wingssail images-fredrick roswold Charlotteville Pirogue Festival. Chris (left) from Shady Lady,and Liz, join Judy at the festival.
“The rainy season in Charlotteville extends past Christmas,” said Clarence Thomas, by way of explaining why he opposed the November Pirogue Festival date, “I suggested it should be in July.”
“You see, the merchants here depend on this festival to make some money, and if it gets rained out, they don’t make anything. It should be held in July. It never rains in July in Charlotteville.”
But Clarence Thomas, who runs Tanty’s Restaurant and Bar here where we can get ice cold Stag beers and watch CNN, is an outsider in Charlotteville; he’s only been here a few years, and outsiders are not held in high regard in Charlotteville. So his advice was discarded, even though, year after year, to hear him tell it, the Charlotteville Pirogue Festival gets rained out in November.
Sunday, November 25, was the date of this year’s Charlotteville Pirogue Festival. It rained Friday, November 23. It rained Saturday November 24. And it rained Sunday morning, November 25, but by the afternoon it was clear, so this year’s Charlotteville Pirogue Festival wasn’t exactly rained out. It was just a little soggy. We went. We had fun. We got a little wet, but not bad. The rum merchants, and a couple of restaurant owners, got some of our money but we have no way of knowing if the festival met their expectations. Being outsiders ourselves we weren’t exactly in the inner circle here in Charlotteville.
Nobody shared their business results with us.
But we stayed ‘till dark, watched the Pirogue race (Pirogues are small fishing boats with big outboard motors, not meat pies) drank some rum, got our ears blown out by the biggest sound system I have ever seen or heard, bar none, and generally had a good time.
The music went on all night, we could hear it, but by Monday morning all was quiet and the whole town was dead, not a living soul to be seen. Assumedly they were all inside somewhere counting their receipts.
We like Charlotteville. It is a scenic little town nestled in the valley at the head of Man of War Bay, on the north end of Tobago Island, surrounded by mountains and it is blessed with an abundance of water.
Sunshine, on the other hand, is parceled out sparingly. Our water tanks are full but our solar panels are getting a vacation.
Still, we love it here. The town is nice, the bay protected, and the bus ride to Scarborough, where the nearest supermarket is to be found, is stunning. We took that bus once, (twice, if you count the return trip). The road is narrow and twisting, and the drivers go pretty fast. We were lucky; we only had four close calls and one minor crash. Now we know why some sailors here sail the twenty-five miles rather than chance that bus ride.
Charlotteville is also an out-of-the-way gathering point for international yachts and we’ve met some old friends here: Shady Lady, from Langkawi, whom we last met in Africa, Top to Top and Artic, both we know from St. Helena, and a few other boats. It is an insider’s stop on the ‘round the world circuit.
But our stay here in Charlotteville is coming to an end. We’ve enjoyed it but we’ve got places to go, people to see. And I need a new phone; somehow mine got wet and is ruined. Tomorrow we will set sail for Grenada.
We had a plan to leave Crews Inn Marina in Trinidad Wednesday at 13:00, motor to Scotland Bay, anchor there and relax for a few hours before setting out into the Atlantic just before nightfall.
The reality was that after the trials of getting out of Chaguarmas and then having boat problems on the way to Scotland Bay (easily fixed, but still…) when it came time to up the anchor again neither Judy or I had much enthusiasm for the idea. All we wanted to do was take a nap.
So we stayed. That was Wednesday.
It rained for two days; rained hard. We filled the water tanks and did a lot of sleeping but by Friday we were ready go, rain or not, and so late Friday afternoon we weighed the anchor and motored out of the Boca into the Atlantic Ocean, looking for some wind and looking for that next paradise.
Sunrise found us beating towards the Island of Tobago and by mid-morning we fetched up in Store Bay, Tobago.
Then we had customs and immigration to deal with.
It seems that when you clear out for Grenada you’re supposed to show up in Grenada, not back in Trinidad and Tobago, which in fact, is one country. We spent the better part of Saturday trekking back and forth between official’s offices before getting all the proper stamps and documents. But we did it and so we were made legal.
