One of the really cool things about Bonaire is the abundant sea life living on the reef that rings the entire island. Marine life is thriving here due to the creation of the Bonaire National Marine Park back in 1979, protecting the waters of Bonaire from the destruction many other islands in the Eastern Caribbean islands have faced. Anchoring is not allowed anywhere on Bonaire, as anchors can ravage coral beds if not carefully placed. Instead, all boats must be kept on designated moorings. Snorkelers and divers cannot wear gloves, as touching coral can also do damage the reef, and dive sites are monitored and temporarily removed from public dive maps if they appear to be suffering from "overuse". These and other rules make Bonaire one of the top diving spots in the Caribbean.
So today, after puzzling a bit over how to put our gear together, we jumped off the boat, dropped down about 40 feet, and explored the abundant sea life below. We saw all sorts of cool and unusual fish, like the "scrawled filefish" pictured above, an "odd-shaped swimmer", according to our fish book. We also saw a bunch of the fish from the "big lips, large bodies" section of the book...although I think the fishes might object to that description. But, by far, the coolest encounter of the day was the sighting of 2 octopusses - make that octopi - toward the end of our dive. Louis initially spotted them - he always points out cool stuff that I've somehow missed. (I'm about as observant underwater as I am walking past the full garbage cans at home that need to be taken out....I swear, I just don't see stuff!) Anyway, we watched them slither along the bottom and then saw their bodies morph from long, tubular (man) bodies to the blobby, gangly things we all know as octopuses. Or octopi. Whatever they're called, they were very cool!
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Louis woke up this morning up eager to get word of our part. He looked around for the cell phone and, having no luck, nudged me awake. "Do you know where the phone is", he asks, a bit of tension in his voice. I grumpily tell him I have no idea, more concerned with finding a cup of coffee than the cell phone. But, as I adjust to a state of awakeness, I realized that, as Louis suspected, I had left the phone at the video store the night before. And they don't open until 4:30 this afternon. Ooops. The word "pendejo" comes to mind! (Other words come to Louis' mind, no doubt!)
The rest of the day is a cacophony of mishaps: we place a call from the boat via our computer to Eric, the hydraulic guy, but we're cut off mid-call due to Skype's bad connection. Then the computer crashes. Meanwhile, minutes on our internet card tick away. The computer slowly re-boots, but the card is now expired! We head to town to see if we can get the part locally; alas, the parts store is closed for lunch. We can't reach Eric, so we place a call from town to a neighboring island to order the part from there. They can't hear me well enough to take down the info, and their internet is down so I can't email them the order. With the fedex deadline minutes away, I sprint down the waterfront to use the internet-phone service on the other side of town and place the order...let's hope it's in time.
We try to send an email to Erik so he doesn't order a duplicate part, but realize his email address is back on the boat. So....back to boat to call Erik using our phone card. Ooops...we forgot to close the hatches when we left. It rained into the boat and, of course, the phone cards are sitting in one of the 2 spots that got wet. Bummer. Wouldn't you know it - scratch off codes don't scratch off when they're wet! Luckily we bought more internet cards when we were in town, so we reach Erik via Skype and let him know the part is ordered.
Thinking our crap-o day is behind us, we go for a swim and then into town for a drink and dinner. On the way to town, the submerged line of a fishing boat gets caught in the prop of the dinghy. Louis untangles the line, but when we get to the dock it starts to rain. We realize we forgot to close the hatches (again!...Pendejos!), so, it's back to the boat to close the hatches. After dinner on shore I go to the video store because, while there was someone there this afternoon who kindly gave me our cell phone back, they weren't techincally "open" yet, so they couldn't take the video back. Go figure. Anyway, I walk to the video store, but, you guessed it - now they're closed and I'll owe a late fee. I think this "sorry, we're closed and have no drop box" policy is the key to their profitability!
To complete our wonderful day, when we get back to the boat I try to connect to the internet to finish some business from this afternoon. But the 6-hour internet card we just purchased has now expired with only 20 minutes of use.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.
Now we know why cruisers drink so much...and here we thought it was because they had so much leisure time!
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The anchorage got quite a bit rollier in the middle of the night, and we both woke up feeling a bit pukey. We were off to Bonaire by 9:00am with TWO flocks of pink flamingos flying by us as we motored east, and later, a few dolphins surfed in our bow wake! Looks like everyone's headed to Bonaire!
