29th January

12 03.520 N
68 51.216 W

Weather; sunny, wind 10 knots E and dropping, waves 3 feet and dropping

We've arrived safely into Curacao! We motor sailed for the last 20 miles as the wind became so fickle with where it was coming from, changing every few minutes and swinging all over the place making it impossible to keep sailing. The jib got furled away first and then we centered the main to try and use what wind it could trap but really only succeeding in creating a banging noise, neither of us wanted to be putting the main away at this point of the trip as it would have meant someone (no prizes for guessing who) going out on deck and taking off the preventer, pushing and shoving the sail into the sail bag, which requires the person to climb onto the lower part of the mast to be able to reach the sail bag and we considered that it was too dangerous as we were both fairly tired and didn't need any last minute dramas and accidents to occur - we would leave this job until we were in the lee of the harbor at Curacao. As we motor sailed along the top of Bonaire we tried to recall if we remembered seeing the hills when we stopped there on our last trip, they were clearly outlined but for the life of us we couldn't remember seeing them last time round. We spotted the refinery lights on Curacao shortly after passing by the hills of Bonaire - we were on the homeward stretch with about 20 NM left to go.
The night was well lit, the moon was full to enormous and quite glorious to see. I tried to get a couple of photos but they really don't do it justice. We rounded the final bend and watched as Curacao came clearer and closer, travelling just a few hundred meters off shore along the coastline was a bit odd, the water is really deep right up to the coast line and doesn't shallow up like most coastlines. As we closed in on the harbor entrance we thought how easy it would be to miss the entrance all together, it wasn't clearly marked with entrance buoys or lights so it's a good job that our chart was well marked. Just before we arrived at the entrance we decided that the time had come to take down the main and put the spinnaker pole back into its residing position at the mast. This was decidedly a 2 person job and I happy to say that despite all our tiredness and certainty that "if it could go wrong, it would" we managed to get everything tucked away, tidied up and looking ship
shape in a relatively smooth and short time, without any shouting or arguing. We also took down our Grenada curtesy flag at this point and replaced it with the yellow quarantine flag which we have to fly until we have cleared in with customs and immigration. So with everything in place we motored the final few meters into the harbor, clearing the entrance by 7.30am. there were a couple of shallow spots that we needed to be careful about navigating through but in the end they didn't prove to be any problem. There looked to be several places to anchor within the harbor and plenty of space to do it in. Gerry picked a spot and we did a circuit around to make sure we hadn't missed anything obvious like mooring balls then I took over at the helm and he went to the bow to be ready to drop the anchor. Everything went as smoothly as if we had done this before and we were quickly at anchor, not giving the audience on the boats already at anchor anything to entertain themselves with.
Once anchored it was time to stash away the "stuff" that needed to be stowed, generally tidy up and then make some coffee and toast followed by a decent shower and a catch up sleep. Gerry was asleep before I even got out of the shower and managed to sleep until about 1.30pm. we had thought to go into town this afternoon and do the customs and immigration clearing in but after sleeping we decided that we could leave it for the permitted 24 hrs., giving ourselves a bit of "rest and recovery time" before doing the legal stuff. We had a late lunch in the comfort of a salon that was missing something - there was no rolling and pitching happening like at the Prickly Bay harbor - surely that can't be right? When you look at it though the harbor here is well protected and you can't even see the sea from the inside the harbor, it's going to take a bit of getting use to not rocking and rolling after so long but I'm sure we will adjust pretty quickly.
Its currently 4pm, we are counting down the minutes before cocktail hour in the cockpit and I'm sure that Gerry is lamenting the fact that he has access to neither internet or phone until we go ashore tomorrow, how will he ever survive without either?
We heard via satellite email that Dale and Lorie have arrived safely into St Thomas without breaking anything, it sounds like they have had a good trip and been able to sail most of the way. I'm guessing, like us, that they are chilling out and catching up with some sleep - the biggest difference is that they have phone and internet connections and probably Netflix, with their US equipment so they can at least phone home and troll the internet or watch a movie!
So that's it for today's blog, I'll be back tomorrow with all the happenings and hopefully an internet connection to pick up emails.