Diesel Duck will be leaving tomorrow, on Thursday evening, to Venezuela's offshore islands the Aves. Islas de Aves are two separate little island archipelagos, separated by about 10 miles of deep water. Our destination is Aves de Sotavento. There is a coast guard station nearby on Isla Larga and perhaps a few fishermen. We are looking forward to some swimming, snorkeling and perhaps fishing for a week or two before returning here. For the last three months we have been sitting in the anchorage of Spanish Waters in Curacao and Benno went under the boat today to have a look. Sitting in a crowded anchorage for a long period of time usually means that barnacles, grass, little shrimps and who knows what attach themselves to the underwater portions of the boat. Especially the propeller. There was not too much of a garden down there this time, but the two propellers of the bow thruster were full of growth and Benno took them off for me to clean up while he scraped the blades of the propeller for the main engine. When he was done with that job, he mounted the bow thruster propellers back on. Doing this, he lost the shearpin to one of the thruster props. I heard him cursing under water, using bad words. Thanks God, we had a spare shearpin with us. Then he scrubbed the anchor chain, because the links were also pretty filthy.
We've checked out with Customs and Immigration and are good to go. When we return here we will get another extension for 90 days which should take us into December and the right time to head west.
The picture is of Benno ready to dive below. He's wearing his harness which holds lead pouches to weigh him down and the yellow hose is for the regulator, hooked up to the compressor so he has lots of air to breathe