Leaving Curacao
29 November 2012 | Aruba
We had a great time in Curacao hanging with our friends on "Kim". We have provisioned the boat with hopefully enough food for a few months, save for fresh foods. We rented a car and spent days shopping, and stowing foods. We learned about SintaKlass who is a Dutch Santa Claus. He comes between late November and December 5th. You leave your shoe out and sing a song for him and he comes at night when you are sleeping and leaves a small toy or some candy. Chocolate letters are big. Zack has done it twice and has received a small toy and a chocolate N for Nicholas, We had already had a chocolate Z on our own. SintaKlass must have known.
We were sad to leave our friends in Curacao, and hopefully they may follow us soon, but it was time to move on. The wind is really laying down. We saw a few boats pulling out and we were thinking we should have been joining them, but we had plans and stayed to hang out one more day. We decided to leave Wednesday night at 6pm and sail thru the night. It was a 13 hour sail and we like to arrive in the daylight hours. That turned out to be a great choice. One we had a nice day and then a nice sail with perfect winds and calm seas. When we pulled into Aruban waters I hailed the Port Authority to declare ourselves. We had an email from Sueno telling us to do this, otherwise we may be boarded and have an escort to customs. Well it was about 6am and the officer that answered had no idea what I was doing and basically said good for you and gave us some bad directions as to where customs was located. It was fine because we knew where to go. Some new friends on "Blue Kai" hailed us on the VHF and told us they had had some rough seas coming over the day before us so we were tired but glad we chose the night sail.
To check in to Aruba you need to take your boat to the dock. A big commercial dock lined with Venezuelan fishing boats. So you have to pull in and ask to come along side and tie up to the fishing boat. They were all very nice and had obviously done this a lot. They helped with the lines and all was good.
After checking in we motored around the corner to find Sueno. Poor Zack has been looking for their boat since he woke up at 5 this morning and we could see Aruba. We came around into a very nice bay and found Sueno, Windswept, and Blue Kai. Everyone is ready to move on to Columbia. Unfortunately we have no wind. We have decided to hop our way down by way of a small Venezualan island that is just a little outpost for La Guardia Costa. We should be leaving Saturday very early in the morning. It looks like we will have to motor the entire way. Bummer!!