Bonaire

Bonaire is shaped a bit like a boomerang, with the concave side facing west. The whole of the island is fringed with a coral reef which drops off quickly into very deep water. Between the drop-off and the shore is a narrow ledge dotted with dive and yacht moorings. It is illegal to anchor in case you damage the coral. We radioed ahead for a mooring assignment and picked one up just north of town.
Bonaire is Dutch, as part of the Netherlands Antilles, which also includes Abaco and Curacao nearby, and half of St Martin to the north. These are the remaining Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. The sheltered reef is known around the world as a dive destination. With the reef so close to shore most dive tourists just stay on shore, rent a car, and drive around the island to dive the various spots. It was a great place to dive training too, and I intended to try to get some work as an instructor to top up the cruising kitty again.
We had some chores to do. As we motored into Bonaire we notices that the engine had not been generating any electricity. Quick look under the hood revealed that the strut that allows you to tighten the alternator belt had broken. Also we didn’t have charts for Panama, and were running short of fresh food.
I deployed the dinghy and we went into town to check in. The process was finished fifteen minutes later, and we were the proud owners of the biggest passport stamps we had ever seen. We walked through the town and realised that this was the first time except for the attempted picnic in the Las Aves that we had been on land for months. Our second mission was to find a hamburger and a cold beer, not necessarily in that order.
As we got into our dinghy we bumped into Matt and Heather off Pelorus Jack, whom we hadn’t seen for months. Also keen divers, they intended to do some training here and were checking out course prices. We also caught up with Darwin’s Passage and started to make plans to run Advanced and Rescue courses for anyone who wanted to upgrade their skills.
We couldn’t wait to get wet, so the next day we went for the first dive, directly off the stern of True Blue. We swam forward to check the quality of the mooring and found a moray eel had made it home there. Ten meters from the back of the boat there was a pretty coral drop-off that went straight down to 140 feet. There was some reef damage from a hurricane the year before, but as you went deeper the damage disappeared and the coral and fish life was exceptional. The water was crystal clear.
We also did the dive off the stern as a night dive for everyone’s night dive for their advanced course. I took my video camera and strapped my dive light to it. It didn’t make a very good video floodlight, but as I was filming a small fish a bloody great Tarpon darted in and ate my subject. I filmed him for a while, then turned it back to the reef, but every time I lit up a fish he ate it. In the end I gave up.
We dived a wreck called the Helma Hooker for the advanced students’ wreck dive. This was a great dive, about 100 feet/30m deep, with a pretty complete freighter laying on its side. Again there were huge numbers of fish.
On land the island was pretty flat and uninteresting. The town was pretty, with a European feel and plenty of tourist stuff. We ate out a lot and went to the jetty bar when we felt like it. We re-stocked the boat, as our next stop was to be the San Blas islands in Panama, where there were no shops at all. We had Christmas there and enjoyed being able to call home. We procrastinated a bit, because the next passage was a big one. We found we were making excuses to stay. I had the motor fixed at the local marina, which ended up being a good, cheap job that is still holding up today. It was time to go.

Around Columbia

We said our goodbyes, then had one last quiet night aboard before moving off. We had been listening to the weather reports for the last few days and they repeatedly talked of strong winds around the area at the top of Columbia, which was directly on our path. We decided to sail around the area entirely. We would sail northwest for a couple of days to fully avoid any drug dealers or pirates, then approach Panama from the north.
Our first night was a fast, pleasant sail, but the next day the wind piped up to around twenty knots. The reports were of up to forty knots to our south, so we kept to the north. The wind was still on our stern, so it was not too rough. The next day, though, the seas were building to four meters of so and there still gale warnings for the area. At this stage we were half way to Jamaica. We had to turn. This put the seas on the beam, so Bluey was broadside to the waves and rolling heavily. We had a double-reefed mainsail and only half of the genoa out, and the large swells blanketed the wind from the sails each time we went into a trough. I wondered if I needed more sail to stabilise her but didn’t feel confident enough to put more up. The area had relatively shallow water, so the waves were close together and square. Every half hour or so a wave crashed across the deck and filled the cockpit. Mostly we stayed below, only going outside to check for ships every half hour. Standing in the cockpit, tied to the mizzen mast by my harness tether, it amazed me how strong the boat was. Every now and then there was a small job to do outside the cockpit, like changing sail, lashing down the anchor more securely, or tying down a loose fuel container. We always put these jobs off until we couldn’t stand the noise any longer, because it always meant getting soaked to the skin. Noises get magnified inside the hull on passage, and the smallest thing on deck sounds like the end of the world while you lie on your bunk trying to sleep.
This kept up for three more days, until finally the wind dropped and we could relax. There were dead flying fish everywhere on the deck, and the salon was damp and salty from breaking waves leaking through the hatch seals. Ironically the wind was now clocking to the northwest, so we had a tail wind coming into the San Blas. We debated visiting Cartagena, Columbia, which was a safe haven in the otherwise lawless country, but by then we just wanted to get anchored, so we headed for the Holandes Cays.
The final night of our five day passage was spent off the coast, waiting for the sun to come up. There was a haze over the islands and the sky was grey. We didn’t have a good chart for the area, just the sketch charts in the cruising guide, and the pass we were going through was not completely charted there, so we came in with our hearts in our mouths. We were pretty safe because the wind was onshore, so any water too shallow for our boat would have had breaking waves, but it would have been nice to have had good visibility so we could see the reefs.
A half an hour later we were back on the charts, motoring west in the flat waters behind the reef.

