Out Island Paradise

So I guess I should begin by saying…sorry! When we arrived in Bonaire on the 1st of October, we had numerous emails with the subject, “WORRIED”. We told some people we would be out of touch for about a month, but obviously we should have told more, so we’re very sorry! However….we had an in-cred-ible month!
I have to first say Congrats to the new babies that have arrived in our world. We are very happy for all the new parents (and some second timers!).Ok…so I guess we left you in Medregal. Well…we’re back in the water, in case you didn’t catch that memo. We launched Meggie with dread as we thought she would leak like a sieve after sitting on the hard in the tropics for 2 months, but to our delight, she didn’t leak a drop. We were outta there. We headed to Cumana (the closest city) to provision the boat for a month, checked out of Venezuela and tidied up a few last minute details and we were off. Our first stop was Tortuga, laying 70 miles northwest. We had an uneventful night sail and arrived in the early morning hours and were met with gin clear water. We had forgotten how blue the water could be, and to top it off a beautiful white sand beach lined the turquoise waters. We rested up and moved to a reef enclosed anchorage, where you could snorkel off your boat and catch your dinner. One overcast day we sat in the anchorage and watched a storm pass north of and watch waterspout clouds try to form, but luckily they couldn’t quite touch the water (Thank God). Then we saw another funnel form one day in Los Roques…not a sight you welcome, but cool to see. We stayed in Tortuga for about a week, just playing with the fish and once we had a decent weather window we moved to Los Roques, Venezuela. We had a screaming over night sail of about 85 miles flying wing on wing the whole way, and by morning the wind was up to about 20 knots, so Meggie was flying. We entered the narrow cut behind the reefs and again were met with the most unbelievable blues you could imagine (I’ll probably write that a lot in this blog). Oh and on the way…we caught a perfect size mahi mahi. So we dropped the hook and had a great mahi lunch and then a great mahi dinner!
Los Roques is a protected marine park, so no spear fishing here, but the reefs are so alive with enormous fish swimming about feeling very safe in their protected environment. Los Roques’ eastern end is an enormous reef, with little islands and sand bars tucked safely behind it.
Sailing behind the reef means lots of wind, with only a small wind chop and no ocean swell. So we enjoyed meandering along in the perfect blues and finding a different anchorage alone every night, unless you wanted to be with people. We decided to anchor right behind the reef so we could check out the sea life, and we met with 3 Canadian boats whom we knew of. So we got more acquainted with these Canadians over a beautiful mahi dinner that Rene on Gypsy Blues had caught on their way from Tortuga. So John, Lucie and their 2 boys Theo and Simi on Tyee 3 a great family from Revelstoke, BC (whom we’re still travelling with), Chris on Spy Glass (a single hander from BC) and Rene and Cheryl on Gypsy Blues (from non other than Barrie, Ontario whose cruising grounds are the North Channel and Georgian Bay!!!!!). Great company, great food, great scenery…who could ask for more.
While in another anchorage we were able to catch up with another friend on Seredipity. Harke (from Holland) and his crew Joyce (from the US) were kind enough to host many dinners aboard Seredipity and as always great times were had by all. This was Joyce’s first experience cruising and it was fun to watch her taking it all in.
Los Roques isn’t quite as remote as it once was. Huge Venezuelan mega yachts cruise here on the weekends and holidays and there is one island that hosts quite a few posada’s, restaurants and little shops. At this point in our little adventure in the out islands we were pretty low on fruit and veg, flour, eggs etc…so the little grocery shop was a much needed stop.
Up until this point I was making pancakes from scratch, baking bread (that’s right mom…I was baking bread), baking morning sconces and trying to come up with different recipe’s to include our dwindling supply of food.
After a quick restock of some fruit and veg we headed to the central and western Roques. All anchorages were beautiful but Isla Cayo de Agua was the nicest in our opinion. Beautiful beach, protected anchorage, great diving, lots of turtles and of course great company with the new addition of Mustang Sally. Cayo de Agua has a little island that sits off it where you can see wild flamingos meandering about…pretty cool.
I’m going to sound like a broken record. Basically all the anchorages were beautiful, and the reefs were bursting with live coral, and an abundance of fish (all types of species…too many to count, and of course no underwater camera!), the beaches were white sand with numerous beautiful shells littering the shore, and an unbelievable array of blues I’ve ever seen. The water more clear than the Bahamas, dare I say.
