St. Maarten to the Orinoco Delta

St Maarten to Trinidad

I’m afraid our emails took a bit of a back seat for a while and I apologize for this one being so long. I think I last wrote a general email just after arriving in St Maarten however, shortly thereafter, I received news from my sister in Canada that my Mom had had a serious heart attack and was about to undergo a triple by-pass – not a minor thing for an 85 year old woman!

I had been intending to fly back to Canada later on in the year so just fast forwarded things a little. We dashed back down the island chain as we needed to get Calypso to a safer anchorage during the hurricane season where Paul could work on her during my absence. Fortunately, my niece, a flight attendant, was able to organise me a flight out of Trinidad very quickly.

The French Side.......
The trip down was something else! We roared along at quite a pace, often 9–11 knots, punching into heavy seas. I’ve always loved waterfalls, but when they are a feature of one’s anchor locker, they become a bit worrisome to say the least. The bilge pump worked overtime en route! However, Calypso is a solid boat and handled the conditions well.

We stopped briefly at St Lucia as I had two crowns waiting to be fitted and the dentist was such a star, fitting me in immediately so we could get on our way quickly. Next, we dashed down to Grenada just for an overnight stop and shared a few drinks with friends there before heading off on the last leg to Trinidad . All of it was a bit boisterous but we arrived in good time for me to pack and fly out a couple of days later.
Anchorage at Simpson Bay (Dutch Side)

Strolling the French side with Cooee Too

Canada

I arrived in Toronto to find my mother still in intensive care as she’d had a few return trips to ICU due to complications. All in all, she came through a severe heart attack, followed by a serious operation and is still getting her strength back. I extended my return to Trinidad by a further month to help my sister put Mom’s condominium on the market and move her into a retirement residence. We had a rather busy couple of months organising this and I sincerely hope she feels happy and settled into her new environment. I was able to catch up with a couple of old school friends briefly which was great but, sadly, wasn’t able to take the time to visit friends in Ottawa and Montreal. Next time! I did manage to get a little sailing in on Lake Ontario thanks to my brother-in-law who does some racing and also a few deliveries. It was a strange sensation sailing on a lake. Although lake waters can get equally as choppy as the seas, the movement is somehow quite different.

By the time I left, my Mom was settled into her new apartment and progressing slowly on the road to recovery. I hated to leave but I'd been away for two months and time was marching on.

My Mom's 85th Birthday...............................................................................Pubbing with old school friends

Sailing past Toronto.....................................................................................Oakville Yacht Squadron
Sailing past Toronto.....................................................................................Oakville Yacht Squadron

Trinidad

Whilst I was away, Paul tackled a myriad of boat jobs. For those of you who own one, you will know that there is ALWAYS a myriad of boat jobs. For those who don’t, picture in your mind house maintenance, and then multiply it at least tenfold, but before you do that, shrink it, bounce it around a bit and make every conceivable part inaccessible – this gives a tiny hint of what maintaining a sailboat is all about! I arrived back to a bright clean bottom, new cockpit table, new dinghy davits and a whole host of other things fixed, replaced, cleaned or chucked overboard. Yup, he’d been really busy!

The Orinoco Delta

I had only just stepped back in Trinidad when we upped anchor and headed off to the Orinoco Delta with a couple of other boats. Paul had been chatting to various other cruisers who had either been or were planning to go so a group of us took off to head across the Serpent’s Mouth towards the huge river mouth.

Talk about getting away from it all! Magnificent, peaceful, remote and well worth the experience. We took Calypso 50 miles inland, stopping each night wherever it took our fancy. A dozen times in our dinghy, we paddled down tiny tributaries, ducking fallen branches and vines, chopped our way with machetes, powered through thick water hyacinth, and wondered if we were the first humans to have ever travelled right there! It is so easy to believe that this were so! We saw parrots, macaws, parakeets, southern screamers, toucans, scarlet ibis, woodpeckers and many birds we haven’t been able to put names to yet. We discovered that parrots & macaws always travel in pairs – parakeets are obviously a bit more social, they seem to travel in groups. We woke to the sounds of howler monkeys and saw them early in the morning high in the trees, waking and stretching before moving off into the undergrowth. We also found the little capuchin monkey and even saw a tarantula! The rivers are home to two types of fresh water dolphins, the Boto, one of the largest and the Tucuxi, one of the smallest. Neither is particularly attractive but they often slowly played around us in the muddy waters. No anacondas to be seen though. Our days were full of adventuring down one river or the other or simply exploring the swamps in our dinghies.

The Orinoco Delta is inhabited by the Warao Indians (Warao means people of the canoe). An extremely friendly & delightful race of people who rowed out to us in their dugout canoes to wave, smile and sometimes to trade their basketwork with whatever you had to offer. For this reason, we deliberately took pencils, books, crayons, kiddies things and traded old clothes. Even tiny children handled the canoes as though they’d been born in them (some probably had!) We were invited to one of the villages which was quite an experience. Their homes are built on stilts over the wetlands or mangrove swamps, with no outer or inner walls. They sleep in handmade hammocks (and when I say handmade, I mean totally, even down to the string they are woven with!) Roofs are plaited palm leaves and cooking fires appeared to be built on flat stones on the floor. No hint of having reached the 20^th Century let alone the 21^st!


One of our trips took us through a small river connecting two of the larger tributaries. This was quite something as we were not in our dinghies but in our sailboats, winding our way through a narrow path about 20 miles long with overhanging branches, fallen trees, huge floating logs and shallow waters! Paul likened it to threading a needle, a little nerve-racking but quite an enjoyable experience!

I can honestly say that this has been one of our major highlights to date. If I were to find anything negative to say about it, it would be the bugs, the damned bugs! Mosquitoes, no-see-ums and deer flies! The biggest decision of the day was; do I put the sunscreen on first or the anti-bug spray? Cream or spray? In the end, it’s necessary to plaster yourself with both so you just hope they work either way! Paul has come away with nasty sores and swollen ankles which must all stem from too many mosquito bites which have turned rather ghastly.

We returned to Trinidad to find our friends, Bronte & Helmke on Cooee Too and, a couple of days later, we were there to welcome, at long last, our South African friends, Otto & Lillian on Vagabond, after three months of crossing the Atlantic! Well done Vagabond!

As I finish this, we are at anchor, just for the weekend, with Cooee Too on a small island off Trinidad . Bronte, as always, has caught a small tuna so we’ll be indulging in sushi tonight! And Helmke just has to be the ace sushi chef! The great life carries on but it’s back to work tomorrow as Calypso has a few electrical problems and we’ve just discovered that we have a broken part on our prop which makes reversing rather difficult. The list never seems to come to an end!