Trinidad & Tobago – Sailing Azimuth

September 5, 2023September 5, 2023

On to the Land of Blue Drinks!

Last time we left you in Trinidad, we were in the boatyard getting Azimuth ready again for the next season. This time we will tell you about the rest of our time in Trinidad and an eventful sail to Curacao.

It was seriously hot in that boatyard. The temperature on paper was not that high, about 32 degrees, but Trinidad is a very wet country full of steamy rainforest and the humidity most days was 85%. Its easier to deal with such heat in the trade winds of the Caribbean. At anchor, you can pretty much guarantee a steady flow of air through the boat and a cooling breeze across the deck. In the boatyard? Nothing! So after a month of it we were pretty well ready to get the hell out of there. Some vicious mosquitos too!

What really makes a place though is the people. Trinidadians are a lovely crowd and can not do enough to help you. They also like to party, and life is pretty good! After all they live in a beautiful place, and the oil industry has bought some prosperity to the country. Crime rates are still a problem though, although we never felt threatened during our time there. I guess though we really didn’t travel far and lived in a tight community of boatyard life and other cruisers

The cruisers put on some really nice events. Every Thursday night at the adjacent boat yard called Power Boats.

Every week we also went to a local outdoor restaurant place with lots of food stalls called the fish fry for some tasty food and a good chinwag with the other cruisers

We never got bored of watching these crazy guys romping around in the tree behind our boat!

Finally though the guys managed to finish the gears and after some mucking about, put the steering gearbox back together. I refitted it to the boat, tested the autopilot and everything worked as expected! It was time to depart!!!

I put together a video of the launch. We were both pretty nervous!

It felt pretty amazing to be back in the water again, and we were soon heading on our way out of the bay and out to open sea again with the long sail to Curacao ahead of us

That first couple of hours were amazing sailing. It was light seas, good winds, and Azimuth was leaping through the water with clean bottom! Even the autopilot sounded happy…. oh but wait a minute! Whats that grinding noise??? Oh no!! The autopilot decided to pack up!!!! Alarms went off … no rudder response. Now what?

Well, after playing around for a while, trying things out, I came to the conclusion that the motor that drives the autopilot (which has many gears inside it) must be the culprit. It couldn’t possibly be the gearbox that we had spent so much money fixing right?

What to do? It was getting dark, we were about 2 hours North of Trinidad. We both decided then that we couldn’t go back. For one it would be like admitting defeat, and for two if would be a bit embarrassing turning up again having been so happy about leaving. So, it meant that we had to hand steer all the way to Curacao, at this point about 450 miles away

The winds were very light or non existent after the first 24 hours, so we actually just stopped and had a rest for a few islands, drifting in the right direction towards curacao at about 1.5 knots on the equatorial current. There were some large squalls and thunderstorms around. After two days we were both in to the swing of it. The wind seemed to pick up at night and die in the day. The squalls were not too strong and so we had the full sails up. Unfortunately about 3 in the morning on the third night we were hit by a really nasty squall! it went from no wind to about 30 knots. All hell broke loose! I was asleep below and poor Ailsa had to shout and scream to wake me up. The rain was lashing down and we fought to get the sails under control for about 15 minutes. Unfortunately, in that time, we managed to do some damage to poor Azimuth! Mainsail ripped at the top, and one of the winches got stripped when the furling line became jammed, and someone (who remains nameless) carried on pressing the button!

The next day revealed the damage, but we still had a functioning genoa, and we managed to sail the rest of the trip with no incidents. it took 4 days and we arrived in Spanish Waters in Curacao, dropped the anchor and pretty much collapsed!!!

It all gets stored in the sailing experience file. I don’t think you ever stop learning. We will definitely pay closer attention to squalls in the future, and of course it was more difficult, because we were having to hand steer, and you could literally do nothing else, especially at night when the other person is asleep.

The night time was really quite special on that trip. The sea was lit up at times by the bioluminescence in the water. The wake went out behind the boat for many tens of metres as a green streak, and the crests of the waves were lit up. The stars were spectacular too, with the milky way plastered right across the sky, and I used the stars at night as a reference for easier navigation than using the instruments. I wish you could capture that on camera, but its only something that you can experience first hand, very cool.

