Em

Em has her own blog now - you can see it at

http://emilyondelphi.blogspot.com/

with Photos!!!!

Back in Florida - last blog until July!

I arrived back in Florida on Monday 18th, and am staying in Boca Raton for a couple of weeks. Phillip set sail today (Saturday 23rd May) from Curacao to Fort Lauderdale and is buddy boating with Forewinds (Pat and Frank and their dog Chi Chi). Apparently winds are up to 25 knots at the moment so they are having a great sail, and let's hope it lasts so they get here quickly. I leave for the UK on the 3rd June and will only return to the US on 1st July, when I fly to Baltimore to meet up with Phillip, Emily and Delphinus.

It's so strange being back in civilization. The initial buzz I got from seeing a fully stocked supermarket (fresh milk! lemons! red peppers! tomatoes!) faded quickly and within a day I was desperately missing boat life. I never thought I'd say that. The most I thought I'd be able to say was that I really enjoyed it - I never ever thought I'd be pining for our boat and for that way of life, but I am. I can't sleep, either the room starts moving violently when I'm asleep and I wake up in a panic, or I just can't drift off. I miss Phillip more than I thought I would, which I suppose is only natural, seeing as how we've been together in more or less one room for the past 4 months, spending 24/7 with eachother and having the best time. It just makes me realise more than ever what a fantastic time I had, what an incredible opportunity it was, how many idyllic spots we saw and how many great people we met - what a gift it was, I am so grateful and thankful that Phillip has introduced me to this - I definitely see it in my future in a big way.

Anyway, we'll soon be up in the Chesapeake and for now I'm just making the most of my time with my brother and his wife and their two wonderful children.

No more blogging until the Chesapeake!

Some last photos

This is a view of Maxsea, a chart plotter program that runs on our laptop and is connected to our GPS. Just shows you how way off base the actual GPS was, and it was on BOTH GPS's that we have on our boat. This is because somehow the CHARTS themselves are off the mark - on our boat, Paul's boat, and most other cruisers we met - mainly it happens in Venezuela. Our Raymarine Chart Plotter was also way off in Venezuela - once we got to Bonaire it rectified itself but it's pretty unnerving to try to follow the chart plotter in these waters. You really have to do it by sight. Here we are in Agua Cay, sailing overland, anchoring on land at one point too.


This shows our progress in Spanish Water, the red line shows how we're sailing over land.



The longest floating bridge in the world, in Willemstad, Curacao.

Curacao - the end of our Caribbean tour

The sail from Bonaire to Curacao was the rolliest one ever - the boat pitched and swayed like it was trying to throw us out, I just hated it. The coastguard helicopter flew out and circled over us for a few minutes when we were a couple of miles from Curacao (wonder what that was about?) and we found our way to Spanish Water where we are happily anchored. It's a massive anchorage with about 100 boats, a morning cruisers' net and free shuttle buses daily to the supermarkets. Checking in is a real pain in the neck. You have to take a bus to Willemstad, to the Customs (which are open 24 hours a day - fantastic!) - that's a quick check in with very professional, helpful staff. Then you have to either walk over the floating bridge (which was out of order, naturally, when we were there) or take the free ferry from Punda to Otrabanda and walk about a mile and a half through deserted warehouses, up and down hills, to find an obscure Immigration Office which has limited hours - there you do more check in. Then you have to go to the Harbour Authority which is in the next building upstairs and tell them where you are anchored. This is most annoying because if you want to go to a different anchorage or bay, you have to go back there and tell them where you are going to be anchored. It took us 3 hours to do this process, and is a huge deterrent in moving around the island. If we want to go to another anchorage/bay, we have to move there, anchore, go back to the Harbor Authority and tell them where we are anchored again - another 2 or 3 hours trip, depending on the bus service. So we won't be moving from Spanish Water.

Willemstad is a very pretty, very Dutch town. This is a view of Punda (from the ferry).


We spent some time walking around Punda - at times like this, we could have been back in Rome or Venice for all we knew!



This is the floating bridge (above) - it apparently had broken down the night before so we crossed using the free ferry instead.


