Ok. This is gonna be a long one. Sorry.

We're currently in Curacao - the middle of the ABC islands. Michael flew back to Miami in October and, since they both died at the same time, took both of our computers with him to get them fixed while they're still under warranty. We're supposed to get them today, right. Well, if we do, I need to put the navigation programs back on them over the weekend, and we'll then be ready to leave here next week to head to Cartagena, Columbia.

Well, we left Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela on Nov. 14th and headed back to Isla Margarita (Porlamar) for check out, spending a night each in the islands of Curaca del Este and Cubagua on the way. We've left many good friends behind, and ventured on to new adventures.

After spending a night each in Robledar (on the west end of Margarita), and Playa Caldera and Cayo Herradra in Tortuga, we took an overnight journey to Los Roques, a national park. We spent one night at Dos Mosquises on the southwestern end of Los Roques. AMAZING!!!! There is a turtle sanctuary in Dos Mosquises. They capture newly hatched turtlings (turtlets?) and keep them in vats until they are a year old. They then introduce them into the sea. We snorkeled to shore to see these turtles.

As we entered the water, the first amazing thing we noticed (aside from the absolutely clear water) were the 5 huge orange starfish directly under our boat. As we swam to shore we saw huge live conch below us as well - all over the place. We've never seen anything like this before! In the Bahamas all we saw were empty shells. These were alive!!! We could see them sticking out of their shells and moving along the bottom. I wish we had an underwater camera on board.

We left our snorkel gear safely stowed on the beach and headed for the turtles. There were 7 ling vats with turtles separated into them by different species and ages. We walked to the end of the beach and found an elderly gentleman working on his fishing boat, and a younger fella re-stitching the sole of his tennis shoe by hand with an extremely thick needle and thread. With my (very) limited Spanish we were able to converse with the older guy. He wanted to know if we'd ever seen pelicans being hand fed before. We said no, so he and the younger fella each grabbed a fish and, one at a time, called a particular pelican to them. As soon as the pelican saw them wave their arms, it flew to them, landed on the sandy beach, and walked to them for its snack. What a hoot! After that we walked back to the turtle babes for one last look, snorkeled back out to the boat, and enjoyed a wonderful Caribbean sunset.

On Thanksgiving Day, we headed to Isla Carenero on the northwest end of Los Roques. I told Michael that we were having cold tuna salad in the shape of a turkey for supper. Actually, we had chicken in mole sauce, rice with peas, beer bread (that Michael made), fried yucca sticks (like French fries) and cranberry sauce. You do what you gotta do.

Isla Carenero was not as nice as Dos Mosquises - and much buggier - so we only spent one night there and on Friday we moved on to Islas de Aves, a.k.a. the Aves (ahvehs). The Aves are 2 separate island archipelagos, separated from each other by about 10 miles. The groups are named Aves de Barlovento and Aves de Sotavento. They are so flat, that you can see all the boats in both island groups. The first archipelago we came to was Barlovento, and we wound up at Isla Sur. It was very windy and rolly, so we only spent one night there. On Saturday, we decided to go across the way to a little hidey-hole on Isla Oeste, but when we got there, there wasn't a lot of room to anchor - when we tried, our stern was only about 20 feet from a reef - so we decided to keep heading west and wound up in Mangrove Bay on Isla Larga in Aves de Sotavento. This is actually the wrong season to be visiting these islands, the best time being in the Spring. It's very windy now. We couldn't put the dinghy in the water and visit the islands, nor could we swim in the water safely because of the winds.

The weather was looking good for us to move on to Bonaire, so on Nov. 25th we did. We had an enjoyable sail over to Bonaire, and easily picked up a mooring ball. Bonaire is a lovely island, but there are only about 1,400 people living there, so if you're not a diver there's not much to do. The water is amazingly clear there, and we could snorkel the reefs located under our boat, so we did. We were able to provision again, and were fascinated by the food items we saw on the shelves that we'd not seen for many months. They have a good variety of American foods there that we could not get in Venezuela.

We caught up with our friends Denise and Paul there (Vixen), and also met some new friends. Denise and Paul are avid divers and have been to Bonaire by plane many times before. If we'd been there sooner, or if both of us were to have stayed there longer, Paul (a master diver) would have helped me re-learn how to dive. But, alas, we were only together for a few days before they headed north to Puerto Rico, and we headed west to Curacao (we both left on Nov. 29th). We'll miss them a lot.

We had a wonderful, easy sail to Curacao and dropped the hook near our friends on Panacea (Rick and Sue). We first met them in Carriacou, Grenada, and have been finding them on and off again since then. They are planning to head the same way we are, at about the same time frame, so we'll be seeing them on and off for awhile - possibly all the way to New Zealand.

Michael has had a problem with his knee since June, so he finally broke down and saw an orthopedic doc here. He's got a tear in his meniscus that the doc said will heal itself eventually, so we don't have to worry about surgery. WHEW! That's a relief. It looks like we'll be here through at least the 25th, so we'll join the get together that day for a pot luck dinner. It's always fun when a group of sailors get together for a pot luck. There is always an amazing assortment of food stuffs to eat, lots of new people to meet, and lots of merriment taking place.

Soooo, on that note (I think it's an F major), I'll say happy holidays to everyone, bye for now and . . . stay tuned.