Anyway, we made it to Curacao and motored in to the very protected anchorage called Spanish Waters. It is a huge shallow lagoon with a very narrow entrance to the sea. Lots of boats at anchor and a very vibrant cruiser community.

We anchored close to a boat called Sans Souci, Jessica and her young family were people we had met in Martinique. Jessica did a video about us and Azimuth on her YouTube channel called Boat Life. We stopped by to see them, and they very kindly filled us in on how to check in to the country, even giving us the bus fare we needed to get in to the local town Willemstad! We set off to town the next day and had the customs and immigration done in about an hour which gave us the chance to go and explore the town a little and first impressions very really good. Its like being in Amsterdam in the Caribbean! Willemstad is based around a channel that leads to the perfect enclosed harbour. The river splits the town in to two, one side is called Punda and the other is called Otrabanda, and the two sides are connected by a floating bridge across crystal clear azure water. When boats want to come in and out of the channel, the bridge disconnects it self from one bank and swings across floating on its pontoons. A very bizarre process that seems to work very well!

It was a lovely introduction, but we were still pretty exhausted so caught the bus back to the boat and went to bed early!

First order of business was getting any repairs underway. From experience we know that these things can take ages in the Caribbean, so the sooner things get started the better. I was kind of gutted really, we had spent a month in the boat yard in Trinidad getting Azimuth up to scratch and here I was looking at a long list of boat jobs! First thing was to get the main off. We found a sailmaker on the island who actually came to the dinghy dock to take it away to his workshop. Were still waiting on that one, but fingers crossed it can be mended. It is only torn at the seam, so should be fixable.

Then it was on to the autopilot. Firstly I took the motor off, dismantled it and fully tested it. It worked perfectly! Damn! Actually, not such a bad deal, because replacing that would have been very expensive. So now I am scratching my head, it cant be my brand new assembled gearbox??? I climbed back in to the hell hole under the cockpit floor and lo and behold, i discovered that the bolts that hold the sub gearbox between the main gearbox and the autopilot motor had somehow shaken loose. The whole thing was moving, and the gears were not meshing properly. Of course these particular bolts were not accessible without a complete gearbox strip down! So, back in to the heat, I got the whole assembly out. Dripping with sweat, and managed to strip it down, apply thread locker to the offending 4 bolts, reassemble with as much force as possible, reassemble and then shoehorn the whole thing back in to place in the hell hole. We need to do a sea trial to check it, but as of today the thing is fixed!

The last thing to sort was the winch. All we did in that case was swap the damaged bits for a winch that doesn’t get used that often. Hopefully we can source replacement parts at some point!

That was a few days of boat jobs then. Time to explore a little more. Right across from where we are anchored we found a really nice beach, a bar and an old fort to explore. The water here in curacao is about the clearest we have seen in the Caribbean.

Yep, that is a huge drill rig you can see in the photos. It is just parked in the bay right next to the fort, a real contrast of old and new. A reminder of all the oil activity in this area of South America

On another day we took the bus back to Willemstad to go and explore some more. This time we visited the old market which is now converted in to a food hall where we had a delicious lunch of local food. That afternoon we visited the slavery museum. Whilst obviously a tough subject, it was very well done and we both learnt alot about the history of slavery in Curacao and the surrounding islands.

There is a huge and vibrant artist quarter in Willemstad and all over the town there are public art works mixing with the vivid colours of the buildings. Very cool place to explore

Thats all for now. Join us next time as we go and explore some more of Curacao!

August 12, 2023September 3, 2023

Its HOT in the boatyard!

Last time we left you we were having fun with friends in the beautiful isle of Tobago. This time we sail to Trinidad and get the boat lifted out for some much needed TLC before heading further on our adventures. It has been over two years since we lifted Azimuth out of the water. Since that time, we have sailed over 10,000 miles in her. Six months in the Caribbean had been hard on the old girl. Most of the antifoul had come off from all the sailing we had done and Azimuth had her own reef ecosystem growing on the bottom complete with crabs and mussels. It was definitely time for a clean and also to fix some stuff, most importantly the steering / autopilot.