Store Bay was alright, we stayed for a few days, it rained a bit, and then we thought we’d mosey on up the coast to Charlotteville and see the sights along the way.
The first stop was Mt. Irvine Bay and that was OK too; it rained some more and we filled the tanks again, met a few nice folks anchored there and watched the surfers, but the next two stops were impossible. Both Castera Bay and Parlatuvre were rough and crowded with fishing boats. Parlatuvre in fact was so small it would have been downright dangerous to stay there with only about 100 feet of broiling water between us and the rocks behind us after anchoring clear of the fishing boats. We could not stay.
The only thing to do was to head onward to Charlotteville and hope we got there before dark and hope it was a good spot.
It turned out to be a nice sail, even if it was a twenty mile beat for the day; we had steady winds and a long blue swell and we made good time to weather. We dropped the hook in a very nice place called Pirates Bay just around the corner from the bustling village of Charlotteville, Tobago. Here we might stay for a while; it is quiet and scenic.
Our Trinidad and Tobago visa was up today and they didn’t really want to extend it, so we checked out. We had to. We're ready to go anyhow, we've been here long enough.
So we are now legally out of Trinidad, however, we did not leave.
They gave us 24 hours to depart so instead of leaving we went from the official’s offices back to the boat and turned on the TV. We’re staying long enough to watch the election results.
But tomorrow, regardless of the election results, we will set sail from Trinidad. The destination is Grenada, but we’re open.
I fell in love with this place the first time I saw it, coming in through the Boca on that morning in May with the soaring birds overhead and a new country on our horizon; there it was off to the left, a small bay, surrounded by mountains and green trees and shimmering blue waters and a few anchored sailboats, passing by us without fanfare, not mentioned in the guide books. But it captured me; it looked stunning on that morning back then on our arrival to Trinidad, and it still does.
So we came again to Scotland Bay now, in October, when the moon is full and the season beginning to turn and we dropped the hook and it is a magical place with mountains on three sides, four if you count the dog leg on the way in, and no houses, just birds circling and fishes surfacing with a gentle swish. It is Nature.
There are three or four boats sharing Scotland Bay with us, a German boat way back at the head of the bay, keeping to themselves, and a Santa Cruise 70 called Hotel California, anchored near us; the captain, Steve, is painting the deck. Off the point an Alajuela from Portland is swinging quietly and in the mouth there is a converted minesweeper with a Dutch family aboard.
I think for a moment that this crowd here is not your normal Caribbean anchorage crowd but maybe it is: international, varied, everyone here for their own reasons, intentionally away from the normal Caribbean social scene. Maybe those of us who cherish and seek quiet places like Scotland Bay are as much a part of the scene as the crowds in places like Chaguaramas and Prickly Bay.
Scotland Bay itself is a good anchorage, almost bullet proof, or so it seems today in a Northerly. Maybe in a hurricane wind from the south it would be untenable, I don’t know but now however, while the trade winds are blowing, it seems perfect.
We came for the clean water, to commission the water maker, and to get some peace and quiet after the hustle and bustle of Chag Bay.
Tonight we sat outside after dinner and listened to music on the outside speakers and watched the moon come up over the mountains to the east of us, Harrison Mountain the chart says.
Then came on a song from the past, from our hearts, clear and pure; Pokarekare Ana by Hayley Westerna, the Mauri song from New Zealand, and we cried. It surprised us and hit our emotions. The song matches Scotland Bay.
Life is just too good.
Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Trinidad
Click here for more photos of Judy and of Wings in Scotland Bay.
Click here for other recent photos from Chaguaramas Bay.
Here is Hayley's song:
Click here to read another story about a magical place: Tanjung Ruh
Taking a break from boat projects and going sailing last Sunday seemed like a good idea.
The “Fun Race” scheduled for that day, which consisted of a noon start and three laps around an island, held little appeal for us. Instead we waited until late afternoon and then, when the day had cooled off a little, and went out for a nice sunset sail with a bunch of friends on board. Anchoring afterwards in Scotland Bay we watched the full moon rise and cooked burgers and boerewors on the grill. We didn’t stay out late however; by 21:00 everyone was ready to motor back to their own boats get tucked into their own snug bunks.
