Ok, we’ve been completely blog delinquent but are trying to get back on line. We’ve been from Grenada to Venezuela, with a trip to New York for a wedding, stopped in Bonaire for a bit and now we’re in Curacao, on our way to Columbia via Aruba (the A of the ABC islands).
Grenada
On 28 May, we weighed anchor and said good-bye to our friends, especially La Buena Vida, as we motored out of Tyrell Bay in Carriacou. Soon we were under sail and had an easy broad reach to Grenada. We sailed past the volcano exclusion zone of Kickem Jenny and into the lee of Grenada. Soon we were rounding Point Saline and heading directly into the wind and the current for a raucous 3 mile ride to Prickly Bay. We weren’t without friends for long for it was there that we spotted Dawn and Laurie of Cat Tales, our good pals from Bermuda and St. Lucia. We had no sooner dropped anchor than there they were, swimming in the water beside us, inviting us over for sundowners aboard their boat.
Prickly Bay is a popular cruiser destination and over the years it has become organized to provide support. There is the morning cruiser net on VHF radio, informing boaters of the weather, upcoming events, tours, shopping trips and help offered and wanted. Soon after our arrival, we took a Friday night bus ride to the northern town of Guyave, the fishing center of Grenada, for the weekly fish fry and bazaar. This particular event was special because it coincided with the renaming of the Grenada international airport to the Maurice Bishop International Airport, plus the first Annual Grenada Music Festival. It was a very festive and tasty evening.
Finding Prickly Bay a little too rolling for our taste, we moved west a couple of bays into Clark’s Court Bay. There we enjoyed the free internet from the nearby Whisper Cove Marina, and the weekly spaghetti and hamburger dinners, as well as dominoes on Sunday afternoons. It wasn’t all hedonistic pleasures, though. While there, maintenance was conducted on Songbird and Bill spent a couple of Saturday mornings with other cruisers tutoring local school children.
While here, we began sounding out other cruisers for their itineraries. Our insurance company wanted us to go to Venezuela for Trinidad for hurricane season. Trinidad was a bit out of our way, since we wanted to go west later, and marina facilities, although very good, were more expensive than in Venezuela. The problem with Venezuela was the reports of piracy offshore, so we wanted to go in a convoy. Without too much effort, we found five other boats to join up with. They were Dreamtime (whom we’d been in touch with since Bequia), Lunasea, Maria Elisa, N’Joyboat III, and Free Spirit (we’d met her skipper, Bo, way back in St. Martin).
Los Testigos
On the evening of July 8, without notice, we set sail for an overnight passage to the Venezuelan islands of Los Testigos. We sailed without lights and kept radio contact to a minimum. As it happened, as dawn broke, we realized that we had all separated rather widely (or maybe only we did). Despite that, we seem to have arrived at our destination within 30 minutes of each other, completely unscathed. We spent three nights in these pretty, unspoiled islands. The Guarda Costa has a station there, and there are two families of fishermen living at opposite ends of the islands. The island is also dotted with a few fishermen camps. At evening, the large wooden boats we came to recognize as unique Venezuelan designs came in to anchor. Unfortunately, none of them offered us lobster. On our last evening, we dinghied ashore to a pristine beach for sundowners beneath a few palm trees and stood in awe of our good fortune to be able to appreciate such beauty.
Margarita, Venezuela
Our next passage was only a day sail, but kind of a long one. We weighed anchor at first light (now there were just four of us—Dreamtime and Free Spirit had sped on before us). We weren’t alone. Several boats had left the anchorage and were on our same course. We made the anchorage at Porlamar mid afternoon and, as planned, dropped more or less, in the middle of the pack.
For security, just about all cruisers anchor in Porlamar. The first dominant feature of this anchorage is the dock of Marina Juan, just about the only secure place in the island to leave your dinghy. Marina Juan is a Venezuelan who is dedicated to providing services to cruisers. Besides the long, guarded dock (complete with garbage bins), he provides clearing in services (he takes all your papers to Customs, Immigration, Port Captain, and Guarda), bus services to shopping, a small marina shop, and weekly happy hour.
