CURAÇAO, BONAIRE JULY TO SEPTEMBER 2007

Curaçao In early July Nick and Josie (Dutch) invited us on board their boat Jedi for a twelve dish Indonesian meal. The Dutch colonised Indonesia and because of this you find Indonesian restaurants and food items both in Holland and here in the Netherlands Antilles. Nick and Josie often cooked Indonesian dishes as do many of their fellow countrymen. Jedi is a sixty four foot Sundeer, a radical, fast, cruising boat with a big ketch rig, fully battened sails, narrow beam, flat bottom and water ballast - top speed when planing, 23 knots!! An awesome boat and we had an awesome meal in great company, you couldn't ask for more. Five hours of preparation and cooking were worth it. If you are wondering how somebody can afford such an amazing boat Nick started the first (and largest) Internet Service Provider in Holland - he sold it. A few days later Nienke and Brian (US flagged Tamata) invited us to a 'baby shower'. "Err, what's that then" we asked, since washing babies didn't sound like much fun. "Oh, a party, great". Apparently it's an American tradition to hold a party and bring gifts for a soon-to-be-born baby and Nienke had about two weeks to go. It seemed an odd thing to do (for fairly obvious reasons) but, hey, any excuse for a party is a good excuse. About 20 people were invited Brits, Dutch, Americans and Mavis (runs the bar) and her family. Everybody cooked and brought along a dish, (it was organised so there was no doubling up) plus a pork and chicken barbecue. The food was fantastic. I made Tzatziki (I think the non-Brits didn't know what it was) and a Spanish omelette that disappeared in minutes. It was a great night. One thing Mike has had to contend with is our VHF radio that decided it would trip it's fuse if we used it for more than a few minutes. Initially we thought it was a fractured wire in the microphone cable (a previous problem) but much wiggling of the wire proved that not to be the case. He then opened the switch panel and found corrosion on the positive busbar (a strip of metal that has multipe connections and distributes electricity to navigation lights, stereo, water pump etc). He cleaned the corrosion and it had no effect. We then got out the manual and noticed that the radio uses 6 amps but the breaker was 5 amps, but we couldn't understand why the cutting-out hadn't happened before. We checked the amps through the switch and found 5.1 amps on transmit (within the switch tolerance) but if we had the new battery charger on it went up to 5.7 amps which would trip the switch. Problem solved, put in a higher rated trip switch. Wrong. The radio stopped working at all. This was actually good news because it's very difficult to trouble-shoot an intermittent fault, but if something is broken you can usually find the fault. What Mike found was the radio was not getting any power. He jury rigged a new piece of wire from the switch to the radio and it worked fine - the old wire must have had a partial fracture and then fractured completely when he was fitting the new switch. That little saga took the best part of two days to sort out and an honourable mention must go to Nick, from Jedi, who came over to help figure out what was going on. One salutary lesson from that saga is that the moronic marine industry can put you at risk. We have sixteen switches on our control panel and the busbar has sixteen small screws holding it to the trip switches - the screws are easy to get out but a nightmare to get back in. To change one switch means taking out all sixteen screws. Suppose (say) you needed to change the navigation lights switch, at night, in a seaway. It would be impossible and you would have to sail on with no lights. Thus the Marine Industry Plonkers award this quarter goes to Newmar, Newport Beach, CA for a total lack of understanding of what is required in design terms. Note from Mike: Companies often search the Internet for their own name to see what people are saying about them. So, Newmar, design the panel so that each trip switch can be be pulled out and a new one pushed in. It might astound you to know that that's been standard in domestic homes and offices for decades. Employing some competent design engineers would also help but don't employ them from Raymarine, Jabsco or indeed any other marine company. Bonaire We left Curaçao at 06.45 on Wednesday July 18th, having gone into Willemstad by bus and cleared out the day before. We had been waiting for suitable weather (the wind had been howling for weeks) and the forecast was for easterly wind around fifteen knots and seas five to six feet. The reason for wanting relatively mild conditions was because Bonaire is up-current and up-wind of Curaçao i.e. a serious pain in the bottom. Rounding the southern point of Curaçao we encountered counter-current of one and half to two knots while heading roughly south east. To get out of it we tacked to the north east and sailed up to around seven miles off the north west coast of Bonaire, where we ran out of wind. Even though the conditions were fairly mild we had swell from the north east and wind waves from the south east. When the three of us