Sailing to Tobago

Since Syms birthday we have been waiting for a good weather forecast to sail to Tobago to go and meet Bev, Lisa, Bran man and Baby Jenson, who are coming to stay at Turtle Beach in Tobago. Jesus Christ….how come every time we want to sail to meet family and friends the weather turns crappy and the wind goes in the wrong direction to what we want. We have been checking everyday for the last two weeks and have been waiting for the wind to have a slight North to it, or even a bloody straight and normal East will do...but no everyday has got a bloody south in it… Can you believe of all the five odd months we have been here, its always east or north east.

Anyway , enough of my ranting, we get the best we can get before leaving it too late and head off on the 10th May. The forecast is east (maybe some south east but not too much)and about 13 - 16 knots. We leave the anchorage in Prickly Bay at about midday and head 82 miles to Scarborough, Tobago!! Our plan is to sail as close to the wind as possible and prob do a far bit of tacking. So more or less we are expecting a choppy sail. We plan to do an over nighter and get there for the following morning. We reckon we could make that distance just within daylight hours, but we are going to be sailing into 2 or so knots of current so the daylight option is out of the question. One nighters are always horrible. We hate them for the simple fact that it always takes a a day or two to get into the rountine and we can never sleep comfortably on the first night,hence we always end up awake for most of it and completly knackered the time we arrive!!

Well the whole day and night is horrible( for me anyway). In all fairness the sea conditions were great and we managed to sail it hard to the wind all in one tack…how amazing she sailed - we were going about 5 to 6 knots the whole way (This may be because Sym spent the previous two days scrubbing the hull of the limpets, fish and weeds we had living on our boat. We also had no water and not much fuel so she was light as chips!!
The only bad point was that I felt sick as a parrot the whole way. All these sea miles under my belt and I go and get ill on a one day sail…perhaps its cos its our first sail in about 5 months ( well anything over a few hours) and I had to get my sea legs all over again..
Feeling queasy on a boat is possibly the horriblest thing known to man kind, you feel so helpless and sorry for yourself and you are a complete waste of space. Anyone who has been sea sick knows exactly what im talking about. Sym did all the cooking and making drink while I just stayed on deck all night keeping watch.

Finally we arrived at first light and sailed slowly around into the Port of Scarborough. By then I was starting to feel better and I got cheered up by catching yet another Tuna fish… We are becoming the kings of fishing now!