So after our fond farewell to the Thompsons at the airport in Tobago, we flagged down a taxi to Scarborough and went about trying to check out of Tobago and get permission to sail to Trinidad. We arrived at immigration at 11am that morning and we were told to come back at 2pm. Not a great start, so we went and did the customs checkout first and went looking for somewhere to get lunch and kill a few hours. Whilst we were wondering around the docks and the edge of the town, we bumped in to the woman who owns and runs the Wonky Windmill, the restaurant we had been in the night before with the Thompsons. She immediately recognised us, and to show just how friendly everyone is here when we told her we had a few hours to kill she insisted on driving us to the top of the hill so we could go and visit the fort! It was well worth the trip

After a pitstop for lunch at a local place that was recommended to us, we turned up back at immigration and several of the other cruisers from the anchorage were also there!

It was all sorted within an a hour or two and we headed back to the clubhouse for one last drink before departing for Trinidad early the next morning.

It was a glorious sail across. So much easier than getting from Grenada to Tobago. Now we were downwind and had the current behind us. We decided to anchor for one night on the North coast of Trinidad at Vache Bay, and had the whole place to ourselves. It was a steep sided bay with no access to land surrounded by rainforest. Unfortunately a rolly night, but very peaceful.

We got up early the next morning. There was no wind, so we had to motor round the corner to get to Chaguaramus to check in to Trinidad. It was a very beautiful and dramatic coastline along the North coast and through islands.

On arrival in Chaguaramus we dropped the anchor and headed to the customs and immigration. Another drama unfolded as we were told that Tobago had made a mistake and checked us entirely out of the country instead of doing the paperwork that transferred us to Trinidad! Come back next week we were told…. which we did, only to be told to go away and not bother them until we wanted to check out! Oh well, as long as we are not in the country illegally we said? The response as curt and so we left! Customs were all good though. Its amazing how the place seems to run ok with all the bureaucracy?!

Chaguaramus is a pretty port, but not the most inspiring anchorage to sit and wait for 3 days before we got lifted out of the water. So we headed a mile away back the way we had come to a very pretty anchorage called Scotland Bay

Expecting it to be a peaceful anchorage, we were surprised when the party boats turned up that weekend! It became the battle of the sound systems. Reggae blasting out and everyone having a good time. They all disappeared by midnight and then we were left with the sounds of the rainforest. A very beautiful place.

The day came for the lift out, and we headed back to Chaguaramus, all nervous about the next steps. We needn’t have worried. The Peakes Yard team were consummate professionals. They sent a diver down to position the straps under the boat. Azimuth was lifted out of the water in no time. The crane was huge so I didn’t have to remove any stays or equipment from the boat (a lot of hassle avoided!).

I got a well deserved ribbing about the state of the bottom! But 5 guys had the thing scraped off in no time and the high pressure washer had her very clean.

Then the guys transferred Azimuth to a special truck and drove her off to her new home in the yard. From water to new position in about two hours! No messing!

So now the fun really started …..!

Step 1: Fixing the Steering

First job was to check out the steering and get a fix started. That meant going down in to the hell hole that is the space underneath the cockpit floor. Have I told you how hot is was yet? With the gearbox removed without too much cursing and swearing, it didn’t look very good, and it was immediately obvious that the unit needed some serious TLC. A good job really that we had caught it now, because I don’t think it would have been very long until the whole thing fell to bits, and thankfully not whilst we were at sea! After a few days asking around, we managed to track down a local guy who had experience of fixing these very units. All the bearings in the unit would need to be replaced, and then as we got further in to it, it became clear that two of the cone gears that turn a 90 degree angle to where the autopilot is attached were beyond repair. This was the cause of the slipping and crunching sound when the autopilot was engaged, as well as all the play in the steering system.

We went round the houses trying to find some replacement gears on the internet, but nothing could be found. That in case then, the only option was to have a new set made by a local metal basher. Expensive!

The guys at the metal shop really knew their stuff. They even sent me a video of the process. Being the geek I am, I thought it looked like a cool process. Here it is for those of you interested!

Unfortunately, as good as these guys were, stuff doesn’t happen quick in Trinidad. In the end this was to be the major holdup for us here in Chaguaramus, but it had to be done, or Azimuth wasn’t going anywhere!

Step 2: Fixing Toilets!

Well doesn’t this sound like we are living the dream?! Talk to any serious sailing cruiser, and all of them have had the dreaded blocked toilet onboard. Everyone also has there own fix or solution! Azimuth has three “heads” and on arrival, only one of them was actually working any more. Time to get serious! Ailsa took it upon herself to dive head first in to fixing this whilst I got on with some of the other jobs on the boat.

