Archiv

CW 06 2002

03.02.2002 - 09.02.2002

Today is Sunday, February 3, and we're still in Prickley Bay on Grenada. Since we're going to leave tonight we're letting the day start slowly with breakfast at the Tiki Bar.
There's a yacht lying here in Prickly Bay, which was much talked about lately - and that for a sad reason. The Seamaster, a large steel schooner, with whom the famous sailor Sir Peter Blake, who amongst others also won the America Cup in 1995 and 2000, used to travel. In December last year Blake and his crew were at the Amazon with the Seamaster when pirates attacked them and shot Sir Peter Blake. Horrible things like that also happen.
The Seamaster is leaving Prickley Bay today and we'll do the same.
And so, on early Monday morning, at 2am, we're on our way to Trinidad. It's a good 80 miles and since we want to arrive there in the afternoon, we're travelling at night. We leave the bay and manoeuvre ourselves past the reefs using the radar and plenty of navigating. Less than an hour later the sails are set, pulling us along with 7 knots speed. A beautiful night for sailing, light and full of stars. The full moon was only two days ago. Shortly before sunrise we through out our fishing lines again, but we're not successful. Probably the fish here prefer different bait again. It wouldn't be surprising, since the water here is totally different from what we've seen so far: it's really green. But not dirty, no, clear water that looks green. The fishing line runs out twice, but unfortunately we don't get whatever was causing that aboard. Well, that's also fine.

There's nothing to see here, besides an oilrig. We've been travelling for 13 hours as we reach Boca de Monos where we're greeted by rain. Thanks! While passing through there's an extremely strong current going against us, so we have to take the sails down and use the engines. And they only move us along slowly. That's how we reach the Gulf of Paria, located between Trinidad and Venezuela, and set course for Chaguaramas where we have to go and sign in again. What we get to see here has nothing to do with what one usually imagines the Caribbean to be like. One wharf next to the other, oilrigs, ships anchoring this way and that, and we can hardly make out the way to the customs dock.

So we slowly make our way through this mess and reach customs dock at 4.15pm - and that's going to be expensive. Even though we travelled quite quickly, we did take a little longer that we'd thought and now our initial plan isn't working out. You can sign in here normally until 4pm, but if you come any later it'll cost you because they ask for a kind of over-time fee. And that can't be helped since you have to sign in directly after arriving and are not allowed to wait until the next day. That procedure takes almost an hour and then we start looking for a place to drop anchor, since there isn't any more room in the marina we wanted to go to. But we do find a nice, quiet place where we drop anchor and fasten the stern line, shortly after 6pm. It does look a little bit more comfortable here, but there's one thing you definitely can't do - and that's going for a swim. Because there's plenty of oil swimming around here.
After having had a shower, cooked and having dinner we've had enough for today. Everything else, we'll see about tomorrow.
After a quiet and refreshing night we set out to check on our situation on Tuesday morning. We still want to get into the marina, that is, we have to, because we're having problems with one of the foresails, something's wrong with the roll up mechanism.
So we have to find someone who knows about rigs and who can fix that, we have to find out where we can do out laundry, and, and, and. On our expedition we see, that Bobby Schenk is also in the Caribbean right now, at least his sailing boat, the Thalassa, is lying in a marina here.
If the name Bobby Schenk doesn't mean anything to you: Schenk is a judge from Munich who's sailed around the world a few times and has written a few books. At first Schenk sailed one-hull boats, monos, and couldn't find a good word for multiple-hull boats. In the meantime he must have drastically changed his mind and is now sailing on a catamaran himself.
We return to the boat in the early afternoon, eat a little snack and continue. Thomas takes off again and I stay aboard since, once again, the logbook isn't ready yet. So we've all got something to do.
Nothing much is happening in the evening since we have to get up early tomorrow.
So on Wednesday, at 7.30am, Thomas is already seeing the rigger and after that he makes arrangements for the mooring place in the marina and we immediately move there.
After mooring at an outer landing I immediately go to a travel agency. After all, our program for carnival in Trinidad isn't arranged yet. To get into the right mood we start tonight. We visit two camps where they make those gigantic costumes for the carnival.
These houses, or rather halls, are called Mas Camps. Mas is an abbreviation of Masquerade. They ask, "do you the mas" and want to know if you're participating in the carnival. We're picked up at 6pm and drive to Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital. From there we drive up high, to Fort George, a defence post from the British times (1777 - 1779). The view of Port of Spain is incredible from here.

