Our Nov. 6th launch went very smoothly – thank goodness! It was another hot day but no rain which was very helpful as we loaded items from our room onto the boat. We were scheduled for 9 am but an old work vessel came out of the water at 8 am and it took a while to scrape and power wash the bottom. The trailer finally arrived at our boat by 9:30 am. We were totally ready for them and excited to get on with the process. The first step was to move us out of our storage space and down to the haul out slip. Oh boy they had a challenge getting our boat out – lots of back and forth to get around other boats and their stands. Eventually the driver managed to get us free of our neighbours. The transfer from trailer to travel lift went smoothly and Mark was asked to board at that point. He got a free ride on the boat in the lift!! They were splashed together (Mark stayed dry)!
Mark had a few jobs onboard as CK went into the water. First he tossed the dock lines to 4 dockhands. Next he had to go below and check for leaks (which there were none!) and lastly start the engine. That was our only issue. The engine had been fresh water rinsed at the end of the season in April so when Mark started it, no engine cooling water was coming out the stern exhaust. He quickly turned off the engine (didn’t want it to overheat) and went below to see what was wrong. It needed to be primed with water and then the engine started working like a charm.
While all this engine excitement was going on, I was removing the rest of our luggage and fridge items from our hotel room and moving them down to the boat. The dockhands helped us put all our luggage and stuff onto the boat. We were ready to depart around 10:30am and with the help of 2 dockhands, they pulled us off of the starboard side of the dock giving us a clear exit out of the haul out slip. The launch was expertly done with lots of care to make sure we got back in the water without any issues.
We headed to Chacachacare, the most westerly island in Trinidad where we anchored last April. On the way there, the fridge started making a terrible noise. Once anchored Mark found out that the fridge had a blockage of some kind so no cooling water was getting in. He bypassed the blockage and we were back in the cooling business. It was very hot (no more air conditioning!) so we went for our first swim of the season – it was marvellous! The only negative about our anchorage was that the cell service was terrible and we could only send and receive very limited messages.