Out with the old pipes andreplace with new

What a job. Basically all the toilet pipes needed replacing. Easy right? Sounds it until you find out where those pipes are routed, inside cupboards, behind wardrobes, buried deep in a rats nest of pipes and cables in the bilge. Oh and add in the 32 degree heat and 85% humidity inside the boat, and it all started to add up to a nightmare. We bought the entire stock of pipe from the local chandlery, all 47 feet of it! Turns out we had about 15 cms left over when the job was done. Very lucky or amazing measuring?

I will leave it up to your imagination as to the cause of pipe blockage… but it was not pleasant. The pipes calcifies up over the 26 years they had been installed and a 32mm pipe was down to about 3mm!

It took about a week in all, but they are all replaced, tested and no leaks!

Step 3: Bottom Painting

Definitely not my favourite job! Two days of sanding the horrible old stuff off the bottom. One day applying a coat of primer and then three days to paint the bottom with new antifoul, where you have to cover yourself up in one of those paper suits and goggles. The antifoul paint is evil stuff that you don’t want to get on your skin.

Step 4: Polishing the Hull

Another favourite! Whilst balancing on a bouncy plan on the top of two A-frames, apply a rubbing compound and use the polisher to take the top layer of oxidation off the gelcoat. Then apply liquid wax, allow to drive and polish with a cloth. 3 days to do Azimuths hull. I think I collapsed a couple of times from heat exhaustion and my arms felt like rubber every night!

Step 5: Sit and wait

Sit and wait for the parts to be made for the steering, see step 1! That’s pretty much where we are as of writing. I think we have been in the yard nearly 4 weeks now and both of us are distinctly looking forward to leaving!!!

While we sit and wait with have seen some interesting stuff though. Check these guys out that live in the trees at the back of the boat

Here’s the view from boat. They pack them in here! The sunsets aren’t too bad either.

We have met some lovely people whilst we have been here in Chaguaramus. There is a great cruiser community. Lots of stories to hear about everyone’s travels. Several of them seem to have been here far too long though?! Got to the yard and never left? We don’t intend to end up like one of those.

We even had one notable day out away from the boat yard when a fellow Brit, Susy offered to take us to the beach one day on the North side of Trinidad. It was a lovely day out and a very welcome change from yard life.

Join us next time when we fingers crossed manage to leave the yard, get the boat back in the water and sail off to the Dutch Caribbean, ABC islands

July 22, 2023July 22, 2023

Old friends and new in Tobago

Last time we left you we were still in Grenada. This time we will regale you with our recent adventures in Tobago. We are a little behind at the moment, so please bear with us. I am writing this sat in Azimuth on the hard in a boat yard in Trinidad. Its been a crazy and enjoyable few weeks. Let me tell you more…

Our good friends Sally and Andrew and their daughter Erin had made a brave choice…. to join us on Azimuth for two weeks on the paradise isle of Tobago!

We were very excited to be leaving Grenada and heading for Tobago to meet our friends! Being only a short walk from a marina where the guide book told us there was a customs and immigration office, checking out of Grenada should have been simple right? Further investigation revealed that infact that office no longer existed. So a new bus route had to be negotiated to get us to the marina in St Georges. I think we must be getting better at finding our way around. It was an easy trip and no problem checking out of the country.

The trip to Tobago looked a bit more tricky. Having got thoroughly used to sailing on a beam or broad reach for the last 6 months, now we were faced with a tricky upwind 70 mile sail. We left that evening and things got progressively harder. As well as the tight wind angle, there was also a strong current against us, the so called equatorial current that flows around the top of South America through the gap between Trinidad and Grenada with Tobago slap in the middle. The winds were light and the sea state was calm for the Atlantic, and it was a lovely sail. Sunrise bought us in sight of Tobago in the distance, and a negotiation with the Trinidad coastguard allowed us to drop anchor in Store Bay on the South West corner of the island. We were one of only 4 boats in the anchorage, a rare feeling in the Caribbean where most anchorages are rammed full of boats.

