17 August Chaguaramas, Trinidad

After our ocean crossings a trip of 90nm is a short hop. The consensus is that Prickly Bay to Trinidad is best done as an overnight passage because you want to arrive during regular office hours to avoid large overtime fees. We tied up alongside the Customs dock (10°40.79N 61°37.88W) at 11.15am, did a quick change in to smart clothes, and raced up to the Immigration office. There was another boat ahead of us and despite filling in th mutliple forms before midday the lady didn't call us forward until after 12. Overtime! No. She didn't charge us anything.

Then I made a mistake and arrived at Customs before 1pm. More form filling and a charge of TT324, or U$53, for infringing upon the luncheon hour. It's a no money, no clearance system and the nearest ATM is 5 miles and a bus ride away in Glencoe. Catch 22. By a fluke of coincidence we had exactly $53 to be able to pay. Next day I borrowed TT100 from Peake Marine office to catch the bus to the Mall and an ATM.

For the first week we were anchored and for the second picked up one of the mooring buoys. The currents in the bay are unpredictable, can be nothing or up to 4 knots depending on the moon phase. We were advised not to pick up the one brown ball with a metal bar through it; this marks the mast of a sunken yacht less than a metre below the surface.

Chaguaramas is a busy harbour for oil industry support vessels who come in and out collecting provisions and gear.

For reasons unknown the anchorage is a popular spot for Venezuelan fishing boats to anchor. (It's only 14 miles to the coast of Venezuela). They arrive in the morning with eight men on board, anchor, do a lot of boat and three or four will row a battered dinghy ashore using planks of wood for oars and then they pick up there rope and anchor and depart. For fishing boats we didn't see any nets or fish....

Far more unsettling than foreign fishing boats was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake which rumbled for almost two minutes. We were below and felt the boat shake. I did the meerket thing popping my head up to check and saw no tankers approaching, but what I did see was the masts of boats in the yards swaying alarmingly, rigging clanging. We felt much safer on the water. Despite this being the strongest earthquake felt in Trinidad for many years (epicentre was 70 miles away off the coast of Venezuela) there were no casualties and no boat damage. The shop, restaurant and fuel dock at Power Boats were damaged and closed for a few days while repairs were carried out.

We were 'Bonded' – shaken but not disturbed.