Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season

S/V Aspen Log #17
Position: 10 degrees 41.0N 61 degrees 38.0W
(Chaguaramas, Trinidad)

We are safely sitting below the normal hurricane area in the Caribbean. Most insurance companies require sailboats to be out of the hurricane area between June and November. So we sit way down here in Trinidad, watching the tropics on the satellites. So this year guess what? There is hardly a ripple on the ocean out there! We love climate change!

We still have our daily tropical deluges here on the boat. By noon you had better be where you want to be for the next couple of hours or be prepared to swim back to the boat! No one even notices when we get 7 or 8 inches of rain in a day here. The locals still go about their work as usual. No problem mon…

As long as the power stays on we are nice and comfortable on Aspen. But the power does go off, quite often. Then it is time to start the generator so Steve can continue to work and, most importantly for Maria, she can have her AC and TV! We both need the AC because without it we would surely die!

When Steve gives the weather forecast in the mornings the maximum temperature rarely varies. It will be 96 degrees with 90% humidity every day. Sweltering is a good word for this! This isn’t our typical dry heat of Colorado weather that’s for certain.

This past week the government decided that since the island revenues were down due to the global recession (natural gas exports are down) they needed 2 new holidays, both of them last week; one on Monday and the other on Thursday. So that pretty much shut the island down for 9 days. Then if you add the day before and the day after, it was a 11-day holiday week! You gotta love this attitude!?!

The sailors are starting to return to Trinidad after spending the summer back home. We are seeing more and more new faces every day and the boat yards are hoping additional boat work comes along with the new people.

We have to warn everyone about something. Steve is getting another haircut. He promises not to post any pictures this time.

Sail on sail on Aspen…
Steve and Maria