There's a theory that holds that the worse a journey begins, the better it will end. If this is true, we're in for a great time on the Rio Macareo. Our adventure began around 0430 when a piledriver in the Chaguaramas harbor decided to begin the workday early. Wham! Wham! Wham! Of course we had been up a leetle late drinking at the Bight bar the night before, and then the usual gunwale-to-gunwale roll in the anchorage kept us from sleeping too soundly. I put earplugs in and stuck my head under a pillow, but it was no use. The metallic clanging of the piledriver sounded like it was bashing into our hull.
Patrick and Teresa hadn't gotten back from running errands in time to get a few last jerry jugs of diesel the previous afternoon, so Britt had offered to ferry them out to the fuel dock in our much faster dinghy as soon as the pumps opened for the day. That would also allow them to put their dink on deck earlier, a more time-consuming process than our easy hoist, and we'd get moving more quickly. (As it turned out, their motor mount gave them trouble, and they ended up having to tow their dinghy rather than deflate and stow it.) Britt dropped our dink and headed over to pick up Patrick while I was still groggy. I eventually dragged myself out of bed, made a cup of coffee, and sat in the cockpit to enjoy it; the petroleum smell of the harbor was particularly strong this morning, I noted. Then I realized it was Britt, still a hundred yards off.
Apparently the fuel pump had a rather faster delivery rate than Patrick was expecting, and Britt and our dinghy were covered in diesel. We had borrowed Kajsa's water jugs and jugged a bunch of water over the previous afternoon, since it was free and we didn't want to run our watermaker in the foul harbor; Britt used most of it in trying to clean the diesel out of his hair and skin. His clothes may yet end up a total loss.
Well, no matter. We were soon unhooked from the bottom and sailing southwest in a gentle breeze which gradually built through the day to a howling 20+ knots. Our route led us among the derricks and platforms of the Soldado Oilfield, where we caught a large crevalle jack, then around some striking rocks to Columbus Bay at Trinidad's southwestern tip. Just as we rounded Los Gallos rocks and headed into the bay we caught up with Alsager, the third boat of our party, who had left much earlier in the morning. We grilled up the jack as the main course of a potluck for all of us, and sat back with our drinks, among friends, contented, thinking, "Ah yes. This is cruising."
Of course cruising also means motorsailing into howling wind, adverse current, and big whomping waves breaking over the bow. The next day we covered the straight-line distance of 20 miles by power-tacking 33 miles, which because of the current translated into 47 miles through the water. It was a bone-shaking day, rough and bouncy through thick brown water. We had a dispiriting choice of unpleasant waves where the current was less strong, or smooth water among fishing boats, but right into the wind and the worst of the current, so we just tacked back and forth and partook of both.
Reuben on Alsager had convinced us all that one of the waypoints in the Rio Macareo info packet was incorrect, so we cut across the "mud flat" shown on the chart. This turned out not to be the right thing to do -- at least not for Alsager, as they have a 7-foot draft and the water was about 7 feet deep. Windom slid through with our shorter keel, while Kajsa led Alsager the proper way around. Eventually we were all in the 12-foot deep channel, although our GPS and chart insisted we were actually aground. About half of the area on the chart is marked "unsurveyed," but as far as we can tell they didn't do too good a job on the bits they did survey.
Not that it matters, because in a day or so we will be off the chart entirely. We anchored for the night just downstream of Pelican Island, which is about the best-named island we've seen. We've been on Hog Islands with no hogs, Rat Cays with no rats, but I don't believe I've ever seen as many pelicans in one place as we saw on Pelican Island. Dark pelicans with white heads occupied every branch of one tall, dead tree; white pelicans nested among the green bushes and stood along the mud shores. As night approached more and more birds flew in, including several striking flocks of scarlet ibises, bright red against the greenery. The view was stunning. The smell was -- unique. But it was the flattest, calmest place we'd anchored in the past several weeks, and we slept well.
In the morning we awoke...to another world.