Thursday, January 22, 2009

final report from Charlotteville, Tobago Jan 2009


This is our final report from Charlotteville, Tobago for Jan 2009. It is a lovely harbour with an interesting village spreading from the waterfront into the surrounding hills.



The majority of cruising sailboats here are from Europe, making their first Caribbean landfall from Cape Verde. The trans-atlantic boats tend to stay for awhile to recover from the crossing and to savour their first tastes of the Caribbean. We have enjoyed their company. There are very few charter sailboats. This picturesque 5-masted cruise ship stops in for a day about every 3 weeks, dwarfting the “Charlotte D”.


The dry season may have started. We are operating our watermaker about 15 hrs to produce our 300 litres of fresh water per week, now that we are not collecting rainwater into our tanks. Daily temperature range is 25-33 deg C (77-91 deg F).

We are privileged to have met many interesting people here. Curtis (holding his sleeping daughter) operates the combination internet café, laundry, and snorkel rental shop.



He also runs sport fishing charters, rain forest hiking tours and a boat repair shop. A most industrious man! We went with him one day to Scarbourgh, and along the way stopped to help start (successfully) a small truck carrying a Christmas pig home for slaughter.


Cosmos (in chef hat and football jersey) operates bakery and “kitchen” (café). Stuart (sharing Gluhwein with us) operates a SCUBA dive business in Charlotteville and was also repairing a boat in the same shop (Curtis’s) where we fixed our dinghies.


Glenna operates the produce stand on the waterfront and shared many local vegetable recipes with us. Kalisha has now prepared Catherine’s hair in various braid styles.



Tim-Tim is a local fisherman and one of the many sober young gentlemen in this village. Michael the Customs officer was the source of local knowledge and shared much advice on cooking East Indian Style.


Rowing continues to provide Peter with daily exercise. We made good progress on a number of boat projects after finishing the dinghy repairs. Two new canvas shades help keep the “Charlotte D” cool.



Yes, Dorothy, there is a Santa Claus and he looks a lot like the fellow that sold us fish yesterday and had drinks with us the day before!



Old Year’s Night was, as expected, the occasion for several parties outside along the Charlotteville waterfront. At one a large pot of “all-in-one” stew was cooked over an open flame. It had “ground provisions” (root vegetables), dumplings, and “cow heel” (beef shanks) with wonderful fresh spices and herbs. At another party, hosted by Stuart, there was a mixed grill of burgers, dogs, corn, potatoes, Wahoo steaks and Mahi-Mahi fillets.

Enthusiastic local musicians were joined by cruising sailors with varying talents. It was not a chorus, but rather a fine spontaneous cacophony of voice, guitar, bongo drum and didgeridoo.

Derrick (bongos) is a local fisherman, Squeezy (guitar) sells empty CDs of his music to unsuspecting tourists, Kim (didgeridoo) is an 18 year old Dane who crossed the Atlantic aboard a 12 m sloop.

Catherine and I completed a SCUBA refresher course and started toward our advanced certification. There was one day of academics with our instructor Stuart, after 4 days of self study with new text books. After passing the written and oral tests, there was a day in the pool to review all basics and for safety checkout.


We discovered that SCUBA equipment has evolved quite a bit. The biggest changes that we noted are in alternate air supply systems, buoyancy compensators and dive computers. Fortunately, we are not too old to learn. Our brains were well stimulated.



We enjoyed 4 open water training dives on the wonderful reefs offshore Speyside, Tobago. Anthony drove the dive boat “Heaven vs Hell” and Stuart was the divemaster.


These were our first experiences with “drift dives” and with regimented “multi-level dives” that start deep and gradually ascend along the reef wall (facilitating off-gassing of blood nitrogen without long decompression stops). The sea conditions were robust with large swell and strong current. The reefs here are excellent as you will appreciate by following the various links to photos and videos at http://www.caribstu.com/ We enjoyed the course and dives under stuart's supervision and would highly recommend his services.

On Jan 9, we sailed away from Charlotteville. It was a 17 hr, 95nm passage to The Grenadines. Click on the VIDEOS below to see the dolphins that joined us along the way and to get an impression of sailing conditions on this wonderful passage. The story of our destination will be subject of the next blog update.

Jan 20, 2009; the end of an error. We have been privileged lately to be in the company of cruisers and residents of diverse homelands and ethnicities. The range of opinions strongly held and expressed is enormous. Nevertheless, on one issue there is a surprising degree of agreement. There is such hope and optimism about the new administration in Washington! The inauguration ceremonies and speeches of Jan 20 were carried live on local radio even on these small Caribbean islands, and groups collected around radios in public places. There is a high level of interest. Obama has inspired. Now we are all anticipating his performance.

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be one.” John Lennon