12.09’669N 068.17’039W – Current Position
April 2, 2017
Kralendjik, Bonaire (pronounced: “Crawlen-dike”), Netherlands NV

We arrived back in Antigua at the end of February after a quick visit back to Thunder Bay and Ottawa. Laurie spent the first 2 weeks training new pilots and I flew the line a bit as well as visiting Sheldon, Payton, Atari and of course, Mom + Dad.
Anyways, as we mentioned previously, time to move on to new places. We left Jolly Harbour on March 3 and headed up to Low Bay, Barbuda to position for our next leg to St. Maarten to provision and have a rig survey done. We left for St. Maarten at 0500 from Low Bay. To our surprise, 3 other boats left in a group about 30 minutes ahead of us. Wind was pretty light to start out but after the sun came up it started to pick up and so did we. Those 3 boats were about 2.5 miles in front of us when we departed but they were all over 5 miles BEHIND us approaching St. Maarten. No competition in our blood! Not to mention we landed a tuna and a Mahi Mahi while passing them! One was a Catamaran and the other was a 54’ mono hull which made it even better!
We anchored in Marigot Bay and went into clear customs (love checking into the French Islands, $2.00 and stay for 90 days) We immediately ran into Mike on Toocanoe from Thunder Bay. He had a charter going on but he still stopped by for a quick beer and to say hello.
Next morning we dinghied over to FKG rigging to see about the rig inspection. No need to go on their dock but they did want us “in the Lagoon” to go up the mast. Not having been in the French side entrance we decided we have better check things out to make sure we did not run around – which happens to A LOT of boats going in on that side. We took our hand held depth finder and set off to “find” the channel. Fortunately, new buoys have been placed part of the way in BUT when they end you are supposed to be able to turn left towards the Dutch side. And you can, if you draw 4 feet! The bottom have numerous gouges in it where boats had grounded. Anyways, we figured out which way to go and brought Hedonism through the bridge in the afternoon and no, we did not ground. Depth sounder chose this time to quit but we made it. The rigging inspection went well, we provisioned over a few days, bought our “bottom paint” for the next haul in Panama and even went to get our Yellow Fever vaccinations. After the vaccinations neither of us felt well for 2 weeks. Not sick but run down, tired and achy. We Google side effects for the Yellow Fever vaccine and they were tired, achy etc. Go figure.
We had to wait a couple of days for the weather to be right for our next leg to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. We departed the Lagoon in the morning and anchored out in Marigot Bay for a few hours. We then departed Marigot in the afternoon of March 15 for an overnight sail to St. Thomas arriving at 0915 in the morning. Our only reason for going to St. Thomas was to get our Life Raft recertified at the only certified Winslow service center in the Caribbean. That went well. We rented a car for the day and did a bit more provisioning since we were “in the USA’. Even went to Kmart! While we were waiting for the life raft recertification we also trouble shot our depth sounder. It ended up being the transducer so there goes more $$$ and we ordered in on Friday and had it Monday, again, we are in the USA.
We got our Life Raft back on Monday so we departed Tuesday afternoon (March 21) for Bonaire which we figured was about 2 ½ days. Once we left the waters of the US Virgins we only saw commercial vessels and the odd cruise ship. On Wednesday morning shortly after sunrise I spotted something on the distant horizon. Nothing on the AIS but I was able to ‘paint’ two targets about 15 miles out on radar! Grabbing the binoculars I realized that the main object was a LARGE oil platform. Shortly after the AIS showed both a Tug Boat (250’ big one) and the Atwood Condor oil platform. The AIS said the platform was “not under command”. Being towed. The tug’s AIS said the destination was the Barbados. We ended up passing within about 2 miles of the platform. Pretty cool seeing it that close up. It was big enough we could probably have sailed between the legs. Once we got to Bonaire I looked up the Atwood Condor and the company website said it was being towed from the Gulf of Mexico to Singapore for a refit and was then heading to Australia. At 4.5 knots. I looked it up on Marine Traffic to see where it was and it was just passing St. Lucia. I have a couple of photos I will be uploading.
The sail to Bonaire we basically good except the wind died after sunset on Thursday evening. We had been thinking we would need to heave-to for a bit so as to approach Bonaire in the daylight but….the wind dying looked after that for us! By sun rise the wind was down to 5 knots so we ended up motoring for a couple of hours until we got around the SE tip of the island when a nice breeze set in so we were able to sail into the anchorage an hour later arriving at 1045 on the Friday.
Pretty cool here. You MUST take a mooring. Anchoring is forbidden and the whole island is a marine park. The bow of our boat is moored in about 15’ of water and the stern is in about 200’. This is a diving destination and wow, there are divers everywhere. Flash bulbs and light below us until late at night and yesterday morning we woke to the sound of bubbles against our hull at 6 AM!
We moved into the marina for 2 days as we needed to do some maintenance on the boom. It had to be removed along with the vane and re-shimmed and we didn’t want to do that with the boat rocking. All went well. We stayed the 2nd day and washed the salt off the boat. The water here is CHEAP compared to elsewhere in the Caribbean, only 0.10 per gallon. And it is clean. No water spots and the pressure allowed me to rinse out first set of spreaders from the deck! Do I sound excited?
We rented a truck for a day to drive around the island. We were told that we needed a truck as the road conditions in the parks were not good. Glad we got the truck, they weren’t. So we drove around and toured, saw multiple Iguanas (they are everywhere here), Pink Flamingoes and so on. It is pretty hard to get near the Flamingoes but we lucked out as you can see in the photos. The other thing you will see is this island is basically a desert. Did I say dry? Cactus, blowing dust and more cactus.
So, here it is Sunday April 2 and we are waiting for a “weather window” to make the hop to Bocas Del Toro, Panama. That will be a 6 to 7 day sail. The weather off the north coast of Columbia can be pretty bad (it is right now) so we will be heading a couple of hundred miles north of the coast to stay out of the worst of the “Colombian Low”. The weather inland in Columbia is pretty bad right now, 250 people died from flooding and landslides yesterday. That was inland and is not expected to impact us. At the moment it is looking like we will be departing on Thursday morning but we won’t be making the final decision until later. I spend a couple of hours a day watching the wind and weather patterns. If we leave Thursday it will be windy when we depart but we will be riding it downwind and on the “downward trend” in the wind cycle. At least, that is how it is looking today….
So that is about it. Some boat chores to do (always) and perhaps some diving this afternoon. Laurie is going too!
BTW: Our MAP has been updated and I will try posting to the album with my data connection. Hope it works.