Hello Trinidad.

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So, appetites have been truly whetted by my confusing last post... boat? land? what? I don’t know what the day is today, let alone the date, but following my fun-filled family Christmas with my sister and her babba, I got into the whole 'family' bit, and wondered where could I take it from here? 'Where' indeed, turned out to be pretty far, three plane trips, in fact. Armed with my recently discovered sense of peoples mortality and my newfound zen-like non-angry persona, I ended up arranging to go and visit my father, and spend some time with him, for, as I said on the phone as we arranged the visit "Its occurred to me that you could like, die. Because, you’re like, old".
My dad happens to be living on a yacht. He normally sails about on said yacht with his wife (the nautical - wind -appropriately named Westa) but she is recovering from some fairly major shoulder surgery, which left Dad on the boat on his own. I'm a pretty poor sailor - lets be clear on this. Sheffield trams could make me vomit, so I'm full on Linda Blair on a boat. I can’t often tell my left from my right without several attempts, I get sunburned easily, and don’t absorb vitamins as well as the other hominoids (hence I'm prone to bouts of scurvy). Still, I was intrigued by the chance to spend some time trapped in a 39ft floating tin, with one other person, and that person would be the male, grown-up version of me. I know what you’re thinking... two Beths in one small place? With no-one but the other for company? Is this some kind of sit-com from-hell pitch? Possibly. We definitely have the 'sit (ch)' - the boat, and there’s a fair amount of miss hearing and bumping into things -could this be the com? Anyway, after researching (I googled "Films where kids bond with their fathers" - sadly mostly all about fathers and sons, at least one of whom had to be terminally ill, and all pretty appalling movies, although My Life as a House was quite sweet) and packing up my $200 hair straighteners and pair of 'super-awesome' bluebird cowboy boots, I left grey old UK, via Heathrow and Manchester airports, to go get my nautical on.

I flew to Grenada, where Dad picked me up. His boat is the good ship Marsha Claire, pictured above. It is 39 feet long, and 12 feet wide. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms -making it more impressive statisticly than anywhere I have lived in my adult life. We stayed in Grenada for 4 days where we were moored in the sea in Prickly Bay. It was a five minute dingy ride from the boat to the shore. This is the first time I have ever been able to start the dingy. A good sign. We went for two practice sails before our big overnight sail to Trinidad. It turns out sailing at night is pretty lame, especially when its pitch dark (the moon doesnt come up here until quite late in the night), its dark, scary and lonley. But not cold. It is never cold here. Its about 30-something degrees in the day, and once I saw the thermometer go down to around 24 one night. Anyway, we managed to avoid and death or disaster that night (although I dont think Dad wore his harness once, even during the very short but marginally exciting 'squall'). We arrived in Trinidad in the morning, where the boat was going to be hauled onto the ground to have its bottom painted. So now we are parked in a big old boatyard, where all the boats stand upright, balanced on their keels and metal support poles. You get in and out of your boat via a metal ladder, so its like living in a very hot treehouse. Good fun though, in a very Baden-Powell way. We will be hear for another week or so, until the boat work is finished. trinidad is much more fun than Grenada. Theres a jungle behind us, with howler monkeys which sound like machinery, and giant butterflies. There are steel-bands who practice in yards and are much cooler sounding than I ever expected. We've been out running in the jungle and are going bird-watching on an old plantation tomorrow. The internet connection comes and goes, but I will get some better pictures up soon, promise.