Moonlight ripples on the placid sea as we ghost along at 4 knots. The light breeze is barely enough to push us along, but that's fine with us. Trinidad is only 80 miles from Grenada, too far to go in daylight but a short overnight passage, and there's no point in arriving before dawn. We'd rather have this gentle journey than be heeled hard and bucking in big waves. It's calm enough that Britt's sleeping in our usual berth in the forward cabin, which is usually too bouncy for comfort, and it's even on the uphill side of the boat on this port tack. It's just past 3 a.m.
Our last week and a half in Grenada was filled with chores and errands, trying to get us and Windom ready for moving again. We got the fridge and watermaker working again, killed most of (we hope!) the ants (which had two nests, one in the lazarette and one, yuck of yucks, under our bed), bought a few groceries and did a whole lot of laundry. We spent hours cleaning the bottom, more hours cleaning off the anchor rodes, even more hours slowly disassembling the mooring we'd constructed out of three anchors. We managed to find time for a little fun -- we traded in a backpack-load of paperbacks we'd read for a load of new ones at a cruiser's book swap, and finally learned how to play Mexican Dominoes -- but mostly we were just going through the necessary motions, marking time until we could leave.
We left on Sunday afternoon so as to arrive Monday morning, to avoid steep overtime fees. A tropical wave was on its way, but the forecast sounded pretty good other than the usual "scattered thunderstorms" warning. We saw a few big clouds and a couple of rain showers before sunset, even a big fat nearly vertical hunk of rainbow, but all we got were a few sprinkles before the sky began clearing. The wind finally shifted from south to southeast just before we got underway, and kept shifting eastward during the night, so we've been slowly easing the sheets, going from close-hauled all the way to a nice broad reach. The direct course is 190°, but there's an incredible westward-sweeping current near Grenada, so we had to steer 170° -- which resulted in a course made good of between 200° and 210°! The problem was that with the wind quite a bit south of east, pointing higher would slow us down, allowing the current to sweep us even further off course. Finding the optimum course was a bit of an exercise, but about 30 miles out our course made good abruptly swung to the east, indicating that we'd escaped the current at last.
In the morning we got hit by a new current as we approached the Boca de Mono, one of the "dragon's mouths" (bocas) leading between steep-sided islands into the Gulf of Paria. The ebb tide rushed north at about the same speed we were making south, bringing us to a standstill just short of the narrow channel through the verdant hills. Well, we needed to charge batteries anyway, and it was only four miles more to the Chagauramas anchorage. As we drove in, we were excited to see Hallelujah, who we hadn't seen since May, and Kajsa, who we'd last seen in July -- both of whom we had expected to have left Trinidad by now. Of course they were planning on leaving soon, but we are going to see if we can talk them into staying a little longer to do things with us!
Another boat we know here is Dawn Treader, another Caliber 40 like Windom. We had met Shirley and Jack in Annapolis when we had just started cruising; when we headed south on the ICW, they went offshore to the Caribbean, and they've been here ever since. We've been keeping in touch by email and SSB, but haven't actually seen them for two years. When we stepped ashore to find Customs and Immigration, we stopped the first person we saw to ask for directions...then did a double take...yup, it was Shirley!
So we're settling in again, in a new place. Hopefully we'll catch up with old friends and make new ones. We're looking forward to playing tourist again. We don't expect to be hanging out here for too long, since if we do end up returning via the Eastern Caribbean islands, we'll need to beat back eastward from Venezuela before the winter winds set in. But plans are never too solid around cruisers, and Trinidad has a reputation as a "tarpit harbor" -- you put your anchor down and just somehow get stuck there. So we shall see.