Slow and smooth or fast and furious? I know Rosa would choose the first and her wish came true which sums up our 4 day passage from Carriacou to Bonaire. When we were ready to depart the weather models were showing light to gentle breezes (F2-3) for the next 5-7 days and thats pretty much what we got. Averaging winds of 4-8kts with occasional periods of 12-15kts and on the lower spectrum at 1-2 kts we had a slow and smooth sail - a pleasant journey.

Rose prepared three tasty meals before leaving so we didn't have any laborous cooking to do. We kept two fish lines out constantly during the day and hauled in Travali, barracuda and part of a large Mahi-Mahi - while on the hook, a predator fish took a bite and removed the complete tail! Its a dog-eat-dog world down there! During day 3 we came across a very long drift net that we needed to dodge - I had half a mind to dive on it and cut it up - and this may be my tactic in the future. The death, destruction and damage these nets cause far outweighs the benefits of the catch IMHO. We managed to get the bright work completed and a few other minor boat projects (just so I haven't to spend my time doing boat work while on anchor when we could be out meeting new folks, exploring new countries, diving, etc). Rose and I initially split up into shifts but that didnt quite work out so well as one of us would be sleeping like a baby and the other didn't want to wake us from such a nice sound sleep - it always takes a few days to get into shift patterns! We also managed to study some Spanish.

A majority of the sailing was done exclusively with our genakker (code zero, asymetric) sail. As it was essentially all downwind sailing, where catamarans don't really excel in this condition with the mail sail up, flying the large genakker only was perfect - moving us along typically at 70-90% of the true wind speed. A genakker's tack (or foot of the sail) is normally installed to a center bow sprit where it performs optimally at 70-150 degrees (wind angle to the boat). However, by securing the genakker's tack to either the port or starboard bows, it allows the sail to perform quite well direct or just off downwind (100-180 degrees) thus allowing us to meet our targeted waypoints. However, I still maintained 10-20 degrees off the aft quarter as this is less painful and less twitchy on my faithful autopilot. We've done this on previous crossings with good success.

We blew the dust off the ol' SSB radio and resurrected it for sending email (SailMail) ie daily position reports to my son, receiving weather forecasts, current predictions and also to listen to Chris Parker's daily Caribbean weather forecast. About a year and a half ago we stepped up our technology and purchased the Iridium GO for all these tasks but we suspended the subscriptions when we arrived in the Caribbean as internet/wifi was readily available for weather, etc. The GO and PredictWind (weather/routing package) will be reactivated once we are in the Pacific. However I find the SSB Indispensable as a primary and backup communication device.

Our choice of course thru the Caribbean Sea took us well north off Venezuela due to the turmoil presently ongoing in this country even though we've had recent first hand reports of cruisers visiting their outer islands without any incidents. We are quite risk adverse. We arrived at Bonaire's southern Lacre Punt at night and elected for a cautious night approach along its SW coast toward Kralendijk. As we got in close, with ambient light from the island, a light breeze and Rose on the bow with a torch we safely skirted the coast and a number of yachts until we found an available red mooring ball (anchoring is prohibited here to safeguard the coral) and once secured turned off Emerald to get a few hours kip before the next days activities begin.

Let's discover Bonaire