Yeah - we made it! 61 1/2 hours, 383 miles later after leaving Dominica, we dropped the hook at Sarqui Island, Los Roques, Venezuela. A full rainbow and a school of dolphins marked our departure into the gentle seas and waves. But not for long...as soon as we got away from the lee of Dominica, Scappatella turned into a bucking bronco! It was one PUKE-OH sail for the first 2 days. We averaged 8 to 15 knots of wind, and seas were 6' to start. Pretty tame-sounding, but the waves came at short (6 second) intervals which made for a pretty rough ride. And it was a following sea (waves coming from behind), not our favorite motion. The boat felt like a hobby horse with a few springs loose...a back and forth, side to side motion; sometimes kind of violent. A few times we were "rail-to-rail", i.e. the boat went from heeling all the way over one way with the rail in the water to heeling all the way over the other way on the opposite rail, all in quick second. Throw in some forward and back motion, and you get the idea. Puke-oh!

Louis and I traded 3-hour watches. After my 1st watch I tried to grab a few hours of sleep down below to no avail (and I can sleep anywhere!). The main was slapping/banging around, the sounds reverberating VERY LOUDLY thru the mast into our salon (living room); bottles, jars, pots and pans clanged around as they bashed into each other; stuff we didn't tie down well enough got thrown around the cabin; and I would be thrown from side-to-side while trying to sleep amidst all of this NOISE.

After shoving towels, sarongs and what-not in between all of the loud objects and taking down the mainsail, things quieted down a bit and we both able to sleep. The seas mellowed a bit the 2nd day, but the motion remained somewhat and doing simple tasks like cutting a tomato with a very sharp knife became a bit of a hair-raising feat.

Midway through the 2nd day, we both got into the "groove" eating, cooking, sleeping, reading a bit, listening to music, daydreaming, etc. in between watching for other boats, monitoring our charts and trimming the sails and time passed pretty quickly. Before we knew it we arrived! Now we're all alone in this spectacular anchorage, seemingly in the middle of no-where. Just the lull of the waves on the beautiful white sand beaches, the birds calling in the distance, and...wait, what's that... oh no, a day charter boat with about 20 people on it! And, of course, they're anchoring RIGHT next to us. Where the hell did that come from! Turns out this is a pretty popular spot for people from the Venezuelan mainland to come for the weekend. Oh well, off to find a more secluded anchorage

For the sailors, or anyone else interested . Louis here,I figure I'd throw around some sailing terms, because after all, isn't that a big part of sailing, the jargon?! Anyway, we used the reaching pole for the fist time on this crossing to fly our 135% Genoa. Most of our sailing so far has been close hauled. We used a fore guy, after guy, (not to be confused with my guy) and topping lift to secure the pole. Ran the sheet through the clip and had a set up that was reefable,tackable,and gybeable, so long as your lazy sheet was long enough to make it around the extra length from the reaching pole. We ended up sailing with the Genoa only since the Mainsail, even with a preventer, was slapping so badly because of the rolling and light airs. We have a mast furling main so it was causing the furling foil to slam on the interior of the mast. We were going for a wing on wing set up but the point of sail and following seas or maybe our inexperience???? didn't allow it. Actually, this boat loves to sail with the headsail only. We also used the Monitor Wind Vane self steering unit for the first time. Worked great!