We motor-sailed east for 4 hours with the main reefed so as not to put too much stress on our jury-rigged backstay. Heading into the town of Kralendijk we saw many familiar faces: there's Miss Charlotte (Tony and Hilary who we met here last year and later visited in Italy), Meow (the couple we "showered with" in our "Strange Sightings" entry); and Feisty, Cloud Nine and Sojourner (friends from the boatyard). It feels like old home week! We grabbed a mooring, checked in at Customs, and stopped by the "cruiser happy hour" where we ran into Bob and Barbara, the previous owners of Scappatella (then Enkidu). Bonaire seems like a good place to be "stuck" as we wait for our part.
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The dawn of a new day, and still no word from our hydraulic guy. With no way to call out, I decide to swim around to the boats anchored at Klein Curacao, hoping to beg a few minutes of air time on a neighbor's cell phone. I was in luck! The boat next to us has a cell phone, knows the guy we're looking for (Erik), and speaks Dutch, to boot! He places the call for us, we speak to Erik, and are assured we can continue on to Bonaire and he can help us from there. Yahoo!!
While sitting on our neighbor's boat a beautiful flock of pink flamingos flies by, and later we see a big ol' turtle swimming by Scappatella...what great omens! The sun sets and leaves behind a dusty pink and blue sky in its wake. Things are looking up!
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03/03/2009, Klein Curacao
Sometimes the "bad news" is actually the "good news" in disguise. Huh? Well, yesterday Louis discovered a bunch of diesel on the aft deck. Strange...why the heck is our fuel leaking out? And from where? And how much diesel did we dump out on our sail over here (we have no accurate fuel gauge). Well, it turns out it's not diesel. In retrospect, a diesel leak would have been the "good news". The true bad news is that it's actually fluid from our hydraulic back-stay tensioner, which means we blew a seal. The backstay - along with the forestay and a few other stays - keep the mast from flopping around. With a blown seal, we can't adequately tension the mast. Imagine sailing in 20-knot winds for 5 days with a floppy mast! At best, we'd create undue stress on our rigging. At worst...well, let's not go there.
Unfortunately, to fix the tensioner we need a particular part (the gasket) and someone who services hydraulics. So, that likely means back to - you guessed it - the recirculating eddy of Curacao Marine, aka "Velcro Harbor". Nooooooooooooooo!!!! We did come up with a "plan B", which is to go on to Bonaire and send our part back to Curacao to be fixed. At least then we'd be hanging out somewhere fun, with beautiful diving and an incredible Italian restaurant! To see if our plan B would work, Louis picked up the cell phone to call Eric, the hydraulic/engine/tranny/prop guy in Curacao (we know him well by now!), and actually got a signal! But just as he was about to relay our part number to Eric, we ran out of time on the cell phone. Unfortunately Eric didn't think to call us back. Bummer.....
So we jotted off a quick email to Eric and here we sit, waiting for him to hopefully check his email and call us. Or email us. Or something, so we can decide whether to return to Curacao (waaah) or go to Bonaire. Meanwhile, we're hanging in the pretty, but rolly, anchorage of Klein Curacao.
Stay tuned...
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03/02/2009, Klein Curacao
We finally made it! We've left Curacao and are now at "Klein Curacao" (that means "Little Curacao"). Yahoo!! Ok, so we're only 20 miles from Curacao and can see it in the distance, but still..it's progress! We left Monday morning around 9:00am and got here about 5:00pm. What we thought was going to be a 4 to 5 hour trip took us closer to 8. I could walk 20 miles faster than that! But it is good to have left the boatyard finally. I was jumping up and down in the cockpit as we sailed by the picturesque little Dutch town of Willemstad on our way out of the harbor...it felt exhilarating just to be going somewhere!
We tried out our new sails and got Scappatella cruising along at 7 - 8+ knots beating into the wind, and that was without spending much time trimming the sails! It will be fun to see what we can get out of them when we have more energy. We went way out of our way tacking (as Klein Curacao lay directly into the wind from where we started) but eventually just decided to motor into the wind so we could get here before dark. We both took seasick meds, but I was still a bit nauseas and VERY tired. I slept almost the whole way. That's definitely the worst part of this whole adventure for both of us: feeling sick, having to take meds, and, for me, being so tired and lethargic from them. They don't affect Louis as much; probably being bigger helps. Maybe I just need to eat more?
