8 November Farewell Trinidad

Phew the Big Clean Up is almost done. Seven days of srubbing, cleaning, washing and re-stowing of tools and we're ready to leave Trinidad.

she's a winner!

When we arrived we estimated we'd be here for a couple of months and do you know what? Two quickly turned in to three. Friends recommended Peake Yacht Service as a good place to haul out and now we agree with them. All the staff from office to yard have been nothing but polite, helpful and accommodating during our stay. Daniella, reservations manager, never blinked or said no when we delayed our splash date three times. While we were there the yard purchased a passenger van and hired a driver to take guests to and from the airport and to take us to the supermarket and in to town for shopping trips. I asked for a lift to a mall where there is a Radio Shack outlet. No problem. There were six of us in the van that morning; a couple to pick up a hire car, the mall for Radio Shack and supermarket, Movietown to buy storage boxes and then a stop at the post office for me to send a parcel to the UK. All with a smile.

Peake's dock

Perhaps one of the nicest surprises was that when a boat launches, Peake's will give you five days complimentary on their stern to dock with water and electricity included. This was what allowed us to do our post haul clean up. It also gave the canvas guy time to complete our new bimini.

But now we've been to Customs and Immigration (no clear out charges), spent our last TT dollars on a couple of bottles of duty free gin and it's time to go.

As we motor towards the western boca / pass we do the final commissioning of the auto pilot. For the first three attempts to align the compass we get an error message. Why? David has the book and I have the helm. We swap jobs and discover an we have an operator error. The person who had the instruction book didn't realise two pages had flipped over and was reading the instructions for a different model. Oops. Next try worked first time and we were on our way to Bonaire.