Below is Otrabanda where the Immigration office is and the Harbour Authority. What a long walk and not very pleasant, through deserted warehouses etc.




Otrabanda.
Watermaker Barry arrived from Venezuela yesterday and coincidentally anchored next to us - he's coming over today to get things going. Well, he was - but unfortunately he doesn't have the right size membrane for our boat so we have to wait until we get back to the US to sort that out.

We have done a supermarket shop at Vreugdenhil supermarket. On Saturday or Sunday I have to go back to Immigration to checkout, and then when Phillip's crew arrives on Wednesday, they have to go back there to check him in and check the boat out. Real drag.

Anyway, people here (the cruisers) are so friendly - we had two people come over to us on the first day we were here to welcome us and tell us where/how/who/what we had to do and where certain things were. Happy Hour at Asiento Yacht Club Tuesdays and Thursdays, daily supermarket bus from Kimakalki Yacht Club at 9 am every day, one at 10 am from the other dinghy dock, and Sundays you can get a free shuttle to the hardware stores and Budget Marine etc.

So we're all set now, just prepping the boat for Phillip's trip next week. Phillip may be buddy boating with some people we met on Forewinds - Pat and Frank Ready (he did a lot of surveying for the EXPLORER charts in the Bahamas) and their dog, Chi Chi. They are heading to St. Thomas and may wait for Phillip so they can buddy boat most of the way. I fly to Miami on Monday 18th to stay with Ant and family for 2 weeks, then I will go to London for a few weeks and join Phillip in Baltimore around 1st July. Phillip's crew member, Mark, arrives here on the 21st I think and probably the following day, off they leave.

Paul and Joyce are still in Bonaire, diving away, and they hope to get here by Saturday. They are heading to the Rio Dolce in Guatemala where they will leave their boat for the summer.

Anyway folks, can't believe the Caribbean tour is almost at an end - but we are really looking forward to the Chesapeake Bay. So this may be the last blog for a while - when we're both back on the boat, I will do an update. Cheers for now, and Delphinus, happy and safe sailing back to Florida.

Bonaire

We spent one night in each of the Aves (Barlovento and Sotavento) and then headed to Bonaire, civilization and the internet and of course, some of the best diving in the world.

As you can see from the aerial photo below, taken from another website, you can see how great the diving is. You anchor right offshore off mooring buoys and where it goes from light blue to dark blue is a steep drop off, not a wall exactly, but very steep with great coral and marine life. So one minute you're over 30 feet of sand and the next you're in 60 feet. It's good snorkeling over the sandy areas because all the mooring buoys are tethered to great big concrete blocks where the fish congregate. If you rent tanks or have your own, all you need to do is get them filled and you can drop over the back of your boat and you're in dive paradise.

When we filled up with diesel and water at the fuel dock in Harbour Village Marina, it was a great opportunity for us to put our brand new sail up. The unusually strong winds in the Caribbean this year had taken a toll on our genoa with many rips and tears and repairing the sail wasn't an option any more.




Each buoy consists of two separate buoys which you tie to each side of your bow to make it a very secure mooring indeed. Not the easiest thing in the world with winds blowing at 30 knots but once done, you feel pretty happy about where you are.

Below is one of the 5 resident squid from one of the concrete blocks in the mooring field. They were there every day - really beautiful, shimmering in the sunlight with golds, purples, silvers glittering away - really great and graceful swimmers, so fast.

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One of the great things about Bonaire is that the reefs and fish are so protected that they aren't shy - they don't duck off when they see you and whenever I got in the water to snorkel, a group of fish would make a beeline for me and swim around about 2 feet underneath me, and I could almost hear them bickering with eachother "I got here first", "no, I did", "No, I did" - they were swimming around and wherever I went, they swam with me underneath me, about 20 of them. I tried to take a photo by pointing the camera underneath me - as usual I only got about 3 of them on film but there were about 20 of them. As you can see I'm still having trouble using the camera underwater in it's clumsy camera case. When I think I am focused on something, I'm usually about two feet off so I have loads of photos of sand but nothing of the giant barracuda or needlefish swimming in packs or giant angelfish.