met in the same place we had three inches of water in the scuppers and a lot more flying over the boat. For once we weren't rolling but the pitching was seriously impressive, with the bows nearly burying in the water. We arrived at 17.15 having sailed forty seven miles to make a straight line distance of thirty three miles. Not bad for that type of passage. The following day we cleared in and got a lecture from immigration that we had been illegal immigrants in the Netherlands Antilles for a week. According to the folks in Curaçao we were perfectly legal but this goes back to Bonaire and Curaçao interpreting their common immigration rules differently. We were polite and patiently listened to our 'telling off' and when we left noticed we were stamped in for August the 18th, not July! For anybody following us, wait until immigration is shut and clear in/out at the police station which is always hassle free. Once we had settled in we booked a dive course and spent the next three days studying the PADI Open Water Dive Manual - it's two hundred and sixty pages(!!) but very well written - probably the best training manual we have ever seen. The dive course ran from July 23rd to the 26th, with notionally five sessions/lessons in a swimming pool and four lessons in the sea. In fact we did two underwater pool sessions (one of two hours), covering the whole pool syllabus, and four open water dives. Needless to say the theme was safety, safety, safety. Oh and did I mention safety. Things we were taught and had to demonstrate we could do included: flooding a mask underwater and clearing it plus total removal of mask; throwing the regulator (that you breathe air through) over your shoulder and then recovering it; giving the signal for "out of air" and breathing from your buddy's spare regulator; blowing up the Buoyancy Control Device under water by taking air from the regulator, taking the regulator out of your mouth and blowing into the BCD inflation tube; finding out what it's like to run out of air, the instructor turns your tank off!!; dealing with cramp; a controlled emergency (no air supply) swimming ascent from a depth of ten metres; how to avoid and treat Nitrogen Narcosis; how to handle a panicked diver; the effects of contaminated air; and much much more. Needless to say many of those things were pretty scary first time around and if you made a mistake you certainly knew it - Mike nearly choked himself in the pool with one of the mask removals. But repetition was the name of the game and with it came ever incresasing confidence. In between the dive lessons we had five written tests and then a major test at the end. Mike got five one hundred per cents and one ninety, I got a clean sweep all one hundreds, so we did quite well. We were also taught about buoyancy control. What is interesting about this is that you primarily control your descent and ascent by your breathing - the more air in the lungs up you go and vice versa. To learn this we started by lying on the bottom and using our breathing to raise and lower the forward part of the body off the bottom. The next step was hovering three or four feet off the bottom and it is the most amazing experience since you are effectively weightless. The key to it is to remember that water is very dense and there is a delayed reaction, so you have to start breathing out before you want to stop going up and vice versa. A number of amusing things happened. On the first open water dive they look at your body make-up and weight and decide how much lead weight you need to achieve neutral buoyancy at the surface. Mike couldn't descend much initially and the instructor kept giving him more weights (under water) until he carried sixteen pounds of lead, more than everyone else had. The following day he told the instructors about his lungs...wait for it. He learned from being recalled for an X-Ray that he has significantly larger lungs than the very great majority of people, the X-Ray screen they used was too small for him!! The instructors had only come across this once before. The corollary to that is, of course, that he breathes huge amounts of air and was the only person to get his tank pressure gauge into the red danger zone (he watched it coming and hand signalled the instructor under water, so it wasn't a problem). Who says Mike isn't full of hot air!! On the other hand I had a slighly different problem, I could get to the bottom but had difficulty staying there. On one occasion (the last dive) we were sitting in a line on the bottom practising emergency procedures. But I kept "taking off". Mike was next to me and he kept having to reach up and grab me to pull me down. He would then look at me and ask with a hand signal if I was OK, while laughing. I have to say it was very funny. Not so funny though was the problem of equalizing air pressure in your ears and sinuses - at ten metres the pressure is double that on the surface (treble at twenty metres). There are various techniques to equalize: hold your nose, close your mouth and 'push' your breath; swallow (difficult because tank air is totally dry); wiggle your jaws about; rub beneath your ears; combinations