Anyway, we're here and it's a picturesque little Caribbean island. We watched our 1st sunset last night, had a bite to eat, and then went straight to bed. We both slept for 12 hours straight! I guess we're a bit tired :
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If you speak even a little Spanish you're probably familiar with the word "pendejo". It can be used in that friendly, guy-insulting-guy way as in, "Hey, Pendejo, how's it going?" Or, it could be directed at someone who just did something really stupid, like backing out of their parking space without looking and almost running you over...."you stupid Pendejo (kind of redundant, but you get the jist).
Well, last year during our very fun visit with Dave and Lilka aboard Scappatella, we had an unforgettable "pendejo" moment. We had left our favorite little bar in Culebra, Mamacita's, and were riding back in the dinghy at night, with no light. I briefly saw something in the water and yelled, "hey, what the...". This was immediately followed by a loud CRUNCH and then several "Oh Shit's". We had run the dinghy aground, right into the rocks off of Point Something-or-Other. I can't remember what the official name of the point was, but after that experience we all jokingly referred to it as "Punta Pendejo". Louis, being the Captain of the dinghy that evening, was the object of that affectionate but insulting term, loosely translated to "Point of the Stupid Idiot Driving the Dinghy"....although, as Lilka pointed out, we were all the "pendejos" that evening! Since then, Punta Pendejo has become a sort-of code phrase among the four of us to describe something really stupid one or the other has done.
Well, a few nights ago we were at a farewell party for our Venezuelan friend, Julio, who's finally leaving Curacao after 3 months, 14 days, and 6 hours. (He had a rough time in the yard). Anyway, a friend Moss asks about the use of the word "Pendejo". She was told it meant pubic hair, and wanted confirmation of its meaning. (us yachties have many such high-falutin' conversations). She was immediately corrected by several people who threw around other meanings like "asshole", "stupid idiot", and "dumb-ass". Louis hears all of these definitions and looks up at me with disbelief in his eyes. "Pendejo?" he says softly. "No....not pendejo....that means dangerous, doesn't it?"
I just about spewed my wine all over the cockpit, I began laughing so hard! It seems Louis had conveniently forgotten the meaning of "pendejo" that Lilka had clearly explained in the dinghy - "No, it's not just an idiot...more like a STUPID idiot" - and apparently confused it with the word "peligro", meaning "danger". So all this time "Punta Pendejo" has meant "Dangerous Point" to Louis, instead of "Point of the Stupid Idiot"!
Amazing what the mind is capable of!
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We've seen some odd things in our time here in the yard. Like the guy today who walked over to his car, opened the door, and took a piss right there in front of the office. Twice. "It kind of blows my mind", Louis said. "I mean, why would he do that? The bathrooms are just around the corner...about 30 paces away". Go figure.
There's our neighbor, Joost, (in the photo) who's using an acetylene torch to melt the lead out of his keel. Apparently his boat is a bit stern-heavy, so he's lightening his load by taking some weight out of the keel! I suppose the fact that the keel (beneath the boat) is ballast for the mast (above the boat) isn't a concern? Guess he'll find out...
And then there's "the blue man"- this really nice yard worker, Ellison, who gets some of the nastiest jobs like sanding bottom paint, the ultra-toxic stuff you put on the bottom of your boat to slow down barnacle growth. He's sanding away wearing just a tank top and a dust mask! No long sleeve shirt. No hood. No respirator. He walked by covered head-to-toe in blue paint and I thought maybe he was heading to an audition for The Blue Man Group. By the way, this is the same job Louis did last year wearing hooded Tyvek coveralls, shoes, a respirator and glasses. The only exposed parts of his entire body were his eyebrows. And they tingled for a few weeks. Seriously.
And how about our shower the other night? Louis and I shared a stall so our friends, Gino and Mel, could each have their own. Gino's a big guy, plus, they had just that day been put in the water after 5 months working in the yard. Anyway, right as Gino's about to end his shower, we hear him say "naah, I'll hold it - I gotta pee over the rail tonight!" It seems he was going to pee right there in the shower, but the excitement of their boat finally being on the water and being able to pee over the side just got to him. Guess it doesn't take much to excite you after 5 months in the yard!
