12:09.274N 68:16.781W Bonaire Sunday 26 October
If Knot Y Knot
Patricia Day
Sun 26 Oct 2008 20:44
It was a relief to be out of Venezuela. The country is amazing and the
people generally friendly, but the security risk for yachts is
particularly bad at present with incidents weekly and cruisers being
killed. Especially when some of the boats are ones that we know. I spent
two months in Venezuela and there were fantastic anchorages and marine
parks that we had not visited which meant we could have easily have spent
another month there. With every day we stayed we felt that the
probabilities were more of us becoming a statistic.
So here we are in Bonaire and now we can relax. We had to check in at the
police station and it was easy, the people were friendly and it was free.
Monday 27 October to Sunday 2 November
We went to the marina to pay for the mooring, there is no anchoring
allowed in Bonaire which is basically a diving heaven.
Passat and Puddle Jumper arrived on Wednesday.
Thursday we went for a snorkel and I had my first scuba dive. I had to
upgrade my snorkelling permit to a scuba diving one.
Friday morning we went for a more serious dive. I went down to 28 feet
with Kerry and could see the wreck from where I was, while Jimmy took
Heather, Scott and Andrew down to the wreck.
In the afternoon Kerry, Andrew and Jimmy went on a drift dive. We went
down to the south of Bonaire they jumped off and we left them. All we had
to do was watch the bubbles and pick them up about an hour later when they
came up. I was driving Bluewater Cat, 38 foot and two engines, one in
forward, one in reverse and you twirl quite nicely. Unfortunately it was
not possible to see the bubbles and so I was letting the boat drift with
the current and then motoring back to stay in the general area. When they
came up they inflated their coloured markers and we saw them immediately,
they had not got a fraction of the distance we were expecting, and picked
them up without running over them. They had fun, it was a bit more
stressful for us. We saw a flock of flamingos flying nearby.
Saturday we saw some flamingos at 150 feet away on a salt pond near the
marina.
Sunday, 8.30 start for more snorkelling and a dive, we had to be back for
dominos at 2.