We finally left the marine park of Los Roques and arrived in Aves de Barlovento where we wove our way through the reefs to the end anchorage behind the big horseshoe reef. The difference in the Aves is that you can spear fish!!! We geared up one day and dove on the outer reef in search for dinner, only to be chased back to our dinghy by a 6 foot barracuda (ok, maybe he was only 4 ½-5 feet but he looked unbelievably big under the water). Normally barracudas linger a bit, but don’t usually bother us, but as I was confirming my find of a nice sized grouper I felt searing eyes on me and I turned around to be face to face (well probably about 8 feet away) with this nasty looking monster. I’m a bit of a freak when it comes to barracudas as it is and I had wandered pretty far from the dinghy and Mike was half way between, so I had to pass the monster to get to Mike who was chasing a snapper ready to shoot. I bolted….turned around and he was following…like closely. I tugged on Mike’s fin and made funny gestures with my hands and yelled into my snorkel, but he already saw him behind me. I headed for the dinghy with Mike hot on my tail and launched myself into the dinghy (similar to the move that Mike made when he saw the reef shark in the Bahamas)…I looked back and Mike was turned to the monster with his spear aimed and ready to shoot and the barracuda was about 5 feet from the tip of the spear and coming strong. With a swift move, Mike turned and launched into the dinghy just as the nasty beast swam past the ding. AHHHH….We’ve never experienced such an aggressive barracuda before, and we did not like it. So we went back to Meggie and had spaghetti. That night we encountered for the first time in a long time a pretty good 40 knot squall that lasted for quite awhile (always in the early morning hours). It’s always a little scary even though we’ve had our fair share of squalls to deal with in the past, and being anchored with reefs all around isn‘t a comforting feeling, but Meggie held like a champ.
A cool thing on Isla Sur (Aves de Barlovento) is an shrine-like-leave-your-mark for sailors/cruisers who come upon this island. So Meggie’s name written on piece of coral sits amongst the others who have passed through this beautiful part of the world for years to come.
Aves Barlovento was great, but we were anxious to see Aves de Sotovento (20 miles west) and then carry onto Bonaire, so we up anchored and made the short hop to Sotovento.
We anchored off a white sand beach….again, and the next morning the gang on Tyee 3, Mike and I headed out to find dinner. At this point our shelves on board were looking pretty skinny, but with the help of some flour (and my new found baking skills…HA) and some long lasting cabbage, and of course rice and pasta we were doing ok, but fish would top it off nicely…but even better would be some lobster!
So by 8:30am we were in the dinghies heading out for the hunt. Probably the most diverse and alive coral I had ever seen yet was found in Aves Sotovento…absolutely unbelievable. I couldn’t even begin to name the different types of coral or the numerous species of fish, it was astounding. So armed with lobster snares and spears we searched the reefs for some sort of dinner and were not disappointed .
For two nights we were treated to a lobster/snapper dinner for 6, but only after being in the water from 8:30am-2pm for 2 days in a row. Believe it or not…it was exhausting (I know…tough life, huh).
So by the 1st of October our water tanks were almost empty, our fruit and veg had been eaten, the canned goods gone, all dry goods finished and our rum and beer depleted so it was time to leave the serenity of the out islands and finally say goodbye to Venezuela once and for all.
We arrived in Bonaire and headed out for a much welcome burger and fries dinner with an accompanying cold beer or two and a side of cold water with ICE!!!
What an incredible month. We really are spoiled to see and experience such amazing places as the ones we’ve just spent the last month in.
So, with our shelves somewhat stocked again, we plan to hang in Bonaire for a bit and take in some of the sailing regatta and then make our way to Curacao (only 35 miles away now) to prepare ourselves and Meggie for our 600 nautical mile sail to Jamaica at the end of the month. Bonaire is also beautiful and is considered the diving capitol of the Caribbean. We feel very safe again in Bonaire, and also felt safe in the out islands which is a nice change to always worrying about safety and security in Venezuela.

So anyway, not a lot to write about in this blog, but so much fun was had.
I’ll try to do a quick blog before we leave for Jamaica, so people know when we’re going and so I won’t get any “WORRIED” emails when we arrive in Jamaica! All the same, thank you all for your concern.
Cheers,
Kylie and Mike