This week we completed our canvas project by sewing the new dodger, a large awning and rain catcher, and a small sailing awning. With this we have reached the bottom of a long list of significant refit projects which started in Thailand three years ago and against which we have been steadily chipping as we worked our way around the world from Asia to the Caribbean.
We’ve now completed exterior refinish including new Awlgrip topsides, deck paint, hatches, repainting and rebuilding of all the spars, and of course finished the canvas. We’ve redone the interior including new upholstery, cabin sole refinish, bulkhead painting and total re-varnishing. We completed major structure renewals including rudder, rudder tube, stern tube, keel bolts, mast step, and chain plates. We’ve done major engine work, replaced the dingy, life raft, solar panels, autopilot, and rebuilt the windvane. We’ve rebuilt much of the sailing instrumentation and wiring, bought new computers and navigation computers, installed AIS, bought batteries, alternator, radio and tuner, inverter/charger, watermaker membrane, hot water heater, and propane system, and purchased LED interior and exterior lighting. We completed a stove rebuild (twice), installed new fixtures, and bought new running rigging and sails.
And we’ve sailed 15,000 miles. We’ve done a refit on the go; so to speak.
Of course the boat list never ends, new items are constantly being added, so we’ll be able to keep busy. But perhaps, for the next year or so, we can focus on the small items which come up from time to time, before going back to the beginning of the major project list and starting over.
So now the days take on a familiar cadence. We swim in the mornings for exercise, find some way to be productive on the boat, interact with the other cruisers here in Trinidad, and we think about our next move. In November we will head out to explore the rest of the Caribbean. We don’t know exactly where we’ll go nor what we will have to fix along the way, but we’ll find interesting new places to explore and, for sure, we’ll be fixing something.
That part never ends.
Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Trinidad
Click here for more photos of the sunset sailing trip.
Sitting in the Barracuda Bar, looking over the rim of my rum glass, I read the name on the transom of a large yacht across the way: Stormvogel.
Can it be THE Stormvogel, the famous 74’ ketch from the 60’s, now turned up here in Trinidad?
It was and it is.
I rowed over and admired the classic 74ft racer. Its sweeping lines and shining varnish were as gorgeous now as they must have been when it was built in South Africa over 50 years ago.
Ian Hulleman, the Kiwi boat builder who captains Stormvogel and supervises maintenance and rebuilding of the yacht, invited me aboard and we sat on deck and talked about the vessel and its history.
A collaboration by Cornelius Bruynzeel of Bruynzeel Plywood, E. G. Van de Stadt, Laurent Giles and John Illingworth, Stormvogel was built of plywood in Brunzeel’s factory in Stellenbosh, outside of Cape Town in 1961. It was an experimental, ultra-light (for its time), design with fin keel, spade rudder, and a tall (the tallest at the time) aluminum mast, built for speed and ultimate ocean racing. Stormvogel’s first passage was a fast 7500 mile delivery to England to sail in the 1961 Fastnet Race in which it took line honors. That started a life of ocean racing and record breaking for the yacht. Brunzeel and his crew then began sailing the world looking for challenges. They won Buenos Aires-Rio (1962), Sydney-Hobart (1965), China Sea (1966), Transpac (1967) and Middle Sea (1968 & 69). The boat has continued to be successful under various owners over the years. Now owned by John Cummings, the boat was owned and raced by Italian Ermanno Traverso for 25 years. It was in Phuket for eight years, and crossed paths with Wings there.
While crew Ben (another New Zealander) sanded teak, Ian and a friend removed the huge mainsail in preparation to a haulout, “the first in four years,” he said, “But the boat is now in its best condition for many years, it is still sound and still fast.”
“We can push this boat without problem and it can beat the new yachts.”
“Forty years after its first Middle Sea Race we returned there in 2008 and finished second. The wind blew in the mid-thirties and we beat the TP52’s.”
“Coming across the Atlantic this year we sailed over 270 miles a day for three days; the boat is fast.”
“In 2012 we won the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta.”, he said.
Clearly Ian Hulleman is proud of this vessel, and as I admire it sitting serenely at the dock in Trinidad, I can see why he does.