But nothing quite beat the sight I saw in the nasty unisex boatyard bathroom yesterday. This woman had pulled up a couple chairs in front of the sinks and was reading a book, right there in the smelly, hot, mosquito-infested bathroom. That's odd enough, but she had her computer with this HUGE screen propped up onto another chair! It was like having a big-screen TV in the boatyard bathroom. Weird. Really weird for Louis, as he went in later to "do his business". He's sitting there making his daily deposit with this lady basically watching TV and reading a book, just a few feet and a stall-door away from him! That's enough to send the average Turtlehead running the other direction. But not for Louis - he just sat there quietly and went about his business. (Fortunately, there were enough poo-tickets in there for him and he didn't have to ask the lady to pass some extras under the stall...a common occurance in these bathrooms).
So, UFO's we don't have...but strange sightings? You betcha!
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Well, it wasn't pretty but we did it - we're in the water at Curacao Marine in a slip adjacent to the yard. All of the slips on the leeward side of the dock were full (that's the easy side to come in), so we had to go around to the windward side (much more challenging). That itself wouldn't have been a problem for the talented Cap'n Louis - he's pretty damn good at this stuff - but we had to back in so our bow will be into the wind when we put our new sails up. Backing our boat is very difficult: the prop kicks the bow off to one side so it's near impossible to go in a straight line. In addition, it was very windy and there wasn't a lot of room to maneuver in coming into the slip, and, let's see...what other excuses can we come up with?
Well, the long and short of it is we ended up sideways to the dock with our bow inches from Curacao Marine's racing boat! Luckily we had the help of several hundred onlookers (just a few, really) who swung us around and, with the help of our GIANT inflatable fender (aka bumper), we avoided any scratches and such. Meanwhile, I forgot all of my "line-handling" skills so in addition to the Captain's sideways entry we had a bumbling line-handler on board. "First boat?" I could almost hear the crowd saying.
Anyway, we're here and tonight Louis gets to pee off the boat - he's pretty excited!
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It's 10:00 pm and I sit across the "salon" table from Louis...the heavy-lidded, dog-tired stare he's giving me doing absolutely nothing to curb my " I-just-finished-my-1st-coat-of-varnish" enthusiastic jabber. He gives me a knowing look while I wonder aloud if those slight varnish over-runs are going to mar the smooth-as-glass surface of my recently sanded wood trim. "What", I innocently ask, thinking that Louis, the Woodworking God, is about to impart some secret pearls of wisdom to me, his Varnish-Virgin. "What are you thinking?", I eagerly prompt him.
"Help, I'm talking and I Can't Shut Up" he responds, momentarily crushing my puppy-dog enthusiasm. But only for a moment. His comment sends me into hysterics as I realize it's right on the mark - I'm in one of those "Jabberin' Janet" kinda moods that Louis found soooooo adorable when we first got together. I try to contain myself and quietly begin my new blog entry. The moment would be much better portrayed, though, if I could truly capture the essence of his exhaustion via a photo. I grab my camera and try to pull one off, but he just looks pissed (go figure). The 2nd attempt gets me a shot of the bottom of his foot, put forth in a "talk to the hand" kind of way, and for some reason this just sends me into more hysterics. "Are you on drugs or something", he asks. (I do get a little smile out of him when I show him the photo, though")
The boat is engulfed in silence as I eventually go back to my blog-typing and Louis sits there, pondering the next day's tasks, no doubt. A loud "WHAP" breaks the silence as he goes for his 10th mosquito kill of the evening. "Missed him, the fucker" he says.
More silence (him) and out-of-control laughter (me).
He gets up to bring our dishes to the sink and dryly comments, "Boy, that was a rippin' dinner". He's referring to the lukewarm, dry, chicken wrap we just ate. It was the other half of our lunch we saved so we wouldn't have to bother cooking dinner. For some reason this just cracks me up more, and on I go with the hysterics. I really must have inhaled some varnish fumes today!
Maybe, though, I'm just in a giddy state because my CRAP-O day ended so wonderfully! After spending hours and hours this afternoon scraping and sanding off the oil sealer I had so meticulously applied the day before (because it didn't harden...bummer) I got my 1st coat of varnish on and, I have to say, it looks GOOD. Plus, there's a full moon out!
So, all-in-all, life is good!
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