We turned in on our first night in Margarita with some trepidation. The anchorage was surrounded by hotels and our experience in much of the Caribbean had taught us that this increases the probability of being bombarded by reggae, soca, and ska well into the beginning of the next day. That night, there was music indeed-- several bands, in fact. The difference is that they played Latin jazz and blues, and played it well, and not very loudly. Now, it was keeping us awake, but only because we wanted to hear it. We felt we might like this place.
Shopping in Margarita is more than just a trip to the local market. First of all, Venezuela is a large country in its own right with a large consumer market. Secondly, Margarita is a duty free island and a Venezuelan tourist destination. These factors combine to make Margarita a great place to just Shop. The bus leaving Marina Juan’s takes passengers to a very good and very large grocery store where purchases are boxed, labeled and delivered to your dinghy at Juan’s dock. In addition, the grocery is located in a very large, very modern, very air-conditioned mall where many consumer items are available for very little money. Self-control must be exercised—we live in a boat!
Speaking of purchases, Venezuela is a great place to refuel. Venezuela produces oil, of course. In addition, gasoline and diesel sales are subsidized. Venezuelans buy diesel for about 5 cents a gallon, actually less than it costs to produce it. For us, there’s the special foreigner price, but even that’s easy to take. Each tank was about half full and we topped both off for a little under $17—the price per gallon being 38 cents. Wow.
So, these were the benefits of life there. Unfortunately, there are some serious downsides. The first one is crime. We were warned daily to raise and lock our dinghies to our boats at night to avoid having them taken. Our first day there, we were told of a boat that had had its dinghy stolen while they watched from the cockpit. One of the thieves was actually talking to them while it was being taken. Also, crime on shore is rampant, and not just against visitors. This is accompanied by, and to an extent, exacerbated by, the politics of the country. As it happened, most of our information on how Venezuelans feel about their president has come, usually unsolicited, from taxi drivers. They say he is ruining their country. The most revealing conversation came from a driver who took us on a day-long tour of the island. According to him, Venezuela has a difficult time just functioning because many of the educated, professional technicians and managers have been replaced by uneducated Chavistas. An example he gave of this practice was the inability of an oil refinery to open after routine closing for maintenance, resulting in Venezuela needing to import refined fuel. He said there is a new class of people in Venezuela called the Boli-Bourgoisie. These are largely incompetent political appointments into the government bureaucracy that are milking the country of revenue. There are many other outrages. One can only feel for the people, most of whom we found hard-working, friendly and fun. Venezuela is a sophisticated, hip, modern country that has enormous potential and can realize it if the people are only given the leadership they deserve.
By the end of July, it was time for us to move to the Venezuelan mainland. We weighed anchor on July 27th and, stopping overnight along the way in a small island of Cubagua, sailed toward Puerto La Cruz. . On the way we saw two pods of dolphins, the first one being perhaps a half dozen. They had come out to play with us. We were delighted and relieved to see this, for we hadn’t seen any at all our whole way down the island chain. Later that afternoon (it was a calm day and we were mostly motoring), Bill saw waves breaking on the horizon, a long chain of them. It turned out to be a long chain of perhaps thousands of dolphins. Their path intercepted ours. They were clearly migrating (or following a migration of smaller fish), but many interrupted their job to turn back and give us a pass or two
Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela
As so often happens after a passage with little or no wind, the wind really kicked up just as Bill was trying to drop the mainsail outside our entrance to Puerto La Cruz harbor. We came bounding in with a 20 knot breeze. We were met by a small boat and led into a first class marina and our slip. It was Bahia Redondo Marina, our new home on the South American continent. This was not the life to which we had grown accustomed. The marina is surrounded by palm trees and well maintained gardens and grounds. It has a large swimming pool (with an island in the middle), restaurant, small grocery, travel agencies, etc. Like nothing we could afford in the states. Bill’s first order of business was to hook up the electricity and see if the air conditioning worked. (We can never use it at anchor—and don’t usually need it out where there are breezes—and it hasn’t run since we had last been in a marina about 3 years ago). Miraculously, it worked, both the unit for the main cabin and our stateroom aft. Now we were living in the lap of luxury
We spent only a week at the slip because we had plans to return to the US for the month of August and, during that time, have Songbird hauled out and placed in the adjacent boatyard, since she was due to have the bottom cleaned and repainted. So, on 30 July we moved to the well and the old girl (all 20 tons of her) was slowly lifted out of the water and gingerly placed on land. We were amazed at what the bottom of the boat held. It was a regular marine ecosystem. Things came plopping off the bottom and crawling away. It smelled like paella, raw, old paella. We spent the next few days readying the boat for storage, and on the 3rd of August, departed Venezuela for New York. The precipitating event was the marriage of our daughter Jessica. We also took the opportunity to have annual checkups, and to buy those special food items that we’ve grown accustomed to and are only available in the US.