I ran my hand along Stromvogel’s varnished cap rail and I daydreamed about what it must have been like to charge home first on this boat back in the 60’s. For years this boat was dominant. I think about these past glories and I know that, for this powerful racer, there are more to come. And I love it when these classics show up somewhere unexpected, still impressive and beautiful, in some corner of the world where we happen to be.
It’s pouring down rain and I’m supposed to be outside painting the deck.
No such luck.
And because the dodger is off (preparations to paint, of course) and because our old awning has leaks, water is dripping in the hatch.
I could stop the dripping water if I turned off the air conditioner and completely closed the hatch, but a little water is better than no air cond.
So I wait.
We started the painting project a week ago and this is the first serious rain we’ve had. We’re nearly finished and we’re pretty happy; the deck is mostly done, two coats, non-skid which came out OK, the cockpits, fore and aft, are all finished, I've been taking the masking off, and it looks pretty good.
The new color “Winter Frost” (plain white, more or less) is bright. It might be a little tough on the eyes on a sunny day but it is cooler; much cooler. On a hot day you can walk on it. Inside the boat there is less heat radiating from the overhead. The white paint just reflects most of the heat. This will be better.
Now if I can just complete the one small remaining area we can put away the paint pots and masking tape.
Last week, when we had days of blue skies and hot sun, we watched the Black Vultures and Frigate Birds riding thermals high into the sky and soaring for hours. On the morning of our first arrival in Trinidad we were amazed to see dozens of these birds climbing skyward on the updrafts. We thought it was a one-time only event. Since then we have watched them nearly every day.
I am not sure why they do it, but it looks like fun.
Another project we completed this week is new upholstery. It took a while to find a fabric we liked but the old stuff was getting thin, too thin to even patch anymore, and that added urgency to the task. We finally found some we liked and a local guy named Carlos completed the job. It still needs a little adjustment here and there, but mostly we like it. One bonus is that the bed is flat and firm again which helps our backs.
So life goes on in Trinidad: we do boat projects, we go swimming in the morning, there’s bird watching, and we plan our next cruise. We’ve got a little over a month left in Trinidad and we have one more big project, new canvas, which will be a week or so of sewing Sunbrella, then, in early November, we’ll set sail, bound for another port, to start it all over again.
Each morning at seven, as the sun rises into the eastern sky and begins to heat the land, we go to the boat to work. Today Judy stays behind to wash up and I leave the hotel room and walk down the stairs. There is a railing and I swing over it and my feet land on the dirt road which leads through the yard toward Wings.
The sun hits me in the face; the sky is deep blue and the air is still. Later a breeze will come and maybe a rain shower will cool us but at this hour it is hot.
A car speeds by on the highway outside.
I walk down the road, silent boats on stands to my left and to my right. I see no one around any of them yet.
Dust rises from my feet. Some birds are circling, looking for the day’s thermals to start.
As I turn the corner I see at Wings ahead of me, growing closer. It is beautiful to my eye; I love this boat.
Here there is some activity. Someone is moving below the bridge deck of the catamaran, a piece of wood clatters, a coffee cup clinks; a soft voice calls out to another. Not me.
Near the black sloop a man is dragging a stand towards the hull.
If I had a cup I would sip some coffee and gaze at the work ahead of me today, but I don’t.
So I simply gather my tools, and with a small sigh, I start my job.
It’s time for the annual haul out, a hard and dirty job but a fact of life for sailboat owners.
We’ve done it every year for 26 years.
With a few exceptions we’ve always done the whole thing ourselves, sanding the bottom, doing keel repairs if needed (more about that later) masking, and painting, but now we hire some local guys to give us a hand and they do the hard stuff. I guess you could say we have decided that our creaky old bodies are finished with sanding and painting.
But we still do any repairs which are needed, and some usually are, and we always wind up pitching in with the dirty work, so at the day’s end, when we shuffle back to the hotel for a cold beer and a shower, we are ready for a rest.
This time there is little repair work to do. As usual the keel needs some fixing for minor damage which occurred this time when we motored through the mud in San Luis, and there is some fairing which was not really finished last time we hauled in Mauritius. Plus there are a few blisters to pop and fill. But not too much, and we can finish it in three days and relaunch on the forth. While we are at it we can even sand the deck so we can paint that later, back at the dock at Crew’s Inn Marina.