of all of those. Mike has always had a problem equalising and was worried whether he could do the full course as the dives got deeper. On the first dive he got to ten metres and had to go back up a bit and spend time equalising, then he came down again. By the second and third dives he had worked out what technique was best for him (wiggle jaw) but it meant using one hand to hold the regulator in his mouth. Fortunately the only significant problem he had was when we did the emergency controlled ascent when you go up quite fast and he wasn't able to equalise - it hurt quite a lot apparently. But he's a tough kiddie and got on with the rest of the dive whilst doing his best to equalise. The first rule of safety is "always look cool". Actually it isn't, it's "never ever hold your breath when diving". Of course this goes against everything you normally do under water so you have to unlearn it. The reason is the air you are breathing is at the same pressure as the water (as I mentioned 10 metre depth equates to two atmospheres). Thus if you go up holding your breath the air in your lungs will expand as the water pressure decreases and your lungs will rupture making it a messy end to the day, if not your life. Initially it seems a bit scary because if you don't have the regulator in your mouth (i.e. you are not breathing) you have to blow little bubbles. When you first throw the regulator over your back you are wondering if you will have run out of air before getting the regulator back. In fact if you follow the regulator recovery procedure you get it back within seconds. But there is also a significant advantage to the pressure. If you start to run out of air (drawing air through the regulator gets harder) then the first port of call is your buddy's alternate air source. If that isn't possible then you can make the controlled emergency ascent we practised. Because the air in your lungs is twice atmospheric pressure at 10 metres, it is the equivalent compressed volume of two large breaths on the surface. Thus you have quite a lot of air to ascend even though you are blowing bubbles. When we did it it was amazing. There is no need to rush the ascent and you arrive at the surface with air still in your lungs. Knowing you can get back up if something went wrong is a great confidence booster. Much of the time we spent diving we were doing safety exercises but we did have a chance to swim around for fifteen minutes on two of the dives. When snorkeling the fish tend to swim away when you approach. But when diving they take no notice of you and many of them are inquisitive and actually come over to take a look at the enormous bubbling monster that has just arrived. Also, and this might sound a bit silly, it's quite amazing to see fish above you. I'm pleased to say that we passed the course and now have our PADI Open Water certificates. These enable us to fill tanks and dive together unaccompanied, anywhere in the world. Being practical however what we've done is pass the driving test, what we need is experience. Initially we will keep to fifty feet depth until we get totally comfortable (the deepest we dived on the course was 17.3 metres/58 feet). Finally our thanks go to Wannadive, Bonaire whose instructors were brilliant. It was around this time that we decided not to head back to Venezuela in early August and part of the reason was diving, it's very difficult to fill tanks in Venezuela. Initially we were thinking of hiring kit and doing a few dives on our own to see if we wanted to continue. But hiring kit is expensive and the more we talked about it the more it became apparent we were hooked. So we went around all the dive shops looking at what kit was available, seeking advice and checking prices. Then we bought two sets of dive gear and started diving off the boat. Literally feet behind the boat was a reef that started about twelve feet deep and angled down at forty five degrees to a depth of one hundred feet and it was covered with fish. I won't bore you with the details but suffice to say we had to adjust our weights because we were now wearing wet suits that add initial buoyancy and on our first dive to ten metres we saw our first snake eel. We also saw a Green turtle feeding on the reef and it swam slowly to the surface (for air) right in front of us! Interestingly the majority of the people on cruising boats in Bonaire were all divers. We hadn't realised until this year just how many of them did it, but with dive sites all over the place, a reef off the back of the boat and tank fill packages at $100 for 50 fills it's not surprising why they come to Bonaire. Curaçao On August 14th we left Bonaire at 07.00 and headed back to Curaçao. We had the odd shower and not much wind, arriving around 14.30, having been inspected at close range by a coastguard helicopter. One of the first things we did was hire a car. Spanish Water is quite remote and while there are free supermarket shopping buses they don't go to the big computer store, big pharmacy, dentist etc. In Venezuela we used taxis because they were so cheap but in Curaçao they are inexplicably expensive e.g. a taxi to the airport is more than