A couple of days after we were back in the water we took off for Bonaire again. More diving and friends arriving. My best buddy and his wife were inbound from the LA basin and we needed to get back there to meet them. Luckily, we caught a nice day with small waves and moderate winds as we were going against the grain. Our friends on Dragonfly made the trip with us as they are avid divers and wanted more time on the reefs of Bonaire. We both found moorings toward the north end of the anchorage which kept us well away from the loud music at Karel's Beach Bar downtown. Since it was Sunday and we had been underway in the morning we held our Bloddy Mary Sunday gathering that afternoon. Life is so much better when you can share it with good friends ( See picture below). Then a swim in the sparklng waters of Bonaire to cool off. This is tough work, but someones got to do it! David and Nikki were due to arrive on the evening of the 28th of Oct, but thanks to the usual incompetance of AA they arrived late in Puerto Rico and missed their flight. The next flight was not until the 30th so with no other recourse we went diving and waited. I laid on a taxi for that evening and headed to the airport to pick them up. The flight was due in at 8:30 and arrived at 9:00. We gathered up the bags and headed to the dinghy dock for the short trip out to the boat. After getting them settled into their cabin we retired to the cockpit for drinks and conversation. It's good to catch up on the lives of old friends when you haven't seen them for a year or more.

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With the excitement of Omar behind us we headed into Willemstad and Curacao Marine to be hauled out for the annual bottom job. The haulout was well and professionally done. By the following Fri we had new bottom paint and the hulls had been compounded and polished. Linda had polished the salon top and cockpit area as well. The old girl looks better than she has since we bought her. By fri afternoon we were back in the water and headed back to Spanish Waters. We had about three days to get organized again and then we would need to head back to Bonaire to meet friends flying in from CA.

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As we sat calmly at anchor thinking of the trip to Fl for Fantasy Fest with our friends the Pirates fate was brewing a little surprise for us of a not so pleasant nature. About 150 miles north of us a low pressure system was being born and it would rapidly become a tropical depression and then a tropical storm. It would drift south toward us instead of going north as is common. By the next day when we were supposed to move the boat to the yard to be hauled out we had experienced a complete wind reversal and it was blowing 35 to 40 knots from the west onto the normally protected side of the island. With waves breaking onto the lee shore at 10 to 12 ft it was obvious that we weren't going to be moving the boat out of it's protected anchorage any time soon. While we were protected from the waves, the wind was a different story, especially when blowing from the west. We had no problems the first day and night, though little sleep. However, in the middle of the second day our anchor broke loose and we began to drag toward other boats. We immediately fired up the engines and got her under control while barely avoiding a collision. Realizing there were just too many boats in the anchorage for this type of situation we headed for the far side of Spanish Waters that is not commonly used for anchoring. In the end four boats moved to the wide open area on the east side and reset anchors to ride out the worst that was yet to come. The day light hours aren't so bad as you can at least see what's going on around you and with you boat. Then comes the night and a whole new and scary scenario develops around you. The comes horizontally and in sheets too dense to see through. The wind howls through your rigging until sounds like a freight train is bearing down on you. There will be no sleep this night. As the wind peaks at 2am at velocities between 50 and 60 kts you start your engines and and let them idle so that if your anchor surrenders to the blast you will be one step closer to saving your boat (and yourselves). The night wears on endlessly until finally the eastern horizon begins to lighten and the wind begins to slacken ever so slowly. As Hurricane Omar finally begins to move off to the northeast with increasing speed we realized we had ridden out our first tropical storm and survived with the boat and ourselves intact. It is not an experience I would ever care to repeat.

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