So it is a pretty short haul-out, which amazes most of the other boat owners. Here in Trinidad most boats are in the yard for a big job: they stay out of the water for months.
Then there was the slap of lines like fat snakes landing on the concrete and we started to back out. It was satisfying for me, after a month sitting in the marina berth, to get out of the slip, even if it was only for a motor trip to the Boca to watch a powerboat race; just to do something, anything.
Ten people had showed to go at six-forty-five so I guess it was a big deal for them, or maybe they were just like me, looking for something interesting to do on a Saturday morning in Trinidad or maybe they simply enjoyed the opportunity for another social interaction with other cruisers. Judy served coffee and tea and muffins and the scones someone brought and when we got to the Boca looking for a good viewing spot there was already a few dozen other spectator boats, so maybe it was a big deal after all. I dunno.
A guy named Gary came with us and I never met him before but he was a Kiwi and he seemed like he knew what he was doing so I gave him the helm to hold station among the pirogues and sport fishermen and I told him not to hit anyone when I went forward with Thorsten to shoot the racers when they came through the gap, if they ever did, and he didn’t hit anyone but we had to wait for half an hour. No problem.
Then a skipping dot leading a white roster tail appeared on the horizon and it turned into an orange and red missile with three big outboards and three men in red crash helmets and it sped through the cut alone and was gone.
We shot a few frames and wondered if that was it, where were the rest of them and mainly where were the big boys whose motors we’d heard snorting in the boatyard all week? Shouldn’t they be first?
Thorsten said there was two starts, and the big boats came soon enough; big cats with closed cockpits and snarling engines, and with photo helicopters swarming overhead, looking like they were loafing even though they were going a hundred and thirty. I missed them; looking through the viewfinder of a Nikon you don’t really see much.
When they were all gone on their way to Tobago someone joked that we should follow them to shoot the finish, Ha Ha!
Instead we went for a lazy sail on the Gulf of Paria. Gary and I checked out the Kevlar genoa which I had just got back from the loft while Chris steered and the rest finished off the scones.
This is not the first time I’ve operated on one of these but the last one died of complications brought on by a careless hand. I confess, I crossed two pins and in an instant the life went out of it.
Before that I put one down, out of selfishness; it had a flaw, I wanted perfect. I thought we deserved better. It died of a broken heart, maybe. Anyhow, it too is dead.
So I was callous before, then careless.
Now I have another chance; this one came from California via Florida, used and somewhat neglected, from the garage of a boat owner long since boatless, but alive, he said. I tracked it down on the Internet and had it sent.
It arrived DOA, shipping is cruel, but machines can sometimes be saved, and for awhile it hung by a thread on my bench, wires connecting it to life support, it’s shutters clicking clicking like a heart beating, sixty a minute, music to my ears, and my surgeon’s hand working inside its chest.
To make it strong once again.
Solder here, a scalpel there, and forceps or pliers if needed, a screw driver, inserted with care.
Then we close, and watch the patient.
Thirty years ago, this 20/20, was born of B&G, and yet it still lives.
We spend a lot of time on boat repair, working on Wings, maintaining, fixing. The B&G instruments get a lot of that attention mainly because they are 30 years old and, frankly, electronics that old tend to break down a lot. But when we sail we sail by the numbers and always have, and new systems are really expensive, so when the B&G system goes down we try to fix it.
But this isn’t always easy; parts and service is hard to find. Out of necessity I have collected a lot of spare parts myself and have often been “under the covers” on these instruments, repairing them, or trying, myself.
This particular instrument, the 20/20, which is on the mast, is pretty touchy, and since we replaced the insides in Africa in 2011, due to some limited functionality, it has been off and on, literally. This month I got another used one from a boat owner in California, who no longer needed it, but it didn’t work.
So for a couple of days I had this unit apart on my workbench, with wires strung around to supply power and data, and finally, by trial and error, got it working.
Well fun if you ignore sweating hours spent crammed in the forepeak taking out bolts, then putting them all back in.
