4th -13th May 2008

We left Grenada at 4am on Monday morning and sailed in company with two other boats to Trinidad. We arrived at about 5pm and anchored in Scotland bay overnight before going to Chaguaramas to clear immigration and customs. On route to Trinidad our companions, Gordon and Eta, on their boat Didi Mau, caught a large dolphin fish (see picture). They invited us and our other companions, George and Ruth for dinner. Fresh fish barbecued, it was delicious, even William, who is not fond of fish enjoyed it. Scotland bay is very pretty, like being in the jungle, complete with Howler monkeys. Next day we moored on a buoy in Chaguaramas harbour. What a difference, Chaguaramas is a busy commercial port and very industrial. However we have maintenance to do and there is no shortage of chandlers etc. We met up with Jim and Frank again and a group of us went out for a meal at a local restaurant, it was swordfish or ribs. I had the swordfish, William had ribs (he has had enough fish for the moment).The fish was very good and not expensive, the better choice in my opinion. We came into the marina after a week to get mains electric to run the air conditioning, its very hot and humid here, getting up into the 90s, which is too hot for me. After a bit of a struggle getting the right mains adapter we finally got the air con switched on and it was lovely. However it only lasted a day and packed up! Oh well I shall just have to spend the day in the shopping mall where it's cool.

14th May - 27th May 2008

Yet more maintenance, the broken generator is proving to be a real challenge for William. It has to be removed and taken away to see if it can be mended and it seems to have been shoe horned into place. The good news is that that the air conditioning has been fixed so things are cooling down.

Giant Leather Back Turtles

We had a break from boat maintenance and deck scrubbing and went on a tour to the other side of the island to watch the giant leather back turtles coming up onto the beach to lay their eggs. I have seen this before on television but this was the real thing. Leather back turtles, so named because the shell is like thick leathery skin, are the largest and most ancient of all species of turtles, with the females reaching five or six feet long by three to four feet wide and weighing in excess of 500 pounds. The largest ever recorded was a male which was ten feet by six feet , weighing 2000 pounds!! They can trace their lineage back to the dinosaurs.

Leather backs are an endangered species and Trinidad has the largest population nesting on its beaches. At the height of the season which is now, up to 150 a night come ashore on a beach 8 km long. We were privileged to watch three females make a nest and lay their eggs. Females lay 80 to 100 eggs in a clutch and do this on several different nights. They have already mated with several males, each mating taking up to seven hours, no wonder they are reputed to be an aphrodisiac. They store the sperm in pouches and fertilise the next clutch after laying the first. They begin laying eggs at about 25 years of age and can go on until they die at 100 years old, breeding every two years, so thats a lot of babies. However only about one in a thousand survive to adulthood. Hatchlings are easy pickings for birds, dogs, possums and of course people, as we saw when we watched the baby turtles in Tobago, being gobbled up by marauding pelicans.

We were accompanied by a guide, the source of all this information and we had to have a permit to go on the beach. He used red light so as not to confuse any turtles which were coming up the beach. They think white light means water and will turn back if they see a light on shore. The babies do the opposite and head for the light, again thinking it means water and have been known to walk into beach side restaurants. However being protected they don't end up in the soup. Our first turtle was a youngster, only about 4 feet long and was being tagged by a group of American students on loan to the Trinidad turtle conservation group. The second was much bigger, six feet long, aged about and encrusted with barnacles. The turtle selected a spot on the beach, (nearer the water where the sand is cooler means more sons and warmer conditions favor daughters). Sex determination by temperature if your a turtle. She made a pit with her body then dug a hole with her rear flippers. This took some time and when she was happy with the hole she laid her eggs. While she was laying she went into a trance and at this point we were allowed to take photographs and touch her. Once she finished laying she filled in the hole and patted down the sand, then she spread loose sand all over the nest to camouflage it. She spent a lot of time doing this and making a false nest to fool predators. Then she returned to the sea. The final turtle was nesting too close to the sea. She had dug down to water but just kept on digging. Our guide said that the water would kill the eggs which are porous, so the babies would drown. He said there was no way to make her move if she didn't want to, so he threw sand back into her hole as she was laying, to fill it up a bit.

