Chaguaramas: Skipper's Paradise!

A bay lined with boat-yards, chandleries, boat-motor shops, boat electronics workshops, rigging specialists, sailmakers and huge lifts and cranes to move boats swiftly and easily from sea to land and back. Brightly lit and noisy with welding and hammering, smelly with oil and dark diesel smoke: a picture postcard of a sailor's paradise!

Actually it's surprisingly pretty. Well organized, no litter or mess. All the rusty oil drums have become musical instruments! There is a narrow strip of boat industry along the bay and dense green jungley hillsides rising up from the forest of white boat masts.

We find our new "home", Peake's Boat Yard. The office is in the cosy, red-tiled, green-trimmed restaurant and 8-room hotel, "The Bight". That's where we'll stay when "Babette" goes up on the hard. Palms and purple flowered vines lead to the tiled patio along the shore. And to our room, nr.7! Right upstairs is the restaurant veranda, the bar indoors.

Check-in at customs/immigrations is easy, coming from Tobago. After leaving the Customs quai at the "Crew's Inn" area we anchor sort of mid-bay. The holding is said to be poor, but we seem to have set the anchor as well as possible, in about 9m of water. With 35m of chain out it's time for a snoozzzzzzze.