If you ignore sitting in the dingy with an angle grinder cutting off bolts which could not be otherwise removed.
And if you ignore clothes-drenching rainstorms which seemed to hit just as we got all set up outside to do the next step, whatever that was going to be.
You see, we figured that after the backstay broke the forestay was next, or at least the forestay stem fitting
.
So we pulled it out; over the course of four days.
We fixed the backstay and had a couple more races. We had fun but didn’t win and we didn’t break anything else (lucky us). But now racing season is over and maybe it’s time to get off the boat and see a little of Trinidad.
Organized tours aren’t usually our thing but Jesse James, who runs the local taxi and tour company, makes it so easy we decided to take a few.
Sometimes you dodge a bullet and don’t even know it happened.
Then, on reflection, you remember a whirring sound of something going past your ear and you realize you were just lucky, very, very lucky.
On the second beat Sunday there was a huge bang and the boat shook like we got hit by a truck. The sound came from aloft.
I looked up to see if the rig was coming down and instead saw the Windex heading towards a meeting with Neptune, falling from the top of the mast. I knew that was related to the sound, but it hadn’t caused it. As my eyes turned toward the masthead it flashed through my mind, “This is weird; what causes the Windex to break off?” I half expected the top of the mast to be hanging broken and I was wondering if I’d see the whole rig slowly beginning to fold.
But it wasn’t.
The mast was standing, the sails were OK, no wires were hanging loose. Yet something happened, what?
Then we saw the backstay chainplate. It was broken at deck level and the mast was being held only by the safety wires I’d installed several years back. They worked. The chainplate broke, that was the bang we heard, and the mast jerked forward, but the safety lines stopped it and took up the load. The shock at the top of the mast must have been violent. It slowly sunk in how close we’d come to losing the mast. That was lucky. Needless to say, we were shaken.
We took down the sails and motored home.
Before that we’d already been having a tough race. We missed a shift at the top mark and should have set the kite on the other jibe, but didn’t, which put us behind. Then the wind gusted strongly on the run turning it into a reach then we had trouble getting the jib up and we had a couple of big wild roundups trying to get to the bottom mark. The takedown was a shambles, the kite was completely in the water, a couple of crew got rope burns and we were definitely behind the curve. Two minutes later we broke the backstay.
But it was OK; maybe we scored a “Did Not Finish” but at least we lived to fight another day.
We motored around the point from Chaguaramas to find a solid wind blowing. It was dark blue water and whitecaps and my pulse quickened a bit more when I glanced at the instruments; sixteen knots and building. That was Number-Three weather and if it built much more the spinnaker was going to be a question mark. Judy had already noticed it and I know she was thinking the same thing. I called for the Three and I started having butterflies in my stomach.
Maybe it was the fully crewed race boats circling around us or maybe it was just the clock ticking down to the start in this stiff breeze that was making me nervous but it’s been a few years since I felt butterflies like this. I shook it off and turned my attention to getting sails up and the crew focused on the start. At ten minutes to go I felt a calmness come over me and the nervousness went away. We went through the pre-start without a problem; I jibed away from the line then back at it then tacked below the committee boat and nobody else was near. We were at speed and on time and we sheeted in and settled in for the long beat.
Now this was great sailing: tacking upwind in 17 knots of wind in flat water with the sails sheeted hard and all the crew on the rail. A nice lift got us to the top mark top mark first while the competition fell away to leeward. A jibe set, the chute filling with a bang and we had over eight knots of boat speed. It was great, there was water and mountains around and our class was all behind us. It went this way for the next three legs. It was our race. We saved our time and won the class.
Not that we didn’t have some problems. The spinnaker work was still a little sloppy, we need to improve that and we will, but keeping a good crew is going to be hard with most of the people we know here in Trinidad being cruisers who leave town as soon as they get their own boats put away for the season, so we will be training new people every week. However Andrew says he and Susan will be here for the rest of the season, Liam too, and I’ve got a couple of local guys who aren’t going anywhere. So we are building.
Then there is the competition.
