Nothing has changed. We are still out of the water but hopefully, we are approaching the end of our major maintenance work. We have been moved from our ‘swamp’ - only a few yards, but we are no longer awash in foot-high water every time we have a heavy downpour of rain!

Mike’s Page will fill you in on all of our work we have been doing during August.

Chaguaramas used to be a US military base during World War 2 and there is a Military museum just along the bay from us so we took a day off this week and cycled along to it. It was only 20 TT dollars entry fee, (£2), and we found it very interesting. The museum is privately owned and has no Government funding and it shows. The exhibits are housed in an old dusty building with a corrugated tin roof and even though we arrived there early in the day it was stiflingly hot inside. There is air conditioning, we were told later, but it is broken and they haven’t the money to repair it at the moment!

The exhibition covers the military history of the country from the earliest days of the Conquistadors overcoming the native Carib and Arawak Indians, through the various buccaneers and pirates taking advantage of the lust for gold in South America to the islands involvement in the two World Wars. The two Macaws above were in a cage here which was a little unsettling to see. Fly, fly, fly!

As a matter of interest, for those old enough to remember the Andrew’s Sisters hit song in the 1940’s - ‘Rum and Coca Cola’ - it was at the nearby village of Point Cumana that ‘mother and daughter were ‘working’ for the Yankee dollar!’

There has been a flurry of activity this weekend. The 31st August is Independence Day in T&T. They gained their independence in 1962 and obviously take great pride in their yearly celebrations. The weekend kicked off with a street show featuring the current Calypso Queen and King, dancers, drummers, ‘jumblies’ (stilt walkers) and a great ‘pan’ band, Exodus, who are one of the best around. They have taken ‘pan’ to another level with their jazz orchestral arrangements. You can hear a few clips here.

On the Saturday we went out on our friends Joy and Rogers’ boat ‘Flyfisher.’ They kindly invited us to join their family for a day’s fishing, power boat watching (we unfortunately were too late to see the big powerboats go past on their annual Great Race to Tobago), eating, drinking and swimming. It was just what we needed after months of working hard and it was very intuitive of them to see we needed a day off! Thanks to all the crew of Flyfisher again.

We MAY be back in the water next month. Our visa extension runs out on the 24th September so we will have to make a decision on what to do as we don’t want to travel north until November when the hurricane season will be over. Watch this space!

A few photos below.

Cheers.