The wedding was an unforgettably, joyous event. Happiness and love were in abundance. It was so nice to see family and visit with so many of Jessica’s old friends that we hadn’t seen since she was in college.
After an arduous return trip, we arrived back in Puerto La Cruz and began work on our boat. After a little fiber glassing, three coats of bottom paint were applied and, on September 4th, Songbird was launched. We were delighted to discover that we could have the same slip we’d had before we left. Life was very easy in the marina. It was secure because the marina was walled and the docks were patrolled by guards, guards packing heat, in fact. They all had holsters containing sawed-off shotguns—a little over-the-top by American standards but effective, one supposes. We soon discovered lunching at the “Chicken Shack”, a small beach-front café outside the marina complex that served ice-cold beer and very good local food. One of our favorites was a dish called Ayucca, a complex combination of vegetables, meats and fruits wrapped in a Yucca leaf.
Our marina was located in a complex of canals called the Morro Complex. It contains several marinas and fabulous houses. Sometimes it seemed like a South American version of Venice. At the bottom of the canals (within dinghy distance) was an upscale mall where just about anything we needed could be found. Life was easy here, although confining. Because of security, we couldn’t wander outside the marina. Taxis were necessary. Fortunately, they were affordable.
We would have loved to have taken tours to the interior of Venezuela, there’s much to be seen: Angel Falls, the Andean city of Merida, tours into the Amazon jungles, and much more. Unfortunately, our budget couldn’t allow it. By the end of September, the time had come for us to begin our way toward the Western Caribbean, but the Venezuelan government had other ideas.
As the sun began to set on September 22nd, the marina was swarmed by red-shirted officials of the Seniat (the Venezuelan tax collection agency) accompanied by armed Guarda Costa personnel. A sign was placed on Songbird, along with virtually every boat in the marina, that said (in Spanish) Preventive Withhold. We were informed, very nicely, that we could not move our boats until the captain of the vessel had personally appeared before Seniat authorities in Guanta about 15 minutes away. The next morning, Bill and four other skippers took a cab to the appropriate offices. After waiting for several hours, Bill finally met one of the officials from Curacas. He first asked, “When was your boat taken?” Bill was taken aback. Our boat had been taken? He recovered and said, “Yesterday.” The official was very polite and apologetic. He said he was very sorry that he had to go through this, that the purpose of all this was to catch Venezuelans who had been illegally registering their boats under foreign flags to avoid paying taxes and that after showing our papers, he would have to wait until noon, and then he would receive a paper “liberating” our vessel. At ten minutes to five that evening, the paper was received. We were then allowed to remove the sticker and move about in our vessel freely. The others we had planned to leave with didn’t get their boats liberated for three days.
Tortuga, Venezuela
On October first, we motored out of our marina receiving a heartwarming send-off from the many friends we’d made in our little community. The next day, after an overnight stop off the island of Chimana Segunda, we sailed to a bay called Playa Caldera on the island of Isla La Tortuga. On the way there, Bill was delighted to catch a Blue Fin tuna! The next morning, we sailed to the west end of the island and Cayo Herrardura, a gorgeous, sheltered anchorage. We caught another tuna on the way here, so again, we had good, fresh fish for dinner. The next day, after a beautiful, moonlit night, we decided to explore the island. We dinghied over to a small lagoon on the windward side and explored. While Pam collected seashells, Bill noticed that some of them were not opened. With very little effort, his pockets were full fresh clams. That night, we enjoyed linguini with clam sauce. This living off the bounty of nature is a pretty good deal!