The rules about checking into Tobago seemed to be quite complicated and arcane in comparison to the rest of the Caribbean. Firstly we had the phone the medical officer. He told us to wait on the boat until he arrived and issued us with a medical certificate? It took about 2 hours for him to get there and then he told us to come to shore. He didn’t ask us any questions, just issued a certificate on the beach?! I don’t think we have ever started a checking in process to anywhere on the beach?! Then he gave us loads of help on where to get money and how to get a taxi from Store Bay to Scarborough to get to Immigration and Customs, who he informed us were waiting for us. The 20 minute taxi ride cost £2 for both of us! The way it works is that everyone shares taxis and they go on set routes. A very easy and sensible system.

On arrival at immigration, the number of forms was bewildering. All filled in in triplicate with the old style carbon paper. I had to find a local photocopier to make multiple copies of boat papers and passports too. However, the people were very friendly, and we got through the process in a couple of hours.

So we had a week to wait before the Thompsons were due to arrive and we decided to get to know the lay of the land. The great joy of that week was meeting all the cruisers anchored in Store Bay. We had a truly international bunch. Tom, Kate and their son Marley from Australia. Gustavo and Danielle from Switzerland, Mark and Susan from USA and Pascal and Veronique from France. What a lovely bunch of people all sharing the same sailing life as us. We were the newbies on the block having only been at sea for a year!

Tobago is a relatively hard place to get to from a sailing point of view. And people are also put off by the reputation of the difficulty of checking in, as well as a history of piracy in these waters. That meant we were only one of about 6 cruising boats on the whole island. So different to other parts of the Caribbean, and we really felt like we had the place to ourselves.

The local beach bar was right next to the anchorage and this became the “clubhouse” for the cruisers! We got to meet everyone in there for a few beers regularly. This is where we found out about “Sunday School”, a local tradition held every Sunday night where we could experience a proper Caribbean party. So a plan was hatched. Some of us sailed up the coast to Irvine Bay, whilst others opted for the taxi route. it turned out to be a relatively small affair but great fun none the less. A huge PA system was blasting out reggae tunes. Many people were competing to see who could smoke the largest joints. There was a distinct smell in the air. Later in the evening the local Steel Band struck up a tune. They were really good. Here’s a little taster…

So we had a couple of days in Irvine Bay and then headed back to Store Bay for the arrival of Sally, Andrew and Erin.

The guys had there own ordeal to deal with first of course, the travel from the UK, a night in a hotel in Port of Spain and then negotiating the ferry to Tobago. What could possibly go wrong??

Well there had been an issue with booking the ferry. It turned out that the weekend they were arriving in Trinidad was the end of the school year. Apparently its tradition in Trinidad for all the new school graduates to head to Tobago with their families and party. Everyone was trying to get to Tobago from Trinidad!

So the poor old Thompsons had to queue on standby to try an secure their seat on the ferry for three hours. Bless them though they managed to get on, and in premier class too. Phew. No sooner has the ferry left than the dreaded sea sickness kicked in …. The poor guys renamed the fast ferry the “vomitarium”. Three hours of hell apparently! However, they made it and negotiated the taxis in Scarborough and we met for a great reunion in Store Bay. Well done guys for the supreme effort!

No sooner had the Thompsons found the sanity of land and started to recover from the ferry ride, than we whisked them off to Azimuth in the dinghy and got them settled in. Unfortunately it was a bit rolly, and this did not help the sea sickness recovery process. It took them 24 hours to acclimatise, but hopefully they weren’t ready to jump ship at this point and check in to the nearest hotel, thinking what have we done???

Actually the next few days were very relaxing. Life consisted of lots of swimming off the back of the boat. Cursing at the jet skis as they used the anchored boats as a slalom course. Giving in to the heat of the afternoon with a tactical siesta and several trips to shore to sample the delights of Store Bay restaurants and the clubhouse.

A few days of relaxing as hard as possible had the trick and hopefully everyone settled in OK, despite the challenges of living in a confined space aboard a yacht.

We had Mark and Susan from the USA in the anchorage. They very kindly invited us all to celebrate the 4th of July with a BBQ on the beach. Bring your own potluck food and drinks.

What a great afternoon. Mark cooked up a feast of chicken and we all enjoyed the ambience of the beach.

