Bush Fires Rage in Trinidad

We've been waking in the morning to heavy, grey skies, not because the sun isn't shining, but because bush fires are raging in the hills above the marina. The smoke is so dense, it burns your eyes within minutes. Combined with temps in the 90sF/30sC and high humidity, it's hard to breathe. It's stifling. This is all too vividly reminiscent of the fires in Tasmania while we were there. The decks are gray with soot and smoke.  

March is traditionally the driest month of the year here, and bush fires are nothing new in Trinidad. Officially the “bush fire season” runs from December 1 to June 30 each year. The latest Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service Dry Spell/Drought monitor at the end of March 2016 shows that rainfall this year was less than 50% of average in most parts of the country. They're blaming the current declining El Niño for influencing drier and hotter local conditions and it's expected to continue during April and May. Lord knows we saw plenty of bush fires burning on our recent trip around the island.

In the meantime, there's a severe water shortage in the area. Tobago, Trinidad's sister island, is harder hit to the point of crisis. Here in Trinidad, water conservation rules are in effect, not so different than we experience in Las Vegas or Colorado during the dry summer months.

Most of the fires are started by locals who routinely burn their fields. With so little rainfall, everything is tinder dry, but still they persist in the burning thinking that they can control it, but obviously in many cases, they cannot. There's a helicopter that makes routine runs over the marina dropping sea water on the fires, but we wonder how effective it is based on so many areas of concern.

It will be good to be back to the sea, away from cities and fires and soot and smoke, where the salt air is fresh and clean and we can breathe in deeply without coughing. All the more incentive to get our jobs done and get back into the water. Soon … very soon!

Trini Food - Hot Stuff!

Living in Trinidad for awhile, we've had the opportunity to sample some of the local food. It's a mix of Indian and Creole and African, with a Caribbean flair. They make use of locally grown veggies and fruits mixed with the spices they're use to. They like “HOT”. In fact, one of the world's hottest peppers, the Moruga Scorpion is grown here. Hot sauce is usually available and on the table in every restaurant.

We've talked about roti before, but there are so many different foods here that we've never mentioned. Bake & Shark, for instance. First, you catch a shark, cut the meat into sandwich-size filets and deep fry it. Then you fry up some dough (aka bake) and make a sandwich. Add some lettuce and tomato and maybe some catsup or hot sauce and you've got bake & shark. Maracas Beach, on the north coast, is especially noted for this local favorite, but we saw signs advertising it throughout the island. David tried it and liked it … basically a fried fish sandwich with a bite.

Doubles are offered daily right outside the Power Boats entrance gate. The local workers line up at little makeshift stands and the ladies dish up the doubles for breakfast and lunch. Doubles are a pretty common street food here. It's basically a flatbread sandwich filled with channa (curried chick peas) and some kind of topping like mango, tamarind or cucumbers and maybe some added hot sauce.

Legend has it that those who eat cascadura (aka cascadoo) will end up back in Trinidad. It's a freshwater fish covered with scales and does not look particularly appealing. It's usually served curried and we heard about it, but never got a chance to try it. I guess we're not coming back.

Fruit chows, comprised of local fruit in season like mango and pineapple, are common and sold as a snack food. The fruit is mixed with lime juice, garlic, cilantro, oil and peppers.

There's souse which sounds disgusting. Pig trotters or chicken claws (i.e. pig or chicken feet) and sometimes conch, are boiled and the meat (how much meat is there on a chicken foot?) is served cold in a briny sauce seasoned with lime, cukes, peppers and onions. We passed on this one, too.

The locals also hunt during season (and probably out of season) for agouti, iguana, possum (manicou), wild hogs (quenks) and armadillo (tatoo). We saw none of these on the our menus. Just as well.

At the market, I had to do a little translation. Ochro is okra, melongene is eggplant and zaboca is the local avocado. Papaya is pawpaw. Garbanzo beans are chickpeas or channa. Dasheen is taro and its leaves are used to make the African-Caribbean callaloo soup, which is quite good.