I went the Divi Dive Bonaire diveshop, part of the Flamingo Resort, and what a great dive operation it was. I was expecting the usual cattle boats but it was a very personalized, professional service - a great orientation explaining the rules of diving in Bonaire (they are VERY adamant about protecting their reefs, which is excellent - you cannot dive with gloves on in case you're tempted to touch the coral, for example, and you'll be fined if you're found diving with gloves on). I wasn't sure how much weight I'd need, so during the checkout dive (they insist that you have a checkout dive so they can see how comfortable you are in the water, which is a great idea), somehow I ended up with an instructor who was doing a dive referral with a young lad from Scotland and his girlfriend. She was certified and he was in the last stages of getting certified - he needed to show the instructor various things under the water - take his mask on and off, regulator in and out of his mouth, boyancy etc. Not exactly a refresher course but going over the basics. Poor lad, he just could not do the mask on and off. He tried so hard but you could see he was panicking and we were about 15 feet down kneeling on the sand watching him and the instructor (Ruud) and he'd take the mask off, put it on again and then panic and head up to the surface. He must have done this about 4 or 5 times and the last time he did it, even though Ruud had gone over everything so patiently with him, he just said he wasn't up to it today and was going to head in and take the rest of the day off. I think he'd swallowed so much sea water he was also feeling sick. Anyway, Christina (the girlfriend) and I hung back in the water and Ruud said he'd take Gary ashore and then come back and take us on a dive on the reef - which was fantastic.

We were down about an hour and went down to 50 feet - it is such an easy place to dive, and the dive shop was so well equipped I'd highly recommend it. Everything from nitrox to technical diving and the dock was excellent - two sets of steps from the dock right into the water, showers right there, lockers etc., just a fab operation. Ruud was superb and pointed out all manner of things to us. Unfortunately I got cold and when Ruud saw me rubbing my arms, he told us to turn around and head back to the shore. So I rented a wetsuit for the afternoon dive.

We went out at 2 pm on SUNBURST, which was a boat filled with a group from Tennessee, all either dive masters or assistant dive masters, and really friendly people. We went over to Klein Bonaire to do the dive, which was 45 minutes at 60 feet - and we saw all sorts of things - spotted eagle rays, turtles (well, one), blue frogfish, yellow frogfish, peacock flounder, moray eels, loads of blue tang and a host of other fish I couldn't identify, and as we were ascending at the end of the dive, doing our 3 minute/15 feet deco stop, we saw a pufferfish swimming with a group of fish - he must have been about 4 feet long, he was huge, the biggest I've ever seen. Anyway - great dive, very easy and great fun. Wished we could have stayed in Bonaire longer to dive some more but we needed to get to Curacao to start getting the boat in shape for its journey to Fort Lauderdale. We were told that there's a guy in Curacao known as Watermaker Barry who specialises in watermakers and we need a new membrane for ours, so we decided this Curacao is the place to go. Paul and Joyce will stay on a few days longer to dive and then join us before we leave for Florida.


When you see the reefs close to shore, where I was snorkeling, they look pretty much destroyed - thanks to tropical storms and Hurricane Omar from last year - so it's not boat/anchor damage, it's mother nature. Obviously, when you get a little further out, where the boats are anchored, the reefs are more or less OK from there onwards, it's only the shallow areas that were affected.

Las Aves Archipelago (Barlovento and Sotavento)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Aves_Archipelago is a great link to look at - explains a lot more than I ever could! There are two islands that we wanted to see, Isla Aves de Barlovento and Isla Aves de Sotavento.

They were different from the others in that they (at least Barlovento) was a total bird sanctuary with a very different geographic layout (flora and fauna too) from the others.