Upon our arrival we get a rum-punsch and a light dinner before we drive back down the steep, narrow streets and go straight to the first Mas Camp, the Barbarossa bands. Every band has a name and for every carnival each band gets a theme according to which the costumes are made. The different models are presented in a small room and can be bought. Security guards are posted in front of the Camp and the rooms in which the costumes are made are secured with bars. Sadly, an image that you see often, everything is behind bars. Private houses as well as small snack bars along the road or a little pub; even there you find bars across the bar. Seems to be pretty rough here.

Actually I wanted to take a picture of this Mas Camp, but the absolutely wouldn't allow that. To get a picture of the costumes you could buy a bottle of wine - the different models are shown on the label! Also a possibility, but I don't think it's really a good one. Well, then we won't have a picture - and we drive off to the next camp. Things are less uptight there. You can go right into the hall in which everything is made and is sold and while we're there some locals come and buy their costumes. One of those glamorous costumes costs 250 € - not exactly cheap. We've seen enough and go on to get something for our ears. We visit a rehearsal of the BP Renegades, a steel band. At first only about 10 - 15 people are playing, then they become more and more and finally there are at least 40 men and woman playing, giving their best. What they present us with is phenomenal. But that wasn't all for today. We take the bus to one more stop, to Victoria Square. Here members of different bands present themselves in full costume and tell us and sing to us about themselves. And for the first time we see someone wearing one of those impressive costumes. That was one of those many events that started last week, and there'll be parties 'till you drop, every day, until Ash Wednesday.
It's 10.30pm and time to return to the appointed meeting place, to start the trip back home.
On Thursday, the man who will take care of our foresail-system, arrives early and I make my way to Port of Spain to check out the supermarket situation. We still have to do some shopping and during the carnival everything will be closed here, and we won't be able to buy a thing. That's why everybody is stocking up. I get back in the early afternoon and Thomas and his men are busy with the foresail.
Now it's high time for us to buy tickets for one or the other carnival event. And if you don't know how this is done here, that's not an easy task. Meaning, I have to get going again and in the evening we finally got a program together. A program for four since we are getting reinforcements from Austria on Saturday. Gerhard and Felix are coming to Trinidad and we want to see and join the carnival in Trinidad together.
On Friday we have to get costumes for the Jouvert Party (more about that next week) and then we really have to go shopping. That'll be my job. Thomas is still busy with the foresail system, but it seems it can be fixed. Thank god!
Saturday, February 9, and tonight Gerhard and Felix will arrive. Until then one or two things still need to be done, but first we move, within the marina. They are expecting a large ship and we were asked to move to another mooring place. We're happy to do that, since the swell at that outer landing was pretty strong, not to mention all the oil swimming on the water and nicely sticking to the ship. Since we're here we've been doing laundry, but that'll be done by today. Since today is the first day with nobody running around on deck, working, we quickly clean everything and that'll be it for today.
Gerhard and Felix are supposed to land at 6.30pm. Now it's 8.30pm and they still haven't arrive, which does make us worry. Totally unnecessary, as we find out only 10 minutes later, when the reception informs us, via radio, that they have arrived.
Thomas takes off to pick them up, but somehow they just missed each other. When everybody is finally back aboard the laughing starts. And we sit together with one or two glasses of rum-punsch, looking forward to the coming days and letting this one end slowly.

… what the next week(s) brought us …
the logbook from week 7 will be available on Friday, February 22 at the latest. Also belated, sorry about that, but therefore there'll be more pictures and from the following week onwards it won't be a lie any more if I say:
… next week here,
same time, same place!

So long

Diana + Thomas

And to keep you from thinking you couldn't rely on us, here's the culinary excursion to our onboard kitchen:

Baked noodles with cottage cheese

200g lean bacon without skin
1 large onion
250g carrots
1 bundle parsley (straight)
250g Farfalle (bow-tie noodles)
250g low-fat cottage cheese
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoonful oregano
margarine for the baking pan
0,2l sour crème

Dice the bacon and fry it in a pan, without oil, until it's crisp, then set it aside. Peel the onion, chop it up finely and steam them in the remaining fat from the bacon.
Peel the carrots and rasp them, add to the onion and steam them together for another 5 minutes, then take them off the stove.
Wash the parsley, take the leaves off, chop them up and mix with the onion and carrots.
Cook noodles in salt water for 8 -10 minutes until al dente and drain them.
Mix the noodles with the cottage cheese, the carrots-onion-parsley mixture 2/3 of the bacon dice. Add slat, pepper and oregano to taste.
Line a baking dish with margarine, add the mixture, distribute the sour crème evenly on top and sprinkle with the left over bacon dice.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 250°C for 20 minutes (in the middle). Ready!
Serve with a nice salad.
Enjoy!

And this week Johann Peter Hebel gives us a minute for thinking:
All opportunities to be happy won't help, if you don't have the mind to use them.