Venezuela to Gibraltar June 2015
Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Tue 12 Jan 2016 15:49
distance, maybe 50 miles to the Golf of Cariaco and Medregal village to see
some friends and check on our house.
It was good to see everybody and say goodbye.
On our return to Puerto La Cruz we spent a few days with Jaco and Christelle
and waited for our crew to arrive. We decided not to bring Chaser back to
Europe ourselves, the excitement of long distance sailing has diminished
over the years. Our longest sail was across the Atlantic ocean from the
Canary islands, it took 18 days, and it took 5 days to get to the Canaries.
It's a long time at sea with nothing in sight, the nearest land being 5
miles away and that's below us. We knew the return trip would be even longer
and it did, our crew took 42 days, from Venezuela to St Martin, the Azores
and onto Gibraltar.
So Chaser arrived in Gibraltar, and, as it turned out, during a distressing
time for us. Billy, Susie's husband/partner died suddenly. Fortunately
Yvonne and I were here to comfort and help Susie and the kids.
Time has moved on now, 6 months have passed, and we are into the new year.
Susie and Evie are doing well and their lives are getting back to normal,
Liam is too young to know anything but we are sure he can pick up on the
sadness, emotionally and financially it's been hard.
Being back in Gibraltar and the Med has made everything easier, now we can
drive to visit the Susie and the kids, Rob lives next door but one, and has
been a great help for all.
Our plans have obviously changed a little, but we are happy to be able to
see everybody regularly.
We visited Malta a few weeks ago to checkout the marinas for next year. We
didn't like it at all, the marinas were full and the traffic was heavy,
during winter too! We found the people to be generally unfriendly, and the
marinas weren't really interested in livaboards. So Malta is out, maybe
Italy or Greece, we'll see.
When we've had time we have done some much need repairs to Chaser, more to
do during the next few months. Now we are waiting for some warmer weather,
we are not cold weather sailors, so we're going to do some travelling by car
or plane around Europe.
We still keep in touch with our old sailing buddies, Jaco and Christelle,
now in San Blas, near Panama, and Tony and Chris now living in Wales.
So some photos of the past months, including our 3 crew, and friends in TMO
marina who have helped us and many others through the impossible Spanish
style beauracracy of Venezuela.