When we were at Toco Beach, we were offered sea moss (sea weed) … both dried and also as a drink. The fellow selling it claimed it was good for energy. We read that Trini men also claim it to be an aphrodisiac. If it is, it would certainly be more ecologically sound than rhino horn powder.

While we were driving through the countryside, we saw a small, hand-painted sign for “Sucker Bags for sale”. Turns out this is a frozen confection made from sweetened, condensed milk.

There's also coocoo (corn meal and ochre) and cowheel soup, pigtail and frypork and several dishes where goat is the main ingredient. There's probably dozens more dishes we've never tried or heard of. Eating in a foreign country is always interesting, but Trinidad has been an ongoing epicurean adventure.

The Blue View - Replacing the Shaft Seal

As part of the process of replacing the cutlass bearing, the old shaft seal had to be removed. I installed a 'dripless' shaft seal about 14 years ago, and while I've serviced it regularly over the years, I thought it might be a good time to replace it as well.

If you're not a yachtie or a boater, you may be asking “What the heck is a shaft seal and why do I care anyway”. Or, more likely, you've tuned out by now and decided to wait till Marcie's next blog tomorrow. If you're still with me, however, I'll talk about installing a new shaft seal.

The shaft seal, as its name implies, forms a seal around the propeller shaft as it exits the bottom of the boat through the stern tube. It prevents water gushing into the boat without causing any wear on the shaft while it rotates. Traditionally, this was accomplished by something called a stuffing box, which consisted of a threaded sleeve attached to the stern tube and a large nut. The sleeve was filled with wraps of a packing material – typically woven flax impregnated with wax, grease or lubricants, then the nut was tightened down until the flax was compressed against the shaft, forming a seal.

To keep the flax from drying out or overheating, it needed to be lubricated with seawater. The packing nut would be tightened or loosened from time to time to ensure the amount of water the stuffing box was leaking was optimal – on a sailboat this was about 10-15 drops per minute. Over time, the flax would harden and wouldn't seal effectively, so it had to be dug out and replaced every few years. Stuffing boxes are still quite common, but the packing material is now synthetic, rather than flax, and require less maintenance.

Nine of Cups originally had stuffing boxes on both the prop shaft and the rudder. Shortly after we bought her, I replaced the stuffing box with a new 'dripless' shaft seal. There were a few varieties available, and I chose the P.S.S. Shaft Seal made by PYI, Inc. It consists of a stainless steel rotor that attaches to the shaft and a carbon graphite flange that attaches to the stern tube with a bellow.

The stainless rotor is held in place with two set screws. I removed these, lubricated the shaft with some dishwashing soap, then slid the rotor off the shaft. The bellow is secured to the stern tube with two hose clamps. I removed these, worked the bellow free of the stern tube and slid it off the shaft as well. Note that we are on the hard... the stern tube will admit an amazing amount of water once the rotor is allowed to slide away from the flange if the boat is in the water.

Installing the new shaft seal is straightforward, and complete instructions are provided by the manufacturer. Slide the new bellow-flange assembly in place over the stern tube and secure it with two hose clamps. Lubricate the shaft with dishwashing soap and carefully slide the new rotor into place. The rotor has two o-rings that seal it against the shaft, and some care should be taken to avoid damaging them as it is slid over the end of the shaft. Position the rotor so that it just touches the flange, slide it another inch or so, compressing the bellow, then tighten the set screws.

A few years ago, while we were sailing along the south coast of Australia, the rotor slid back along the shaft and we began taking on water. There was an adrenaline-filled hour or so while we figured out the problem and corrected it. A friend, John on Active Transport, had the same problem, and he prevented the possibility of a re-occurrence by mounting a shaft anode on the prop shaft. That seemed like a good idea, so we did the same.

The shaft seal is lubricated and cooled by seawater. To make sure there is no airlock and that water is getting to the bearing, it is important to 'burp' the seal once the boat is back in the water. I do this by compressing the bellow, making sure water flows out.

So there you go … new shaft seal installed. Time to move on to the next project.