After hatching baby turtles walk as fast as they can for the sea and keep swimming. They have yolk from the egg which provides food for the first few days, so that they don't need to stop to feed. They are less likely to end up as dinner if they keep moving. After this they feed on zoo-plankton. They will travel to the north Atlantic and even to the Baltic sea. The adults feed on jelly fish and eat twice their body weight per day. They cry thick salty tears (see photograph), which excretes excess salt and protects their eyes. They have a pink spot on top of their head (see photo), the pineal gland which they use for navigation, don't ask me how but they come back to the same beach they hatched on. They can survive in freezing cold water with ice bergs. Adults can out swim a shark (their main predator) and if that doesn't work they can dive to 4000 feet to escape. A truly remarkable creature.

Asa Wright Nature Centre and the Caroni swamp bird sanctuary.

28th May - 1st June 2008

We went on a tour to the Asa Wright nature centre and the Caroni bird sanctuary, with our American friends, Eta and Gordon from Didi Mau and Don and Devon from Liquid Courage. The trip was again with a local taxi firm in a maxi taxi, so we gained lots of local knowledge and were introduced to a local snack called doubles. It was very tasty and consisted of soft dough bread and chick peas, coming either with mild or hot sauce.

We visited Asa Wright nature centre first, for a guided tour. It is famous for its birds and there were plenty to see, (159 species of which we saw about 10), coming in a variety of bright colours. We had a nice lunch here, at the lodge. There was a bar on the hotel veranda and just below were a number of bird feeders, which attracted red legged honeycreepers, green honeycreepers, a yellow oriel and numerous bananaquits (see photos). Beer and birds, what a combination. Others attracted by the feast were an Idex, a large lizard and an Agouti, a large rodent.

In the reserve itself we learned about leaf cutter ants, which have huge colonies all over the place. There are four different types, the queen, soldiers, workers and minums. We saw leaf cutter ants in Tobago and noticed a little tiny ant hitching a lift on a leaf being carried by a bigger ant. This was a minum and its very important, not just a passenger. It prevents a parasitic wasp from landing on the leaf and laying an egg which would be carried into the colony. We saw the Bearded Bellbird, which is famous for its very very loud call and the Bearded Manakin, which is one of those species where the males dance on an area of ground called a lek. The females watch and select the best dancer as a mate.

After this we went on a flat bottomed boat trip in the Caroni swamp to see the scarlet ibis. The scarlet ibis is the national bird of Trinidad and is truly scarlet all over. It gets its colour from its diet of shrimp and crabs which contain carotene. Carotene makes carrots orange and ibis scarlet. There are thousands of ibis nesting in the swamp and they come home to roost in the evening covering the trees with scarlet, they look like Christmas decorations landing on the trees. We also saw some of the swamps other inhabitants, a downy ant eater curled into a fluffy ball in a tree and also in a tree was a Cook's tree boa. It was OK it was asleep.

Our friends flew home on Friday, leaving their boats here in Trinidad for the hurricane season, which officially began on the 1st of June, so we had a few farewell drinks on our boat on Thursday night.

2nd June - 3rd July 2008

William hired a car and we went on a tour of the southern end of Trinidad with our friends from Dartmouth. The weather was not too good heavy rain, well it is the rainy season. We visited The Pitch lake and had a very detailed tour conducted by a local guide called Carl Stafford, who went by the nickname of mice. He told us all there is to know about the lake, how it was formed and the uses of the pitch after it has been dug out and heated in the nearby factory. The lake is 260 feet deep before it meets water below. There are 3 other pitch lakes in the world but this is the only one to export pitch. The lake sucks in water from the surrounding area and causes local houses and roads to subside. I wont go into masses of details I have given enough of a lecture about the turtle visit but it was very interesting and I have a video starring Carl in which he explains everything. Anyone who is interested can see this when we return home in August and September.

The boat was lifted out of the water on the 23rd of June without incident and we lived aboard in the boat yard until last Wednesday, 2nd July, when we flew to the States. The boat yard is incredibly dirty and the boat was filthy nearly as soon as it was washed. Even the local birds are using us as target practice. I had exchanged the dreaded plank walking for a climb up a very big ladder as a means of accessing my home. Before we left there was time for a barbeque with our friends and William took over as the chef as usual.