Having spent a week on land, preparing Chaser 2 for the sea, we are back in the water, at anchor, with a good breeze blowing helping us stay cool. It's been 3 months since we were here but as intended we have sailed west to Puerto De La Cruz. A good sail too, pretty much all the way, though we did stop on route. We sailed into the marina at Cumana, it doesn't get any better. The people are lovely and very welcoming, partly because they now get so few foreign visitors. Though one or two of the docks have been repaired others are falling apart or have fallen apart being held floating around in the water by a piece of rope so they don’t drift away. The price is now 156 Bolivares for Chaser 2, about 18 US$ per night, we only stayed one night.

We departed late morning when the wind picked up for a sail along the coast to Mochima, the plan being to have a swim by an island, have lunch, then continue on down to the village. There was an uncomfortable swell though, rolling right into our intended anchorage, so we just headed straight on down to the village anchorage where we would spend the night. We had thought to have a meal ashore, but come 5pm they shut their doors for the day. It's not a busy time I guess especially in the evenings, we were the only boat in the anchorage. We always have plenty of food and drink on board so we dined in the cockpit.

The following morning we sailed to Puerto De La Cruz, about 22 miles for the luxury of a marina. The plan being we leave Chaser 2 here, while we drive inland, don’t like to leave the boat at anchor while we are away.

For those landlubbers that read our blog, our days may not be appreciated or understood. So to let you grasp our strange way of life I'll explain some of our unusual ways. One has to remember that we have no electricity or water other than what we make ourselves, in order to make that we have to run a generator of some sort in order to charge batteries. Our water maker converts sea water to drinking water at the rate of 70 litres per hour. We can take sea water showers then rinse off with freshwater. The water maker has an electric pump, therefore consumes battery power. Chaser2 has 220 volt sockets on board and 12 volt sockets, if we need to run anything at mains voltage like a sewing machine for example, we have to switch on an Inverter, this converts 12 volts from our batteries to 220 volts AC. All these things take a lot of battery power, we certainly couldn't run an electric kettle or any mains item with a heating element or batteries would soon be flat. We do have a microwave oven but although it takes a lot of power it's only on for a very short period of time. We do have an immersion heater for hot water, this water can be heated by 220 volts, or by running our main engine. So while we are at anchor we run our engine or generator to give us hot water, 220 volts and charge our batteries. This process at anchor takes about two hours per day, we normally do it early evening while cooking, that way we can have lights on without using battery power. When it rains we try and catch fresh water with a contraption we've made that unfortunately sometimes inverts and turns into a sail! But we can catch a lot of water. Our tanks hold 400 litres of water and 500 litres of diesel. Having said all this we do have some luxuries, we have toilets, hot and cold running water with taps and showers, TV and DVD, internet and telephones. The TV however tends only to get used with DVD's, Spanish, Venezuelan and Caribbean TV is generally crap and far worse than UK and the states. We just have to limit its use so we don’t use all our batteries. We do our cooking is by gas, we have two rings an oven and grill, a large fridge that runs on 12 volts and 220 volts, (that consumes a lot of power) trying to keep the beer and wine cool in very hot temperatures.  We have VHF radios for us to communicate with other sailors and the authorities that we have to clear in with when we enter a different country. And we have all our navigational aids that can tell us exactly where we are in the world within an accuracy of 2 meters. Our exercise tends to be climbing in and out of the dinghy, climbing aboard Chaser 2, climbing up onto piers and jetties and walking the length of Chaser's 44 feet. Having said that, not having a car with us does mean we have to walk a lot more than  when we do have one.

While in our anchorage in the Golf of Cariaco we have the use of a car. Anywhere else we don’t so our dinghy is our transportation. We shop by dinghy, explore by dinghy and at night park it in our garage, ie tied to the back of Chaser 2.

Now we have the luxury of being in a marina, here we can plug into the mains electric, so no battery charging necessary. We can fill our water tanks by hose whenever we wish and because there is less of a breeze we can run our air conditioning system, which works well despite its infrequent use (cant use that at anchor) though as i said, at anchor there is always a nice breeze. The marina we are in is called TechMarine Oriente, or TMO, currently it is 71 Bolivares per night approx. 5 pounds, that includes all our electricity, water and the mooring of the boat, so not bad, no bills at all other than gas for cooking which is about 1.30 pounds per bottle, (lasts about a month) and diesel which costs 70 pence for one hundred litres, and in the marina we don’t use any of that.

This time some friends were coming to Puerto De La Cruz by car, they met us in the marina, stayed aboard Chaser 2 for the night then gave us a lift back to Medregal anchorage in order for us to collect the car.

All this time we have had our parrot (Captain) with us on board. Here early morning he shouts at his mates flying past and yesterday 3 of them came to visit and hung on our rigging.

This week, now carnival is over we have to return to Cariaco and collect some materials for the garden. We'll be there for the weekend, have a meal at the restaurant no doubt and then on Saturday go to a friends birthday party before heading back to Puerto De La Cruz. Then we plan to drive inland for a few days and visit the River Orinoco.

We have been living aboard Chaser 2 now for nearly 5 years and sailed approximately 17,000 miles and visited 16 different countries. In between times we have flown back to Europe to visit family and they have flown here to see us. Our next visit is in May, so in the meantime we want to make the most of our time here, inland and offshore.

Oh, yes and my birthday, though I hate to remember it, it came went last Saturday, we all had a good evening, Jean Marc provided the Champagne and I now benefit from half price fares and receive an income!

Until next time.

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