Kategorie: Trinidad & Tobago

After a short visit at home my new adventure started in Oktober. Plan so far: Sailing a Katamaran for 6 month in the Caribbean sea.

Uwe, the captain of Jabulo and I met like on a blind date at the airport in Frankfurt. Uwe around 65 years old with approximately 100 years of sailing experience is the perfect image of a friendly captain with a good heard.

After a flight from 10 hours from Frankfurt to Tobago, a second flight from Tobago to Trinidad and a car drive from 1 hour, we finally arrived at Peaks Yacht Service, where Jabulo was on land for repairs.

Jabulo, a Dean Katamaran with 44 ft. Is an impressive vessel. My cabin was more like a princess chamber. Big bed from 140m, separate private toilet, and far enough space in a bunch of chaps.

Our third crew member was Martha, a 26 year old social worker from Germany, with polish roots. Even as each one of us was very different we made a good team.

The first week we stayed on land, clean and repair the boat and did the preparing shopping tours. In week two we got Jabulo into water and stayed at the Peaks pier for ongoing repairs. We desperately waited the water maker to become complete. Trinidad times works way different then german working persons time.

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Even if we was in a good company we hardly could wait until we finally will leave Trinidad. One good company was Mike with his ship Lady Gray. Mike had Sam and Tailor on board and planed to go in the same direction as ours. They left from Trinidad on a Sunday and our plan was to follow on Monday. But as already mentioned, Trinidad workers time is way different then in Germany. The technical who should finish our water maker didn’t finish his job and also didn’t appear the next day. Also the guy who should finish the cushions was late and in the end it was Wednesday the 17th as we finally declared out from the Trinidad immigration and customs.

Happy we visited the duty free shop to buy some rum and wine. The next situation I want to remark as wonderful example how I experienced the local people in Trinidad. After we had chosen our products, the women in the shop wanted to pack everything into a plastic bag. I told her that we don’t want the plastic bag. The explained to me that she have to ensure that oubstuff is in a plastic bag, as this was a rule from the authorities and four cameras watching her. I turned around to the cameras and speak to the invisible authorities behind, that we don’t want to use the astic bag because they harm the environment and that we brought our own bags with purpose. Maybe the women was touched by my words and it turned out that she had the stuff without a astic bag to us. Wow I was so touched, get gose skin and felt a little tear in my eye. Fantastic! So friendly and nice.

Overall I experienced the Lokal people very nice. I saw a real gentleman like you imagine one on the streets of New Orleans, super nice stuff in a store who enlightened our day with a self made fruit smoothie, the coolest taxi drivers ever and handsome people on the local fruit market.

As we had to sail up to 15 hours we decided that it might be a good idea to fill the tank of our vessel to the maximum. On our approach to the pier the captain announced that their is a problem with the engine. The line from the dingi was hanging down and as we drove our engine backwards, it end up in the propeller of our vessel.

This is definitely one of the worst case scenarios that you could experience as owner of a ship. In worst case the complete propeller had to be taken of the ship. To do this you need to take the vessel out of water. Most of the time this is done by a big crane and it is expensive. After the captain and Ean, a friendly sailor that lived two boats next to mine, spend approximately 1.5 hours in water with googles and tried to get the rope out of the engine, we decided to go to plan b, a diver.

20 min later a diver comes to our ship and after another 1.5 hours of work the rope was out of the propeller. So the next morning should now be the final day of leaving Trinidad.

The forecast does not sound very nice. About 22 knots of wind. I already woke up in the night as the wind blows strong and closed the window in my room. But at six in the morning the weather doesn’t look too bad. Quickly we lift up the dingi and it was a very good feeling finally to pull the rope that bounded us to the mooring in the harbour.

Not far after we left the harbour the sky turned more into gray. For me it was clear that the look of the sky and the look of the water shows all signs of a more rough see. Even if we three never have performed as sail crew together the lift of the mainsail runs quite smoothly.

I have to confess that if it would have been my boat, I had returned to the harbour after 40 minutes of sailing. Reason was that I detected the emergency window broken. The emergency window is a window near the door in the salon. The purpose of the window is that you can swim out of the ship if it turns upside down. Broken in that case means there is a whole in the bottom of your boat and each time the waves rushes that high, water jumps into your boat.

In my imagination, I saw the window already fully opened and us three wiping water in buckets out of the boat. The captains plan try to place some screws into the window sounds crazy for me and I was afraid that we won’t be able to close the window again if it opens. The current situation was that the window opens to the outside and currently remain closed cause the grip of rubber gum that normally avoid the water to come through. But the captains plan worked out and we somehow managed to place two screws in the window and then could fix it with some cable.

But anyway our first sail should stay far away from boring. The yesterday’s forecast turned out to be pretty precise and quickly we found ourself in something like 22 – 25 knots of wind, 2 – 3 Meter high waves and a sky that switches between light gray, darker gray ish and gray-gray ish. Luckylie I was the only person on board that saw this condition as not 100% perfect and also sometimes a little scary.

The good thing in all of this is the fact that running on 9 knots of speed we would reach Grenada in approximately 6 – 7 hours.

I didn’t expected our first trip to be one of remarkable as somewhere after the magic half way mark a school of dolphins passed or way. They swam nearly 15 min with us. This was the perfect situation to give the new video equipment a try. I run to get the gopro and screamed friendly into the direction on the dolphins. It is just amazing to see how easy the swim next to the boat and top its speed. In the water their color was something like lite with gray sprinkles, and they also had young ones in their group. In formation they jumped out of the waves and back into and it’s seem like a game or competition to be faster as the boat.

Sadly my try to get them on video failed, but Martha got one short shot.

After the dolphins disappeared the weather become more rough and I saw it as a challenge to prepare our portion of bread for us. Challenge because the skipper warned me that most people become sea sik while they are somewhere down in the ship. I had a few flaw moments but nothing serious. For the bread this time I added some olive oil and asked my self how the taste might be.

As the same become even more rough, I got the chance to test my waterproof jacked that I bought just for this trip. Somehow I thought that at least in this moment the jacket has a value. Finally after six hours of sailing we reached St. Gorge in Grenada.