After we anchored, Paul & Joyce were approached by a coastguard boat. "Uh oh" we thought immediately. However, we could see immediately that these guys were professionals, simply from how they tied up to the LadyH - they kept a respectful distance and 3 of the men stayed on their boat, with only one going onto the LadyH. We were going to the LadyH for dinner that night and Paul mentioned that to the coastguard, so the coastguard said that it would be OK if we dinghied over there and just brought our boat papers, which is what we did. What a true professional he was - charming, polite, efficient, just as they should be. Anyway, it was a relief to get that boat paperwork out the way and it was a pleasure to check in there. Nothing like the Juan Griego coastguard check-in where they rammed into your boat before tying up to your guardrail.

The catamaran anchored there is Selah - a cat we'd bumped into a few times before, usually spending a night or two in the same anchorage before one of us would leave. British flagged vessel (Yasmin is from Australia, Leo is from Rome and Lara the dog is from, actually, don't know where she's from) . We first saw them in Sarqui and our itineraries have more or less been identical except for a day here or there. They are heading off to the Pacific.

This is the island from a distance.

That night in Barlovento we played Mexican Train (Snake) on the Lady H. Another great night! We didn't swim or snorkel in Barlovento at all - there were probably some good areas to do it but I felt that with so many birds on the island, the water couldn't be that clean and I didn't really want to get in the water there.

We took our dinghy up one of the estuaries - not actually a river but a sort of lagoon mouth - the lagoon was long and narrow, sort of like a very short river, but ended abruptly with trees. Birds everywhere - really lovely.

The photo below was taken from inside the estuary/river mouth out to sea and Delphi and Lady H.

The baby birds were adorable - covered in fluff, as if they all had big fluffy hoodies on.

This was the tiniest island we'd ever seen, we actually pulled our dinghies up onto it for a few minutes because, well, it had to be done - how could you go by this island and not go ashore?

Spot the pteradactyl below. Talk about the land that time forgot.

And of course no trip to Las Aves would be complete without some video. These are all of Barlovento. For some reason I didn't take any photos of Sotavento - it didn't have trees or birds like this, it was very similar to all the other places - beaches, reefs, fishermen diving for molluscs of some sort, pretty flat, pretty waters.

and some more....

and of course, here we are pulling into Barlovento with Lady H ahead of us, both of her poles out.

Los Roques - SARQUI and ESPENQUI

We left Noronqui and headed to Sarqui, which is right next door to Espenqui. Artemo was there so we exchanged hello's (they headed off to Agua Cay that afternoon) and Phillip and I went snorkeling. This was, to me, the most beautiful of all the islands I've seen, just the setting, the abundance of marine life, the clarity of the water - it was just incredible. We dinghied over to Yanqui (a tiny deserted island about a mile from Sarqui) but the beach was surrounded by reefs and while I tried to find a way in for the dinghy, everywhere I snorkeled led to a dead end or rocks or coral. So we abandoned that idea and went to Espenqui to snorkel. The photo below is Espenqui.

My camera is in an underwater casing which is essentially just a strong plastic bag with a lens cover - that's what you see in the top left hand corner (sorry). This is a shot of Espenqui.

Sunset from Sarqui (below). There was an absolute feeding frenzy in the water for about an hour around sunset - constant fish jumping and birds swooping down - not just one fish here or there, but everywhere you looked there were fish jumping. It was amazing.


Espenqui again.

Snorkeling between Sarqui and Espenqui. My camera doesn't do it justice.

There were so many fish, in every direction. We truly believe this is the birthplace of all the fish in the Caribbean - there were just so many of them, all shapes and sizes, from fish the size of a dot in huge massive swarms (that's the only real way to explain them - saying a school or shoal of fish really doesn't express just how huge they were). It was almost like hallucinating - fish everywhere, all directions, up down sideways, glittering in the sun.

This photo below always makes me chuckle - I know it's the fishes' gills but they look like they have great big smiles on their faces. If you click on the photo, it should enlarge.

So many fish - I couldn't resist taking a video, although it's not very good.

My favorite fish is the trunkfish - a huge one swam right in front of me and came so close to the camera. He more or less came and looked right in the lens - of course my camera wasn't switched on at the time (the camera auto switches off after 3 minutes of no use) so I missed the best parts.

After Sarqui, we left for Agua Cay - somehow I didn't take any photos! But after Agua Cay, we left first light for Isla Las Aves.