12:21N 69:30W

 

We left Spanish Waters in Curacao at 6am and it’s one place we weren’t sorry to leave.  It’s an island with very little going for it from a cruisers’ point of view.  With drug trafficking from nearby Venezuela a real issue, anchoring anywhere except Spanish Waters is difficult.  To do so you need to go into the harbour master in Willemstad (a tender, bus ride and long walk away) to buy an anchoring permit which is only valid for three days for any one spot.  We put it in the too hard basket and stayed in Spanish Waters - a good anchorage but not ideal for swimming. 

 

Curacao is a place we will not recall with fondness due to yet another fruitless wait for parts.....the ongoing Never Ending Story (more of a saga really).  Not having a fixed address and having to wait for parts to be sent to a marina, shop or business is a frustrating part of this cruising life that causes huge stress.  The first chapter of the Never Ending Story was in 2006 when we had new mattresses sent to Preveza in Greece.....only to discover they’d been sent back to London by the marina because we’d gone out for the day!!!!!!   We wrote more chapters throughout Turkey, Italy and Spain as we spent countless hours on buses, in taxis, on bikes and even hitchhiking to try and track down missing mail or parts.  In Barbados we waited seven days for our new ship registration papers to arrive from Wellington....watching online in growing disbelief and frustration as they sat in Miami for five days despite being on a “rush” courier service.  Tracking numbers aren’t always helpful!!

 

This time we needed a part for our depth sounder.  Budget Marine is a huge chandlery with stores throughout the Caribbean and, after fruitless attempts in Barbados, Grenada and Bonaire, we finally managed to order the part in Curacao.  We even had a confirmation email from the general manager saying the part was ordered Tuesday (last week), would arrive on the island Wednesday and take a “few days” to clear customs.  David duly rang the store each day to be told it would be here “tomorrow”.  After a week of this.....we began to smell a rat.  Call us cynical but we’d been stung in the past and so yesterday decided to see where out part was.  We headed into the shop only to discover the part had in fact not even been ordered.  It takes a lot to get mild mannered David fired up but the combination of an arrogant Dutchman (the general manager of Budget......what an attitude) and the frustration of our much needed part not arriving saw him get rather tense.  With Easter looming we decided to flag the whole thing. What a wasted week of waiting. Yet another chapter in our Never Ending Story and believe us....there WILL be more!

 

Sailing conditions today are lovely – 15 knots of wind from behind and a relatively flat sea.  We’re sailing with one reef in the main and the headsail poled out to starboard alongside Balvenie – neither boat showing any advantage at this stage despite the Bandit skipper shaking a reef out of the main to increase speed.  We did note that Balvenie had two headsails as well as their main earlier.....note to ground jury......is that legal???

 

We plan to anchor on the south of Aruba overnight then have another early start tomorrow and get underway to Colombia.  We’ve already been buzzed by CoastGuard in a helicopter and, given the proximity to Venezuela, imagine there will be more.