Our arrival to Bonaire was exhilarating as the wind picked up to mid-high 20's as we changed our course to round the southern part of Bonaire, giving us a beam reach. Kikuyu accelerated to speeds of high 7s to mid 8s. Our friends from Contrails radioed us to tell us they had registered 30 knots of winds in a puff. Our Main sail was reefed and we took our whisker pole down so that we would have better control of our Jib. In a fast run, closed hauled by this point, we sailed right into this beautiful anchorage which had water so clear that we could see the bottom with all details including hundreds of reef fish swimming around. We searched for a mooring ball as anchoring is prohibited and spent the next hour tying two bow lines to each of two mooring balls that were tied to a large concrete block at the bottom. We had never seen such a mooring system - sort of awkward. As you may suspect, the lines crossed on our first attempt so we let loose and went closer it to pick up a better mooring.

Kralendijk harbor is fantastically beautiful. From the time we moored to the time we left Bonaire, we did not stop being awed by the beauty of the water, its clarity, the marine life and this desert-like island which was discarded by the Spanish who discovered and deemed it as being "a wasted island". After Columbus lost its exclusive rights to explore the new world in 1495, Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci (from whom the Americas derive their name) were the first to explore this region. Soon after, the Spanish discarded the island as useless because of its harsh and arid environment. In the 17th century the Dutch conquered the island with no resistant from other Europeans and started mining salt to meet the demand to cure meats. Later, a mixture of Dutch, Spanish, English and Portuguese Jews from Brazil migrated to Bonaire. A mixture of all of these languages forms the backbone of the most widely spoken language in the island, Papiamento.
Although Dutch is the official language, residents use Papiamento to communicate. In addition, inhabitants speak perfect Spanish and English. We were quite impressed to hear residents, from the most humble to the most educated, change from one language to another in a conversation as easily as speaking their own language. Bonaire is still classed as part of the Netherlands Antilles, which also include Curacao, Aruba, Saba, St Eustatius and St. Maarten.