It’s actually nice to say “again” since until now every place for
the last 5 years has been a new place. We
initially stayed at Crews Inn Marina for about 5 weeks while a parade of
service people came and went. We had new salon and pilothouse cushions made and
even recovered the leather Lazyboy (that was looking dog-eared) in matching
Ultraleather. New window blinds were measured
and installed. A leaking rudder stuffing box hose was replaced as well as the rudder
bearing. The leaking Naiad stabilizer cylinders were removed and rebuilt. Tom replaced the Clark pump on the water maker
himself and it seems to work although we need to get away at anchor in clean
water to really test it out.
While busy, it was not too hard of a life with blasting air
conditioners (2 out of 3 of them were also fixed), swimming pool and even a newspaper
delivered each morning. Our icemaker had died and it too was replaced. We enjoyed passing out huge glasses of icewater to the sweating workers. Kim did scrubbing and varnish work while Emily played
with the kids on Mojumbo and dug into her 8th grade schoolwork.
We hired some locals to wax the hull and fix some gel coat
dings while I found the same mechanic that worked on the engines back in 2009. He changed all the injectors and did a few
other engine room chores that needed attention.
Immediately following our stay at Crews Inn we hauled out for
5 days for bottom and propeller paint at Peakes Shipyard and pulled the stabilizers off to
replace the hull seals. We had another
local guy strip and paint our rub rail while we huddled inside from the 95
degree heat with two hatch-mounted air conditioners blasting away. Our normal air conditioners are cooled with
seawater which is hard to come by sitting on land!
There was no room for us back at Crews Inn post-launch, so we
managed to get a slip at Power Boats 500 feet away from the Roti Hut where Kim
took cooking lessons back in 2009. We’ve
been eating rotis for lunch and even a few breakfasts when Kim lets us.
We still have another week or two to stay before the risk of
hurricanes is low enough to start moving north.
We plan to do some touring in these last days if we can so that all memories
of Trinidad are not work related. We ran
into a boat with kids (Day Dreamer) that remembered us from cruising in the Exumas
Bahamas 5 years ago. They told us tales
of several other kid-boats that are awaiting us in Grenada, our first island
stop north… we shall see. Our little ship looks pretty good, don't you think? Maybe she won't be too hard to sell back in New England.
Tom
