Greetings, everyone.

We’ve been in Trinidad now for 3 weeks, plenty of time to have a good quantity of “sea growth” on the anchor chain and snubbers. We’ve made pitifully poor progress on all our boat projects, but have adapted to the social routines and goings on here quite rapidly. We’ve attended Sunday church services with Doug and LuAnn from “Whisper”, gone to Wednesday movie nights with Peter and Karen from “Tanee” here at TTYA (Trinidad & Tobago Yachting Association (more on that later)), killed lots of time playing “Mexican Train” (a domino game played with double 12’s), had Thanksgiving dinner with Bob and Susan and 3 other couples aboard “Sunrise” (complete with turkey, cornbread dressing, cranberries, candied yams and bananas, pumpkin custard (explanation to follow) and a lot more, sampled the Food Courts at 3 different shopping malls (Long Circular Mall, West Mall and Excellent City Centre) and Claudia has completed 3 shopping trips for the incredible variety and low prices of the many fabric shops in downtown Port Of Spain (in spite of the fact that she HATES to sew (the prices are that good)). We’ve had pizza at Joe’s Pizza (twice), bacon cheeseburgers at The Lighthouse (twice), all-you-can-eat shrimp at MOBs and fried chicken at KFC (yep, Kentucky Fried Chicken). We even discovered a specialty store at West Mall called Peppercorn’s that sells Pace Thick & Chunky Picante Sauce (mild, medium and hot) and TORTILLA CHIPS!!!! Since we’ve successfully made our own fresh tortillas (both flour and corn) we have determined that from the eating point of view there is no reason to ever leave here. However, there are other points of view to consider so we have not yet applied for residency.

As I mentioned earlier, we are anchored at the Trinidad & Tobago Yachting Association. This is the best anchorage in Trinidad and we pay a monthly fee to use their dinghy dock, water, garbage disposal and other facilities. It’s within walking distance of Chaguaramas where most of the marinas, restaurants, shipyards, chandleries and a couple of small grocery stores are. The TTYA phone number is (868) 634-4519 and their fax number is (868) 634-4376 in case you need to contact us faster than I check email.

We did have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. “Sunrise” roasted the turkey, made the dressing and hosted all 10 of us. Claudia has perfected her Amaretto-peach cheesecake (via the pressure-cooker) so she made another one of those plus experimented, quite successfully, with a recipe for the yam and banana thing. She offered to make pumpkin pies before we realized that we couldn’t find any frozen pie shells here. As she anguished about making pie crusts, I found her a recipe for a pumpkin custard and another recipe for individual shells made from flour tortillas sprinkled with sugar & cinnamon. Topped them with some crushed walnut pieces and a little whipped cream and finished off the Thanksgiving dinner quite nicely.

The weather here has been interesting. This is the rainy season here in Trinidad, but when Hurricane Lenny swept through the Caribbean he sucked up all the moisture and we had very little rain for several days. Things changed back to normal late last week, though, and we’ve had several Texas-style thunderstorms in the past few days, including a tornado that touched down and did some damage in downtown Port Of Spain. When it doesn’t rain it gets pretty warm during the day (not like Texas in July, that’s why I said “warm” not “hot”) but it always cools off nicely when the sun goes down. Speaking of Lenny, it is very unfortunate to have such a late-season storm in the Caribbean. Several boats that we’ve shared anchorages with along the way departed Grenada and Trinidad early in November heading back up island only to run headlong into Lenny. We’ve heard reports of several boats that were lost in St. Martin and in St. Croix; some that were still in Trinidad when we arrived but got too anxious or had commitments to get back north too soon. It’s a lesson we’re glad to not have to learn the hard way … it ain’t over till it’s over and Trinidad is a great place to be until it’s over. There has been a great deal of damage to all of the islands from St. Martin all the way down to even Grenada. Even though the hurricane itself didn’t come close to most of these islands, Lenny changed the normal wind direction from east to west all the way down the island chain. This caused very large ocean swells, up to 20 ft., to break on the west coasts (normally the leeward side), washing away roads, docks and other coastal facilities which are normally on the protected side of the islands. I’m sure this will weigh into our decisions on where we’ll spend time once we do leave Trinidad.

We were very happy to receive visitors last week. Randy Hummel, a friend and business associate for many years, and his friend Lonie and his parents are visiting Trinidad & Tobago. We corresponded via email and arranged for them to come out to TTYA and spend some time with us. We shared a few beers aboard “Ma’alahi”, went to Chaguaramas for dinner and then back to TTYA. The next morning I was amazed at how quickly that afternoon and evening had passed. We sure do like having visitors from back home. Hopefully, we’ll see more of you soon. There’s nothing like hearing the latest goings on from the old work place that makes one feel the joy of retirement all over again! Randy even brought us a beautiful set of double 12 dominoes, a late request from us, and they were the envy of the whole crowd when we played Saturday night. Thanks again, Randy!

Since I’m using an internet connection to send and receive email via Hotmail instead of using the radio via Sailmail, you can probably see that messages can be quite lengthy. That works both ways, you know. While we’re here in Trinidad we can handle more frequent and lengthy messages from you than when we’re limited to those short, text Sailmail ones. Still, please, no jokes, virus warning hoaxes or other internet chain letters (I still have to rent internet time) but it would sure be good for us to get to keep up with what’s going on in your world, too.

That’s it for now. When it quits raining, I’m going to head over to Chaguaramas and line up somebody to give us a quote on laying down that teak floor in the galley. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.

David and Claudia