Chaser cleared out of Puerto La Cruz Venezuela on 28th August heading west for Bonaire. Chaser’s 18 months permitted stay in Venezuela was coming to an end, so before our daughter Susie arrives mid October, we decided to go to another country, clear in and later back out and return  to Venezuela after the required 45 day period in time to meet Susie at Barcelona airport.

Isla Tortuga was our first stop, we actually departed at 06.00hrs on the 30th August, weather was good. Tortuga is a large uninhabited island almost the size of St Lucia or Grenada. It is a favourite of ours and only a day sail away. To the north west of Tortuga lays a small horseshoe shape Cay, hence its name, Cayo Herradura. We love this anchorage, the beach is beautiful and the snorkeling  good over the coral reef. Often we can have this little island to ourselves, or as we did this time, share it with one other sailboat. We arrived Thursday around 1600hrs, fish for dinner, a nice Tuna  we caught earlier. Friday the weather turned a little, with a storm passing to the north. Got a great view of a touchdown behind the reef.

Come the weekend we knew we would be accompanied by many stinkpots from the Venezuelan mainland. They fancy speedboats and superyachts arrive Saturday morning, spend the night and leave again Sunday afternoon. We don’t understand their mentality sometimes. These guys arrive, they ‘park’ their boats, often stern to the beach using a bow anchor and then they swim ashore taking a stern anchor onto the beach. They put out fenders so other boats can ‘park’ alongside them, sometimes 3 or 4 abreast. You then realize why their 30 foot speedboats have 3 – 350 horsepower engines, it’s so they can play their 5000 Megawatt stereos! It’s strange, they come all this way to the most beautiful, tranquil, desolate coral island and turns it into a discotheque, moored up to other boats just as they were when they left their marina earlier that day. Some of the people on the larger boats don’t even step ashore, just watch TV with their air con and generators going full bore and wait for more guests to arrive by helicopters. That’s socialism in Venezuela, don’t believe all you read. The beaches and snorkeling are superb, it seems such a wasted day for them. Each to their own I suppose, you just wonder why they bothered.

Some amusement is provided to us cruisers though; most of the 50 ft and larger boats have crew, who should know what they are doing, but often they do not. One 85ft boat spent hours trying to put out an anchor to his port side to avoid the boat swinging back and forth in the wind. All boats do this of course but these big motor boats have a lot of wind age. He used an aluminum Fortress anchor, with 25 meters of rope, no chain, consequently as the wind blew this 45 ton boat, it just dragged the anchor underneath. Four times the ‘Captain’ tried this, before giving up for the evening. Next morning we saw he’d tried to put it out the starboard side. Still didn’t work of course and it lie under his stern.

An owner of one of the other motorboats decided he was going to take his dinghy for a spin. I assume he had not done this before; it was morning, so he wasn’t drunk, but he started the engine, gave it full throttle and fell over the stern. He had no kill cord on, and the throttle was locked on full. The man was so lucky, this dinghy now trying to reach 30 knots was circling anticlockwise, how it missed his owner I do not know. It didn’t miss the bathing platform of the superyacht however. It bounced up the platform and you could hear the prop chewing up the fiberglass before it continued on its circular route. Fortunately a couple of brave fisherman came to its rescue. They tried dragging a floating rope to snare the propeller but the dinghy was screaming and bouncing so violently that it jumped over the rope as it hit its own wash. As the Pirogue edged closer the dinghy turned and headed straight for their gunwale, hit bounced up on to the side of the wooden boat, knocked one of the fisherman overboard, but another managed to hold onto the dinghy while a 3rd stepped on  and pulled the kill cord.

There is entertainment every weekend. But , come Monday we had our little island paradise back to ourselves. This is the beauty of cruising Venezuela, nowhere else in the Caribbean would you find Coral reefs, palm fringed islands and no sailboats.

Our plan was not to spend all our 45 days in Bonaire, so there was no rush to leave Tortuga, but we decided to move on anyway. We picked up a weather forecast  and decided to head offshore, heading for Bonaire but leaving our options open to turn south west to Carenero or northwest to Roques or continue on. I wasn’t feeling too good, a recurring problem so we decided to head for the western end of Los Roques and anchor for the night. We arrived around 23.00hrs not a good time, no visibility in shallow waters is not a good idea, but we knew an anchorage from a previous visit, ad just dropped the hook, so I could rest.

Next day, we moved inside the reef for a more comfortable anchorage to decide whether or when to move on. I felt fine the following day, just a little weak. So we upped anchor, and sailed to Los Aves Barlovento, a small coral island, a half day sail west of our position. Getting there in good light is important, the water is shallow, hitting a patch of coral can easily hole the boat. We anchored behind the mangroves, watch the amazing number of birds, some quite tame, really nice to have Boobies on the back of the boat! As the sunset we relaxed in the cockpit with a small rum and coke for me and a larger one for Yvonne. Dinner was part of a fine Dolphin fish or Mahi Mahi we caught earlier that day. We stayed here another day before moving on to Los Aves Sotovento, another half day sail, the forecast was still good and we had a good downwind sail all the way in calm seas.

On our arrival the Venezuelan Coastguard called us, asking for identification, number of people on board, our intentions etc. We told them we wanted to anchor for a night or two and then leave for Bonaire. He took all our details and wished us a pleasant voyage.

It was time now  to explore new territory; we are only 30 miles from our destination. We had mixed feeling, having been to Curacao before, another Dutch Antillean Island and we weren’t too impressed, too European and city like. So was Bonaire going to be the same?

These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google.

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