Archiv
CW 09 2002
24.02.2002 - 02.03.2002
Today is Sunday, February 24, and we're still on this Robinson Crusoe Island,
Tobago. In 1719 Daniel Defoe used this place for the scenery for the experiences
and adventures of his hero Robinson Crusoe.
No surprise, looking at these beautiful beaches here. According to a statistic
there's one kilometre of beach for every one visitor.
That can really help you feel like Robinson himself, doesn't it?
To give you an impression of this charming place, two pictures showing the
Man of War Bay.
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So we're enjoying the surrounding, only relaxing. And we'll do the "doing
this and that" when we feel like it. On a ship, there's always something
that needs to be done, repaired, maintained. But now that we have time we'll
get that done with a different feeling altogether.
So we can take everything a little easier and that's why nothing's on our
agenda today. Besides … a band well known in Tobago and Trinidad, the
3 Canals, are performing here in Charlotteville tonight. We read in the newspaper,
that they're supposed to be the best Soca-band. They're performing in the
Banana Boat Bar tonight and we also planning to go.
It's supposed to start at 8pm and the whole town seems to be up and going.
A lot of people from neighbouring villages are also here. As we get there
catchy rhythms are already roaring from the speakers and cool beer, Carib,
is flowing.
An hour later it finally starts and three guys really get the crowd heated
up.
Short but effective: they play 4-5 songs live and then they're gone again.
The handling was nice and easy here as well, no blocking off people or something
like that, on the contrary, the dancing crowd was hardly 0,5m away from the
band.
Without further announcement the band disappears again and we get playback
music again. We stay on for a while, meet a few other, friendly sailors and
then we also take off again. After taking off our shoes we walk along the
beach, back to the small landing where our dinghy, that'll take us back, is
lying.
Monday calls for an experimental work performance.
We told you last week that this problem with the foresail rolling system started
up again. Today Thomas and Karl want to take a closer look. To do that they
spread a couple of lines, thin and thick ones, into different directions,
in order to see where something is loose. After a long debate both men agree
that we apparently have a problem with the ships structure. This is not good
at all. Now we have to get information on the ships construction, get plans
of the ship so we can figure out where to start looking for the fault. But
one thing is for sure: we can't sail any more!
For us that means that we have to go and find an appropriate wharf where they
can fix things like this. Probably won't be too easy. Ok, that's enough for
today. We're having a relaxed dinner with Alexandra and Karl at our place
and a few ideas to this problem come up. Oh well, we'll find a way.
On Tuesday we have to find out where to get information on the ships construction.
So we go to an internet café in the afternoon to look for the email-addresses
of those who constructed the ship. We're not very successful, but another
sailor gives us an address where we immediately send our enquiries to.
In the evening a spontaneous gathering takes place on the Gryllos. Thomas
and I only stopped by quickly, but then 4 other sailors, who'd been travelling
today, also came along and brought 2 fish that they caught themselves.
Alexandra quickly put the fish in the oven, well done and tasty, and we all
got something to eat as well. Later Ute and Erich, with their daughter Julia,
also joined us. They're also sailing around the world, on their Ketch, named
after their daughter Julia. We sit together until late at night, until all
the dinghies disappear and we also make our way home.
And if it was a late night, one can also sleep late the next day, or not?
Or rather, stay in bed late, after all, every day here is greeted with a loud
bird concert from the rainforest.
And today Thomas and I want to take a closer look at that. In the afternoon,
equipped with long trousers and anti-mosquito-spray, we go ashore on the beach
and straight on into the forest. Gerhard and Felix saw parrots here; lets
see if we're also that lucky. Although, we're not on an organized tour, we're
just wandering around by ourselves.
And really, during dusk they all come back. We have no idea, what the names
of all these different kinds of birds are. We find one or the other bird described
in a book later, but we're never absolutely sure. But what we also saw were
those extraordinarily beautiful green parrots. We didn't see them very close,
but if four or five of those screeching birds fly over you, … that's
not too bad.
Using the binoculars we look at the treetops and see a few other birds, but
before we're eaten by mosquitoes or can't find the way back in the dark, we
make our way back. We also found some of these "stone plants". Aren't
they called Tilandsien or something like that? You can buy those at nurseries,
usually stuck onto a stone. Those grow here, as parasite plants, in vast amounts
and all sizes. They're just lying around here.
More and more bats arrive during dusk and with some of them you wonder, whether
they've got their ultrasonic devices under control, because they do get very
close to you. It seems advisable to duck quickly. Leaving the forest and getting
back to the beach some locals invite us to a BBQ, but it's time for us to
get back aboard since it's time to get dinner going, or rather, into the oven.
The Wahoo we caught last week was rather large and we've still got plenty
of fish in the freezer, so we asked Alexandra and Karl if they felt like having
fish. So we spend another relaxing evening together, under a full moon. That's
so beautiful!
Thursday, and it'll be bread baking day. It's about time we baked some nice
self-made full-grain bread again. You can almost only buy white bread here,
or as we call it, squishy bread. It's anything but healthy and sometimes it
tastes like and old cardboard box. We've got the best ingredients for a good
loaf of bread, since Christina and Bernd as well as Gerhard and Felix supplied
us with the finest baking ingredients and we still have good Slovenian flour.