double the price of a hire car for a day. Hire a car for two months and the price comes down and we also shared the costs with other cruisers who wanted to borrow it. The car made a real difference to our quality of life. One thing I didn't mention was when we were last in Curaçao Mike did the weather forecast on the cruisers' VHF radio net at 07.45 every day. When we came back he was asked to do it again. He used to read part of NOAA's Tropical Weather Discussion, the NOAA forecast for east of seventy five west to the island chain, and the local Dutch forecast. He would supplement that with an overview of the satellite picture. He would also check other sources such as the GFS global weather model and the QUICKSCAT satellite that shows wind speeds. All told quite a lot of work. The funny thing was that if he thought the professional forecasters were wrong he would say so, say why and give his view. It happened quite often and he only got it wrong twice, he duly apologised. Mike has a good radio voice, speaks slowly and therefore could be understood by the cruisers whose first language isn't English. The net result was that he built up something of a fan club. Cruisers we knew complimented him and if we were introduced to cruisers we didn't know the first thing they would say is "you're the weather man" and launch into how good he was. Quite amazing. Hope it doesn't go to his head! Slightly later at 08.15 the Caribbean Safety and Security Net is on HF radio. Given the size of the Caribbean not all boats can hear Melodye, the net controller. I sometimes acted as the southern relay, relaying messages if boats couldn't hear Melodye or if she couldn't hear them. All in all we were kept very busy in the early mornings. Trip to England I flew back on Monday 3rd of September, the day the airport reopened after hurricane Felix. I had a fantastic if busy time and was very lucky to have mainly good weather the whole time. I spent most of my time on the south coast with my family, but managed a trip to see Mike's parents in Essex and friends in London. It was great to catch up with everyone's news and see them again. The Southampton Boat Show was good and I caught up with Dan and the LateSail crew and I even managed a drink with Sue and David from Barnstormer who are back in the UK at the moment. A big thank you to Mike and Jacque O'Keefe, Paul K, Alison and Ian D and of course my family for putting me up for so long! The return trip was fine apart from the fact NONE of my luggage arrived with me. It did turn up 24 hours later and, thanks to whoever left it out in the rain, it took another day to dry it all. Odds and ends Games and books. Since we don't normally have television we amuse ourselves with the odd DVD, books, music and games. The games are highly competitive and at the end of September the Scrabble score was one hundred and four games each, we were also even at seventy two and seventy five games. The first time I got level with Mike was on May 31st and I have been ahead of Mike twice. I'm not saying he cheats but you wouldn't believe some of the slang words he claims would be in the dictionary (if we had a decent one). I am of course ahead in Mexican Train Dominoes, twenty to nineteen, the game doesn't need a dictionary. Mah Jong is a different matter - Nick and Josie on Jedi taught us how to play and after three sessions Mike managed to win scoring near the maximum possible - not bad for someone who still doesn't really know what on earth he's doing! Made us laugh. Can't remember where we read this but the SR71 spy plane flew higher and faster than any other plane, by a substantial margin. The SR71 base in the Japan had the following sign outside: "Though we fly through the valley of death we are at eighty thousand feet and still climbing". Brilliant. How to tell a Parrot from a Parakeet in flight. Parakeets seem to have their vocal chords attached to their wing muscles and generally squawk in flight, parrots generally don't. You always wanted to know that. Handy engineering tip from Mike (I thought everyone might be interested because of what happens, it's incredible). If you have a leaking copper washer on a diesel engine bleed point then the copper has hardened. If you don't have a spare the following will turn the copper soft again, but only once. Get a long screwdriver, put the washer on and make sure the washer also rotates when you rotate the screwdriver. Hold the washer over the flame of a gas cooker. Rotate the screwdriver to heat the washer evenly. The washer will turn black as it heats up. It will then turn white with further heat. When white remove from flame. Do not heat to red hot. Let washer air cool, do not put it in water. When cool it will be copper coloured again. It's like magic. Where next? Well...having started to head back east in July and then come back to Curacao we reckon we had better try harder! Friends have tried to persuade us to go west with them, but we have decided to have another go at heading east! We plan to head out of Curaçao in a couple of weeks (got to stock up on Marmite first) weather and current permitting, hopefully before the stonger winds start up.