A boat out of the water: Whisper on the hard in Trinidad

June 23, 2008

Whisper out of her element: on the hard, sails and rigging removed and lockers empty in Trinidad.

We’re posting this blog update from a coffee shop at the international airport in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Our flight leaves in a couple hours to London, where we’ll transfer planes and arrive in Sweden on Wednesday. The past week since arriving in Trinidad has been hectic trying to get Whisper cleaned and prepared to be left alone for three months. After endless amounts of cleaning, scrubbing, washing and trying to dry cushions in between frequent rain showers, Whisper is clean well put away for her summer vacation from sailing. We had no time to explore around Trinidad, but we look forward to doing that when we return in the fall. Almost everyone we have met here has been exceedingly friendly and helpful.



Scotland Bay, a peaceful, jungle-y anchorage near the marinas at Chaguaramas. We had a great sail from Grenada, 80 miles in 16 hours. The winds were pretty light but the seas were just a small chop so we were still able to average about 5 knots under full sail. The last couple hours were at night with the full moon, beautiful!

In preparation for leaving Whisper, we emptied and cleaned every locker on the boat. Kristen climbed in the cockpit lockers and scrubbed them with bleach while Hans encouraged her while drinking a beer in the cockpit. There's something wrong with this picture!

Hans' turn to clean: we removed the sails and scrubbed them with soap and fresh water.

The sails drying.

Return of the gypsy boat: All of the stuff in the cockpit lockers is stowed on deck while we clean. After a week of cleaning, we managed to get rid of at least 4 huge garbage bags of stuff. Maybe we won't have to raise the waterline after all!

Kit Kat and Hans wait to be hauled out.

Kit Kat looks over at Whisper from her summer home on the sailboat Tilly Whim.

Posing in front of Whisper--all clean and ready for summer storage.

We're always mentioning how we're the smallest boat in every anchorage--this picture is a pretty good illustration: the blue boat on the left (Tilly Whim) is 36 feet and the one on the right is around 45 feet.

Hans fuels up on some health food at the airport before the flight.