Just a little more work to do

Jim and Dick admire the "shiny thing"


This is the sort of thing I get excited about!! The first loaf I baked with my new silicone "tin"....definitely NOT shiny!


A lot of work has been done on the boat in the last few days. She is now antifouled with the strongest stuff you can buy...essential for these fertile waters. It was expensive but worth it I'm told. The hull is shiny again after all the rain washing dirt off the deck and leaving brown streaks eveywhere. Jim from Delicado has been very helpful lending a very practised hand to removing then cleaning up and replacing three of the hatches which were leaking....not good with the recent wet weather! The main hatch forward which is huge was especially awkward to do....took three days in all....very unpleasant in the heat and impossible in the rain.




The boat now has a new dinghy which will sit on the still incredibly shiny new davits and a rather splendid, new, equally shiny outboard, a Tohatsu 9.8 HP......As far as I'm concerned, this means that Moonshiner's tender is now the equivalent of a BMW compared with the old one which was more like a Trabant! It will make dinghy trips ashore a lot faster and drier. No more spending the evening sitting in salty damp shorts




The boat is due to go back in the water in a couple of days. it'll be nice to be afloat again...no more having to clamber down long ladders to go to the loo, fewer mozzies around and hopefully a cooling breeze most of the time. We plan to stay around Chaguaramas for just a couple of days because the water here is so dirty and oily...it'll quickly spoil the nice shiny hull!! Note how many times I have used the "shiny" word...this is because all the men around here seem to be especially attracted to all boaty things that gleam....chandleries are just too full of this stuff and are just impossible to pass by without buying something else shiny to add to the collection! Hmm..



We haven't done any organised bus trips to other parts of he island while so much work is being done but we may have time to do something next week. Monday the 31st is Independence day here, a national holiday with lots of events being staged. We plan to visit the Savannah (an open recreational space inside the world's biggest road roundabout near Port of Spain) where there will be lots going on all day, steel bands and fireworks etc. If we go, I'll try to get some photos.



OK, that's it for now. back to work......