We’ve been in Racer/Cruiser class but I guess we’ll go into Racing class next week. Last night Norman, the owner of CMOS, the good looking and fast Soverel 43, shook my hand to congratulate us for our win and asked when we were coming into his class. I looked at the scoring sheet. His time was better than ours but I told him we’d be there on the 17th. How we’ll beat him, I don’t know, but we’ll try. That will push up the pressure.
Next Sunday the jib blew up.
I was steering when it happened; on the last beat. Everyone else was on the high side.
There was some kind of sound, then the jib leech was fluttering.
Didn’t sound right.
“Take a look at that jib, will you Judy? See if it tore.”
She jumped down to the low side and looked up.
“Yes, it’s torn!”
“How Bad?”
“From luff to leech!”
“Damn.”
We sailed a few more minutes. The leech line was holding it. Then it got slack. The fluttering sail was shaking the rig. I could see a bit of sky at the luff where there should be sail, high aloft, and all the way to the head-stay.
“Take it down Andrew. Susan, please drop that halyard. Judy, steer for a minute, will you?”
They all got to work.
I leapt below and grabbed the #4 and threw it out the hatch. We had it up immediately and finished under that sail.
Now I have a job to get done.
But this is what we are doing now and we’ve been here before. We do boat projects during the week and go racing on the weekend. We get lots of sun and wind and a little exercise and we get home almost too tired to put the boat away, but we do it, and we’ll just have to keep on getting those projects done before the next weekend, and we’ll just have to keep fighting off the butterflies on the start line.
The local club, Trinidad & Tobago Sailing Association, has a pretty active racing program and we decided to give it a try.
With pick-up crew (quite good, actually) and basically no other preparation whatsoever, we went out for a Saturday race in the Racer/Cruiser Class. It was a nice day, there was a good breeze, the race was in a great sailing area, and the committee gave us an interesting course (one mark was a wrecked ship). So when we got a good start, (not too aggressive), and were soon catching up on the racing class boats, we were feeling pretty good.
But the start was an hour later than we thought it was going to be, the race, at 17 miles, was going to take all afternoon, and two of our crew, Andrew and Susan, had appointments in the afternoon. We had to withdraw in order to get them back in time.
No problem. We called the race committee, told them we had to quit, and we turned down wind, set the kite, and got them back in time to catch the bus.
The people of Trinidad & Tobago have been making music with whatever they could get their hands on for a couple hundred years, maybe longer. They used bamboo poles, gin bottles, brake drums, and anything else which would make a sound. By the 40’s they had developed the oil drum as a musical instrument. They sunk the tops into a pan shape, figured out how to make a chromatic scale, and began seriously beating on them.
Bands formed and their rivalry led to street fighting as well as music.
The street fighting passed, we think, but the music competition just got more intense and the music better and better.
By 2012 Trinidad & Tobago’s Steel Pan Bands have long since become world famous.
We had to see and hear them for ourselves and on Saturday night we went to a concert.
It still had a bit of a gang flavor; the neighborhood was a bad one, but inside the concert venue it was all fun and music, wonderful music.
Our driver suggested we leave early to avoid the traffic jam. He said, “This was not a place to be stuck in traffic”, so we missed the last two bands but we saw seven of them and they were great.
I think we’ll go back.
Click here for more photos of Trinidad & Tobago's Steel Pan Bands
The old man in the bar with the white shirt and rumpled captain’s hat looked slightly familiar as he chatted with the couple from Toronto and the burgee on his shirt pocket rang a bell too, but which bell I couldn’t say.
So when he moved off to another table I stood up and intercepted him.
“Hi, I’m Fred Roswold. I know that burgee but I can’t place it. What club is it from?”
He shook my hand and said, “Royal Vancouver. I’m Vern.”
Royal Van, of course. I’d seen that burgee a thousand times back in the days when we sailed in RVYC events in the Pacific Northwest. And Vern?
“Vern who?”, I asked.
“Vern Ruskin”
Now I had it. Jolly Olly. This man, Vern Ruskin and his boat Jolly Olly, had at one time, in fact for many, many, years, been a familiar sight to us in races all over Puget Sound and British Columbia. Vern Ruskin and his Jolly Olliy was a fixture in NW sailing for as long as I can remember. Too many times I had found myself looking at the transom of his 35 foot, blue and white, Petersen and swearing to myself, “How did this old guy get ahead of us again?”
