Day 48 Passage to Trinidad Wednesday 16th March 2016
7pm
Position TRINIDAD. yay yay yay.
Yes we have made it, the anchor is firmly being held by Caribbean sand at a depth of 14mts.
After 48 days 4054 nautical miles of the most challenging crossing to date we are just rocking gently and finally feel safe.
Well we have a mental amount of all types of vessels around us, from yachts to cargo ships, tugs fishing vessels, oil and gas rigs you name it, they are all here, but who cares, I know we are both going to sleep well tonight.
After a horrible night before, I forgot to mention one very special highlight, of that trip.
Things started settling down around 3am and yes I was still awake, I actually didn't put my head down till around 5am.
I could hear some dolphins around the boat, so I went out on the back deck, not really expecting to really see them and oh man.
I was hit with the most spectacular sight, as there was a massive amount of phosphorescence the Dolphins had just lit the water up with the most spectacular light show you could imagine.
At first I thought they may of been whales, as they were very long, but soon realised that it was there wake behind them.
It was like massive torpedoes darting here and there, they were diving and playing around the boat for at least an hour, and when they surfaced for air, oh man it took your breath away there would just be a massive explosion like fireworks.
The Captain woke up a short while later when the show was over but within 10mins they came back, we both watched this time both acting like little kids and racing from one side of the boat to the other and The Captain even raced to the front of the boat to have a look as well, it sure was something.
Finally I felt safe enough to lay down, I was asleep, before my head hit the pillow and gladly let The Captain take over.
I woke in daylight thank god, as everything is so much better in daylight, and does not look half as scary.
We still had little wind and were not making real progress at all, in fact we had only 10 nm to go, so we decided to finally start the engine, The Captain filled it up with transmission oil and with fingers crossed, we fired her up.
Thank god it worked, but still with the engine going and sails it still took 4 1/2 hours just to get to the entrance to turn in, as there is very strong currents.
There is four entrances to go through and you have Trinidad on one side and Venezuela on the other side, I was actually surprised how close it really is.
A good friend of ours Alex, advised us which would be the better entrance, just in case the engine failed and that was a strong possibility, so we knew we wanted to go down number 2 entrance, now they all have names, but that was way to confusing, for my brain, at that moment, so we just counted, they all have very strong currents running so you also have to pick the right tide as well.
We found it fine and turned in like I said at around 2.30pm, than we made our way down, past beautiful mountains with tropical forest all around, with little bays here and there with a few houses, it really looked nice and peaceful.
We could see a little island in front of us and knew we had to go around this and we would be in the anchorage.
We were also talking to Betty and Louis from Ave del mar, they were on standby, ready to bring up their anchor and come and rescue us if needed.
This last little bit of our journey was where we needed the engine, and why we could not use it on our trip, we just needed it to last till we got to the anchorage and got the anchor down.
So we come around this island and OMG, there was every different vessel you could imagine, so much for the tranquillity of a tropical island, we had to weed our way through this lot and when we had no idea where to go Betty gets on the radio and says look ahead you will see us, finally there they were and thank god they have a red boat it was so much easier to see.
After a few attempts at getting a good position, we finally got the anchor down and I might add absolutely perfect, which even shocked us, as with muddled brains, from stress and lack of sleep and the last time we have anchored anywhere was in Knysa South Africa, that was well over 6 mths ago.
Betty and Louis came over and congratulated us on getting here in one piece, we had our first alcoholic drink in seven weeks, a Dark and Stormy and the four of us sat and chatted and swooped horror stories.
They left us an hour or so later, and I think within half an hour we were fast asleep in a real bed, oh man it was magic.
Well tomorrow is another day.