Los Roques, Venezuela
Our next stop was a 14 by 25 mile archipelago called Los Roques—the rocks. While the main islands in this group are very large rocks, many are small, mangrove covered islands, surrounded on the windward side by a huge coral reef. The result is kind of a pristine lake of ocean water in the middle of the sea, dotted with pretty, little islands. It is a national park and a real marine playground. A lot of Venezuelans sprint over from the mainland (about 70 miles away) in their power boats to enjoy this. Fortunately, our stay didn’t coincide that much with the weekend, so we missed many of them. Unfortunately, we could not spend the time here the place deserves because of visa restrictions. We had checked out of Venezuela on the mainland and therefore could only transit through the islands.
We spent a couple of days in Gran Roque (one of the big rock islands) enjoying the pleasant village there. The streets were all pedestrian streets lined with colorful stucco buildings. The island had some good restaurants, too. From there, we sailed to a small island called Sarqui, sailing at 5 knots under genoa alone in flat water. The next morning, after Bill had a quick snorkel to what he said was the best reef he’d seen, we sailed to Cayo de Agua, an island who owes its name to the fact that fresh water can be found just below the surface of the land. It is an extremely arid island, occupied by tame, little black birds, dark lizards and a large number of hermit crabs.
The Aves, Venezuela
Next morning we weighed anchor and sailed to Isla de Aves (the Bird Islands). Our first stop was Isla de Solavento. Once we wound our way through all the reefs, we found a very sheltered anchorage – a nice dry breeze and flat water – yes! This island sports 40 feet tall mangroves and provides a habitat for thousands of red footed boobies, Bill’s favorite sea birds. By taking our dinghy through the sheltered mangrove lagoons, we were able to see these noble in all stages of development. There were the mature parents, squawking to keep us at bay and the very large babies, looking like they were wearing white fury snow suits.
From there we did a one night stop of Isla Barlavento. We anchored in the lea of three very small sandy islands, the middle one sprouting 3 palm trees that looked like they’d been planted by a landscaper. The water was very deep but incredibly clear, portending of things to come.
Bonaire
Leaving the Venezuelan islands Songbird had an easy downwind romp to Bonaire, the first of the Netherland Antilles (the ABC Islands). Bonaire is very protective of its natural environment. Anchoring is not allowed; boats must secure themselves to a mooring. Upon doing that, you understand why. The scenery beneath the surface of the water is unbelievable. Songbird floated over the edge of a precipice going from 20 feet to 100 feet. From our deck we could observe the large coral fish and SCUBA divers below. We seized the opportunity to use our snorkel compressor and dive below, ourselves. It was magical. For that matter, the snorkeling was magical. Bonaire is definitely a diver’s paradise.
For a change of pace, we rented a Suzuki (jeep) for a day and toured the island. It is a desert terrain where large cactus and large lizards (including iguanas) grow in abundance. The beaches, however, are isolated and incredibly beautiful. Having gone to the B of the ABC islands, it was time to go to the C: Curacao.
Curacao
Curacao is a more populous island and definitely Dutch. The capital, Willemstad, looks like a Caribbean version of Amsterdam, colorful, tall buildings situated upon canals. Lots of good shopping and great restaurants. We anchored in a large lagoon called Spanish Water, frequented by cruisers bound east and west. Like cruiser habitats, this comes with a social support network including a daily radio network broadcast, scheduled free bus trips for shopping and services such as water gas, and happy hours.
A few months ago, a sick baby Pilot whale arrived on the shore of Curacao. He was rescued and nourished by the local dolphin academy, but because he required 24-hour care he soon stressed the capacity of that organization. Cruisers (and other volunteers) rose to the occasion by contributing their time to watch over this amazing animal. Now he is a healthy adolescent waiting to join a pot of others of his kind. In the meantime he still requires watching. We were privileged to participate in this. Our watch included his time for exercise (following a small motor boat at 40mph for 30p minutes) and feeding. Our job was to watch Sully (his name) but we often felt we were being watched by him instead. Cool!
Oh. We forgot to mention that we have a new crew member, Ted's new girlfriend. Her name is Mabel and they are very happy with each other.
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