We weighed anchor after sunset to make landfall in Aruba in daylight. Customsdock in Aruba is a mandatory place for first landfall and clearance with customs/immigration. The dock has a bad reputation for strong tradewinds,narrow manouvering space and a shallow reef 30m in leeward.

We were lucky having a space large enough in front of a tug boat were we could land stern to the winddirection. Except for taking our spearguns into custody clearance for long time storage of Dora Mac went fine.

Aruba is furthest to the west of all three ABC islands and therefore also the most windinfested. It´s a flat dry island with a lot of dust,long white beaches scattered with hotels and it´s an island of masstourism. From a cruiser perspective it´s windy,dusty and with very few descent anchorages.

The reason for most boats to go here is long time storage on the hard during hurricane season at Varadero Aruba. None of the ABC islands has had any hurricane since 1877 which is well recognised by all insurance companies.

After clearance we headed to Arashi Bay at the northwest tip of Aruba where we dropped anchor at 2,2m. This is a beautiful spot allhtough with few sandpatches where the anchor will dig in. We had to reanchor several times and still got a very doubtful hold checked by snorkeling. Since winds were gusting up to 30kts we turned on the anchor alarm allthough not seriously concerned having nothing dangerous in leeward.

After a couple of days we had 3 new neighbours anchored in windward of Dora Mac. One of them anchored close to us just in line with the wind and like the rest of us with a doubtful hold on the anchor. That was of more concern.