San Blas Islands, Panama

The San Blas Islands are a long series of coral islands dotted along a barrier reef. They are white sand and sandstone with palm trees and little else. The local inhabitants are the Kuna Indians, who live a subsistence life around fishing and coconuts and some handicrafts. They are fiercely independent and are govern themselves as an autonomous region within the Republic of Panama. They are pretty primitive and get around in dugout canoes.
As we motored into the anchorage we saw Althea! We dropped the anchor near them in the lee of one of the islands and broke out a celebratory beer. It was warm and fizzy from its rough treatment over the last week, but rarely has a drink tasted so good. A couple of hours later the local island chief and his family came out in his canoe to collect the anchorage fee. This was a standard, one-off ten bucks for the right to anchor anywhere in the region covered by that village, so we didn’t mind too much, but it was the only place on our trip we had to pay to anchor. It was a little embarrassing that we didn’t speak very good Spanish, and they obviously wanted to make friends. After a while they gave up the social aspects of it and asked for Café and Aroz, which we were happy to give them. He came back later on with a receipt for the money, but I was kind of hoping for a fish in return for our rice and coffee too. Given the remoteness of the island, though, we were happy to make it a gift.
Perhaps we were spoilt by an experience we had in the Bahamas, on our first trip. We were anchored at Little Farmers Cay in the Abacos, and one of the local fishermen came up and asked me for some rope. After looking at all the different types (a sailboat has a lot of rope), he settled on a $3.50 hank of poly line we bought from U-Haul to tie down our furniture. The next day he returned with most of the rope and seven lobster tails. He had only needed a few feet for a starter cord for their generator.
These islands looked similar to the Bahamas Out Islands. As the day wore on the haze lifted and we had blue skies again. With the improved light the true beauty of the place became evident. We could see the coral reefs under the crystal clear water. A wrecked sailboat marked the edge of the reef and served as a reminder to be careful. The water was inviting, so the next day we all went spear fishing. There were reef sharks around and the fish were elusive. I didn’t end up getting any. Vege stir-fry again.
For the next couple of days we relaxed and recovered from the difficult passage. Alison had not felt well for the entire five days. It made sense, because most of it had been like a 24 hour a day ride on a roller-coaster. We had also sustained some damage to our sails, and we pulled the mainsail down and sewed it up where it was splitting. In Trinidad we had bought some cloth to make splash guards for the cockpit. These hang between the lifelines and stop some of the spray getting into the cockpit, as well as making it feel more secure and giving privacy while bathing at anchor. I had wished we had them on the last passage, and it was good to do something proactive about making the ones to come more pleasant.
We soon found out how little I knew about sewing canvas. My corners were about half an inch thick. Althea came to the rescue. Laurie was a professional canvas maker with a sail maker’s sewing machine aboard, and in the end we just hired her to do it. They came back just as strong, but with neat corners and even pockets. They lasted the whole trip. We put them up that afternoon, made some popcorn and a jug of rum punch, and watched the sun go down. As it got dark we strung up our little low wattage anchor light and, as we had so often, threw together a quick pasta for everyone. After dinner Mark tried to teach me some tricks on the guitar. The passage was behind us, it hadn’t been the most pleasant trip, but we were in Panama.

Rum and Crystal-Lite

Take a two litre / ½ Gallon drink container.
Tip in 1/3 – 1/2 of a 750m bottle of good, cheap Venezuelan Rum
Dump in 1 Crystal-lite ‘tropical delight’ satchel
Fill with cool water and shake
Serve in a plastic unbreakable tumbler while anchored behind an exotic tropical island