Some of the guys bought along a couple of sets of the French game Boule. Later that afternoon, Pascal gathered up willing players and adjudicated over the game. Easier said than done given that a few of us had maybe had one or two beers. It was great fun. Apparently we were in two teams, but I don’t think many of us actually knew which team we were in?! It didn’t seem to matter. Eventually the teams were properly identified… of course it had to be Trinidad versus Tobago. The competition was fierce, but Trinidad took an early lead and Tobago just couldn’t make up the difference.

Thanks to Mark and Susan for putting this together. We all had a great time!

So, we wanted to take the Thompsons for a sail up the coast to show them a little of the island. But before we did this, it was time to first see Buccoo Reef and the Nylon Pool and for Erin to have a try at diving.

The Nylon Pool was pretty cool. Essentially it is like a swimming pool in the sea with an amazing aquamarine colour. Buccoo reef is huge and very shallow across much of the area, so we took the dinghy along the Tom, Kate and Marley to go and visit it. I took a short video on the GoPro

Our visit to the Nylon Pool

It was to be a day of watersports. After we got back from the visit to the Nylon Pool, many of the guys decided to go and dive on the reef in Store Bay. Tom is a dive master and he offered to take Erin for a dive too. The rest us non divers went for a snorkel which was pretty good, although the visibility was not the best.

So the next day we weighed anchor and set sail up the west coast of Tobago. The wind was a little tricky so after about 2 hours of beating upwind we relented and pulled in at Plymouth Bay and dropped the anchor off a huge sweeping beach

The next day we took a visit in to the town. This was very different in comparison to Store Bay, a more traditional Caribbean town free from the trappings of organised tourism. We visited James Fort, built by the English to protect the bay (probably from the French). We then found a great little shop serving up a delicious lunch and sat looking out over the bay.

After Plymouth we moved Azimuth down to Irvine Bay where we had been before and there is a really cool beach bar. More chilling for a few days here. We had a great night out at a local restaurant called “The Fish Pot”. The meal was delicious and the rum punch was flowing freely.

We had one or two evenings in the beach bar where things may have got a little silly at times? Good cheap food was served too, cause by now we couldn’t be bothered to cook on the boat!

Whilst in Irvine Bay, we managed to get some details about a rain forest guide called Peter, a renowned botanist who took people on rainforest tours. We managed to arrange a tour for the next day. Peter insisted on a 6:30am start! That hurt … but we managed to assemble on the shore in time, and Peter picked us all up. It was a very memorable day and Peter was an excellent guide , hugely knowledgeable, and really lovely with it. Peter could whistle bird song of many of the forest birds and they would reply. He could also spot lots of different kinds of wildlife that we would have just missed if we were on our own.

On the trip to the rainforest we stopped at several beautiful bays on the way. All of them anchorages, shame we didn’t have the time to visit

The start of the trail. Hanging birds nests

The trail is called the Gilpin Trace. A Gilpin is an old Carib Indian word for a Machete. It was the Indians who originally cut the trail as a route across the island.

Peter caught this evil looking whip scorpion to show us. No one wanted to get too close!

Peter also found and opened a trapdoor spiders lair. He couldn’t get the spider to come out though. Perhaps for the best as I would have run a mile!

Here is a video I put together with some clips from the forest. Listen to the sounds in the background. It really was a magical place, and felt very prehistoric. I expected a dinosaur to appear on the trail at any moment.

Clips from our visit to the rainforest

Back out of the forest at the end of the walk

What an amazing day. For me probably the highlight of our visit to Tobago.

Irvine Bay also had a really pretty reef that you snorkel to from the anchorage or by swimming off the beach. I put this video together. Look out for an eel sticking its head out of a hole in the coral, spotted by Sally. Erin got the best footage as she followed a shoal of fish as they swam around the reef.

All good things come to an end, and eventually it was time for us to head back to Store Bay and deliver the Thompsons to the airport. They had very sensibly decided to avoid the ferry journey back to Trinidad and opted for easier plane trip! As it happen the airport was only 5 minutes walk from the anchorage, easy!

Time for one last evening out and a meal at the Wonky Windmill. A few drinks at the clubhouse too

It was with a tear in the eye that we delivered the Thompsons to the airport the next day. Thankyou guys for coming to see us and making the huge effort to get to Tobago. We had a ball and we hope you enjoyed it too!

Join us next time as we head to Trinidad and get hauled out of the water in Chaguaramus for the dreaded boat work!