Wozers, what a busy day. Up at the crack of dawn after getting to the Hotel @ 2am.. so about 4 hrs of sleep.
So we didn’t do everything by the book, but so far so good. When you come Trinidad on a one way ticket you need to show your boat papers to clear in to the country at the airport, then report immediately to customs and immigration again at the marina. Well it was 2 am so we decided to drop our luggage at the boat on the way, another no no since you need to show up at customs with your luggage. We ended up having the hotel call the customs office since they didn’t ask when we knocked, so we woke him up and I sorta implied that we had no bags, so he said just come back tomorrow. So straight to the room and finish off the 6 pack we picked up on the way across town.
We were to splash at 6:30 am, got pretty close probably around 7ish it still floats and didn’t take on any water so thats all good. The sail guy was supposed to have the sails on the boat, they did not so we motored over to the marina and grabbed a ball and then back to the hotel before 10am to get our breakfast that came with our hotel room that we used for all of 4 hours. And a trip to immigration and again to customs that now said we needed some paperwork about when the boat was put back into the water.
We finally got in contact with the sail guy they delivered the sails and battens to the boat, damn they is heavy. We cut the battens to length with the jigsaw and Wayne put them all in, I put on the sailbag and lazy jacks, Christine unpacked and put made the boat liveable. It took the better part of the afternoon go get the boat fully dressed with all her canvas. I think we have most of the lines in the correct places.
The engine work that was done by the Phillipe’s crew at Catamaran Village was top notch, everything works and looks good. The new toilets are awesome. The only missing thing they didn’t hook the port side head up to the fresh water, so they were on the boat doing that while we were tackling the sails. In the process of using the heat gun to shrink wrap the fresh water connections, our inverter blew up, smoke and sparks filled the salon. Ugh, that means no blender drinks unless we can get that fixed.
With all those tasks, we also squeezed in a small provision run, and definitely some cold beverages. After several beverages and a shower we went exploring to find some dinner. We finally found a pizza joint, Joes Pizza, it was good or we were just happy, back to the boat and everyone passed out.
What a days work, it was a little to late to clear customs so we’ll be here another day and see what they say or want to do about blowing up the inverter.