We’ve had a really busy few weeks here. The workmanship has been so good that we have far exceeded our planned upgrades and maintenance. The experience in PowerBoats has been really good. The management even took a big group of us out to dinner in Port of Spain. We’ve had fun too with the other boat owners here. Shared a car one day with Sue and Howard from Sundowner and shopped, lunched and drove over to the other side of the island. For the first time we have met Australians who have actually sailed from Australia – Alex and Joni on Raptor and Ganilla and Tony on Katerina. The others we have met bought their boats here or in Europe. Wine here is hideously expensive – we wish we’d stocked up in Martinique. I had thought that being closer to Argentina and Chile that it may have been cheap. A 3 litre fairly ordinary cask is $TT250.00 (about $AUD45.00) With bottles starting at $TT120.00. The supermarket group called Massy is excellent and the one store we go to in West Mall has the best range of products that we have seen anywhere.
This weekend there has been a massive speed boat race to Tobago (the fastest boat gets there in one hour) and the locals have all gone mad, with boats in the water everywhere. Here at PowerBoats they have been putting boats in the water every few minutes. They have a big dry stack set up and the tractors never stop hauling.
We are on the hard now and have a big plastic tent over the boat. Last year we had some water damage from skin fitting leaks so thought that this would be a good idea – which it is. We have booked in to one of the apartments here for this week as the boat is a huge mess withal the work going on. Ours overlooks the water and is very comfortable with a little balcony to watch all the comings and goings.
Back to Australia now in a few days for 10 weeks whilst the hurricane season passes. It’s a pity we didn’t know that there is a rally to Guyana and French Guyana that takes place in September as we would have done it before coming home – oh well, another time.