Now we find him here in Trinidad, he must be 100 years old because I thought he was he was old when I first encountered him in the late seventies.
I joined him at his table and talked with him for a while.
Yes, he still has Jolly Olly, he still keeps it and still races it in Vancouver. Last year he got first place in the Easter Seals Cup in Jolly Olly. He said they won by finding a wind shift which the rest of the fleet didn’t see.
He has another boat, Jolly Friends, here in Trinidad. He splits his time between the places.
He’s 87. I just hope I am half as good as he is when I am 87.
We shook hands and took a photo.
The next day Judy and I joined Vern for lunch at a local restaurant. Vern had an agenda.
You see, Vern Ruskin, though he is 87 and maintains two boats, travels between Canada and the Caribbean every year continuing to race and cruise, also has a mission and he was recruiting.
Vern Ruskin is trying to get politicians and environmentalists in Washington State and British Columbia, (and Washington DC and Ottawa) to reconsider hydro-electric power. He believes, knows actually as he was the original engineer who came up with the studies which resulted in the Columbia River Treaty of 1964 between Canada and the USA, which in turn resulted in the building of several dams and power stations in the upper Columbia River, that there is still a huge amount of untapped hydro-power in BC. He thinks that developing it would be more environmentally sound than building gas fired generating plants.
So Vern was recruiting me to help him promote his idea. He actually wondered if I knew Patty Murray; maybe she was a member of my yacht club?
Well, I was non-committal on this idea, and anyhow, as far as I knew, Senator Murray isn’t a member of any yacht club we belong to, but I really enjoyed seeing Vern again and talking to him.
And it gave us new hope that we have a few years of sailing left in us.
We arrived in Chaguarmas Bay, Trinidad, early on May 6, 2012 and were checked in, assigned a berth, and tied up all in about 2 hours.
This place is set up to deal with yachts, and it seems like the main business here is parking boats for people who need a place to leave them during hurricane season. Apparently about 1000 boats a year come here, get hauled out, and get parked in one of the many huge boat parking lots. In fact we seem to be the only people who are planning to stay here, in the water, on the boat. It is a little weird.
But with this many boats coming here each year there are a lot of services available so if you want work done, this is the place. And if you want to buy stuff for your boat, this is also the place. There are several HUGE marine stores. We will have no trouble spending money here as we replace broken things and replenish our spares locker.
The first task will be to buy new batteries.
That’s tomorrow.
At the moment we are resting up, secure and settled in at Crew’s Inn Marina, which, like Fortaleza, is actually, or also, a hotel. It has a pool, restaurants, Wi-Fi, all the amenities. We'll probably like it here.
I am a sailor, born of a nautical tradition passed to me by my father and my Grandfather Alfred. I’ve spent most of life on my passion which is the sea and the vessels which go upon them. I have had many such vessels and now I live on and sail on the sloop WINGS.
which I acquired in 1986 with my wife Judy
who shared my passion. For ten years we lived on Wings in Seattle and sailed, including racing. Then we left the Pacific Northwest and voyaged across the world, across the seven seas, to faraway places, and made them our own.
For thirty-eight years I have lived and loved this life. I still live on Wings, in Mexico, and sail and race often. Judy passed away in June, 2023 and I miss her but you can still join us and sail the seas as we did for all those glorious years. Fred Roswold, SV Wings, Mexico
Charlotteville Pirogue Festival.
Lauging Man in Bow of Blue Boat.
Charlotteville.
Sailing the coast of Tobago
Filling the Tanks
Wings in Scotland Bay, Trinidad
Judy relaxes
Sailing
Cabin Full Of Guests
New Canvas
Rain
Painting Project
Soaring Black Vulture
Daily Swim
Pressure Wash
Getting Out for a Day
"E34"
Gary & Al
B&G 20/20
Working in the hell hole
Finishing our racing season in Trinidad
Bamboo Cathedral
Judy stirs pitch
Pumpkins
Tony
Chasing the Leaders
Broken Chain Plate
Bertie Trims
Racing
Steel Pan Band
RVYC
Still Winning in 2011
Fred & Vern Ruskin
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