And while the oven is nice and hot we'll also make nice raisin bread.
| In the mean time Thomas is battling with the laptop and our navigation
software which isn't working properly any more. To relax again angling is just the right thing for the evening. Thomas anyway wanted to thoroughly test the new little fishing rod in peace. But that thorough testing doesn't work, or rather, isn't necessary, because, as soon as the line is in the water there's a fish on the hook. But the first one was too small, so it's taken off the hook and thrown back into the water. Well, since that's what happens, a larger hook is fastened to the line. Thomas catches 3 nice red barbs and then it's time to stop fishing since dinner is ready. |
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On Friday Thomas and I go for a nice walk on the beach before we go shopping.
Apparently it's market-day in Charlotteville on Fridays and, so to say, the
market is brought to the village. Of course there are small fruit and vegetable
stands everywhere on the streets here, where you can shop every day, but Fridays
a dealer comes by car and there's supposed to be more diversity, fresher goods
and they're also supposed to be cheaper.
This car is expected by many yachties, but also by many locals. And then there's
someone else who's supposed to come. The butcher. But he only comes in the
evening, because then it's not so hot any more and that's quite an advantage
since he doesn't come with a refrigerator wagon or something like that, no,
he comes with a normal pick up truck with his meat in the back. Normal plastic
boxes, with meat in them, simply covered with plastic bags.
One box with beef and one with pork. We're all standing around, waiting for
our turn, but that could be a while. First it's the locals' turn and then
ours, the whitefaces. As soon as it's your turn your only aloud to say, and
preferably quickly, if you want beef or pork and what you want to make out
of it. Then you can hope for a good piece of meat. There is no choosing, no
saying I'd like this and that. He also pretty much decides on the amount,
just accepting, wordlessly, an "it may be a little more". The fact
that he cuts the meat on a simple wooden block, a piece from a tree trunk
about 30cm high, lets you forget everything about hygiene-laws and similar
rules you know from Germany. Well, different rules apply here and there's
nowhere else you could get fresh meat here.
We get something cool to drink at a small bar and then we go back aboard before
it gets dark, because Thomas still wants to get his fishing rod out for a
while. So we drive back to the ship. I take care of our groceries and slowly
start preparing dinner and Thomas has all reason to be happy again: he caught
a young barracuda. Anglers luck! If that carries on like that we'll get a
nice fish platter. But since we got back quite late it's already getting dark
and it's better to stop fishing.
Saturday morning and our day starts early, with thick raindrops falling right
into our faces. The last day of the week starts with heavy rain. But the sun
is already shining, and what do we get then? Exactly, a beautiful rainbow!
It's worth getting up early for a sight like this.
Looking outside a little closer we see a slightly different view than what
we saw the days before. It seems that the amount of turning we did loosened
our anchor. So we weigh anchor and drop it again, but not on the same spot,
but a little closer to shore. The advantage is, that we can go diving right
off the boat; what we wanted to do today anyway. So we're anchored in the
corner and are even closer to the rainforest, experience the chirping concert
from up close and can even see the birds in the trees from aboard.
We go on a beautiful dive. Just as we're descending we find ourselves in the
middle of a school of countless tiny fish.
We're down there for three quarters of an hour and can hardly get enough of
the many colourful fish and corals. We see a lot of parrotfish and, to our
surprise, a pretty school of calamari. The most beautiful fish we saw today
was an impressive and large emperor fish. It's simply always impressive, what
there is to see down there. At the beginning of our dive we took a look at
our anchor and how it's lying and we immediately knew we'll have to change
anchor position again later, since it's only attached to one large stone and
if we turn again the anchor would most probably not hold any more.
So we surface, take our equipment off and immediately make our way back to
the anchor place we were occupying before. But not having to take the dinghy
to go diving was definitely worth it.
Diving makes you hungry, so we start making goulash from the meat we bought
yesterday. After dinner we pick up Alexandra and Karl and go ashore for a
beer. There's supposed to be a party at one of the restaurants today, but
somehow nothing much is happening. So we go to the next bar. There is something
happening there, but only due to a few totally drunk tourists. That might
be quiet amusing to watch for a while, but we don't need that the whole evening.
Off to the next bar where we have a relaxed drink and finally walk back. In
the mean time the atmosphere of the bar we were in first has improved so we
take a little stop-over there before we make our way back home and end this
day and week.
… what the next week brought us
… here, in one week:
same time, same place!
So long
Diana + Thomas
Guy de Maupassant said:
" Encountering people is what makes life worth living. "
And right he is.
This will be the last quote we cite here since these " clever remakrs
" could easily be misunderstood or misinterpreted. That wasn't our intention
and not what we wanted and to keep that from happening we'll stop before the
quote from last weeks logbook (" How often does a word divide us instead
of bringing us together ? ") comes true.
Besides, you can buy this little booklet, from the Herder Verlag,
ISBN- 3-451-26943-0
Even if we didn't give one last week, we'll give one again this week, a culinary
tip !
Today it's a starter, but they're also nice as little snack :
Baked tomatoes (serves 4)
8 medium sized tomatoes
iodized salt, pepper, a few thymian stems, half a bunch of parsley and of
chives, 1 garlic clover, 2 tablespoonfuls of ground parmesan, 1 tablespoonful
of bread crumbs, 1 tablespoonful of olive paste or simply tomatoe concentrate
(in that case add more spices)
Wash tomatoes, dry them and cut them in half. Set them into a slightly greased
baking pan, cut sides facing up, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Peel the garlic
and chopp up together with the thymian and parsley. Cut chives into small
rolls. Mix with the parmesan, bread crumbs, tapenade (or tomatoe concentrate)
and the pepper and spread over the tomatoes.
Gratinate at 200°C for 8 minutes.
Enjoy !
