
we're not sure we could deal with it - trying to cut through the backbone would
be too dangerous on a moving boat ! We bought a huge plastic storage box
which will fit in the stern locker so we can keep it until we get somewhere
stable if we catch one whilst sailing.
Hope all this text isn't too dry - I've put a film
into a shop for developing, so hope to be able to add some photos next week
!
Annabel
Sunday 27Jan08
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