Cayo Tabaco Cuba

Tuesday 19 February was a positioning day for us.  El Gato and Carlotta’s Promise left an hour before us heading for Cienfuegos whilst we upped anchor at 0740 and headed in the direction of Trinidad.  Our guide book states, “Trinidad is a perfectly preserved Spanish colonial settlement frozen in time at around 1850.  Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988, it’s Cuba’s oldest and most enchanting ‘outdoor museum’.”  A bit of a must see we thought!

Another laundry day ‘on the go’

Our issue was that the nearest harbour where we could anchor is very shallow but with the right timing for the tide, according to the depths in our cruising guide and on the chart, we should be able to get in.  That said, there was the suggestion that we might need to plough BV’s keel through the top layer of silt in the shallowest part of the entrance.

High tide was at 1000hrs on Wednesday morning so we wanted to find a cay close enough that we’d only have a short passage to the approaches of Marina Marlin Trinidad, making timing our entrance easier.  Cayo Tabaco, in the large bay just south of Trinidad and its seaport, Casilda, looked ideal so we set off in that direction.  En route we fired up the generator and watermaker and Nicky tackled some laundry whilst the watermaker replenished the tanks.

It was actually a really nice sailing day until lunchtime when we had to switch the engine on to finish the last hour of the passage.  We’re clearly in a weather cycle of wind at night and in the morning but nothing in the afternoon.  But, all in all, it was a pretty civilised sail and, guess what, we had prawns for lunch!

Pelican, pterodactyl or bomber?

At 1400hrs we were welcomed to the anchorage at Cayo Tabaco by an inquisitive pelican.  These are amazing birds to watch.  They are big birds and they seem so ungainly on the ground or, more usually, floating on the sea but in the air they are very graceful, though they are rather reminiscent of big bombers or pterodactyls.  We were treated to several low-level formation flypasts by a pair and then watched them divebomb for fish, opening their beaks at the last moment to catch their prey.

But we couldn’t laze around all afternoon.  It was a long time since BV had had her bottom scrubbed properly (as Nicky had pointed out the day before), so we set up the hooker system, fired up the generator and Charlotte and I used the 2 regulators to dive on the hull and sponge off the green slime and weed that had accumulated, whilst Nicky did it the harder way, free-diving with a snorkel.  About half an hour into the job Charlotte and I suddenly found it difficult to breath underwater and, on surfacing, realised that the generator had stopped running.

The tops off the fuel tanks… again!!!!

Clearly, I’d missed something.  Nicky and I lifted the saloon table off and raised the floorboards yet again to allow access to the fuel tanks.  This generator fuel supply issue was becoming extremely frustrating to resolve.  We took the top off both tanks and did another check for diesel bug debris. There was a small amount I’d missed in the forward tank and there was a tiny bit of debris in the generator one-way valve but nothing that would obviously cause problems.  To be on the safe side I also took apart the diesel bug catcher on the main engine again.  Here too there was a small amount of debris but nothing to get alarmed about. With everything put back together the generator fired up again and ran okay.  Let’s just hope that it stays that way.

Caribbean cocktails from a coconut

So, after another lovely day (if you ignore the generator issue, which is, we hope, resolved), we took the top off another of the coconuts, added some suitable cocktail ingredients and handed around the Caribbean equivalent of the wassail cup. Add in a bowl of fried pimenton padron and it was good way to end the day.

Cayo Tabaco, Cuba