These days I wake up around 5am. Not sure why. I used to think it was in line with sunrise but right now sunrise is some time later. We’re keeping our clocks in line with Eastern Standard Time, not Venezuelan time, which is half and hour later – by decree from Chavez a couple of years ago. One reason is my digital watch doesn’t have the new timezone in built. I can change the internal time but then all references to other timezones, including UTC, will be wrong. That is, until it receives a radio signal and corrects itself without us possibly knowing.
Usually I like to write my blog shortly after waking up. When we’re off the internet I usually don’t get to send it until 7:30am. This is because the 20m short wave radio band opens up around this time for use. Longer bands are open earlier but they interfere with on board equipment unless I go down to the lowest power setting. This works in some cases but it’s usually harder to find a working station. Hence 7:30am is my time for email sending and receiving. This includes all our downloaded text weather forecasts from NOAA. Helen will be awake by this time so we’ll discuss the weather together and make any decisions based on what we receive. Incidentally, our recent westward travel is now having a noticeable effect on the propagation chart that helps me plan which stations and frequencies to use when using the sideband radio. It lists the stations by order of distance from our current location. Stations are now beginning to reorder quite obviously and I’m beginning to see real differences in the effectiveness of some stations.
When we received the weather yesterday the recent story of decreasing winds was reinforced. Yesterday was the last day forecast around 15 knots with today expected to have 10-12 knots. So far, we’ve managed to pick the low wind days for our longer passages and sat out or short hopped the stronger wind days, more out of timing rather than planning. We were getting fed up with this as we like to sail in the stronger winds.
So the decision yesterday was to have our planned conversation with Jackster, go for a walk across the sandy spit joining the two Caya de Agua islands then head of for Aves de Barlovento.
We had an interesting chat with Jackster. We shared what we’d learned about their spare part and made decisions based on that. We learned they had had 20+ knots of wind off the beam sailing up from Tortuga (as opposed to our 10-12 from right behind) which made us quite jealous. They’d been persuaded to leave earlier than they wanted and had to reef right down to keep their speed down to 5 knots. They had come with a group of boats. One of them, a veteran cruising couple looking to end their cruise very soon in the ABCs, entered Sebastopol at 6:30am. Jackster passed on our warnings about the need to have good light but they were confident they could find their way in at that time.
They had ran aground.
So I chatted with Jackster about what we did with Alofa and they had similar plans to help out once they’d safely made it through the boca.
After this welcome chat we swam ashore for our walk. After swimming with fins its always a bit of a surprise how much extra effort swimming without them is. But this was a good work out. We then walked east to where the land dipped beneath the sea surface and waded across the spit. This turned out to be harder than expected. The water was hip deep at times and waves came at us from left and right sometimes converging with a high splash. We made it over and walked the beach on the far side. The sand appeared to be made of aero. It was spongy and full of bubbles. Out feet would sink in several inches on each step. It was a nice feeling but tiring. We were able to avoid this by walking in the surf or climbing up to the dry sand.
We eventually ran out of beach and didn’t relish clambering over the dead coral in our bare feet so we headed back. The tide was a little higher by the time we recrossed the spit, at least it seemed so.
Back on the boat we immediately prepped and set sail for the Aves. As luck would have it the wind was again right from our stern. On the main and head sail we could only jibe our way to our destination. The head sail loses the wind when the apparent wind is much less than 45 degrees off the stern so our progress would be slow unless we pulled out the Code Zero. So out this came and we we made good time. The wind couldn’t quite make up it’s mind where it was coming from forcing us to jibe a couple of times. Jibing on the Code Zero requires us to furl it then reopen it on the opposite tack. On one tack the wind was up to about 17 knots. We tried jibing without using the motors to reduce the wind pressure for a while and totally failed. Once I’d received a couple of burns across my finger from slipped lines we decided to make it easier with a push from the motors to ease the apparent wind. (When the sail is half furled, the boat speed drops bringing additional pressure on the sail making the halfway point the hardest point to furl). It was much, much easier.
We arrived in Aves de Barlovento shortly after 3pm with the sun nice and high. The waters at the turn into the lee of the reefs were crystal clear although once in, the waters lost a little of their clarity. The Aves are named due to the very many birds that roost in the mangroves here and fly above. We weren’t disappointed in this respect.
We navigated our way through the reefs to our desired anchorage which was deserted. After our first attempt I checked the anchor only to find we’d hooked some coral and the chain was laying right between two patches. I decided this could easily destroy the patches around us so we up anchored and found a new spot a little further in. Although the bottom is mainly sandy, their are patches of coral all over. Our new spot was much better than the first.
We did a little binocular scanning of the nearby mangroves and spotted very many roosting birds. We plan to take the dinghy out today to get a little nearer and take some pictures. We expect to stay here at least another day relaxing before heading to Bonaire on Thursday or Friday. There’s an inviting anchorage right on the reef which looks clear to leave to the west at night which looks like a good last night here. Yesterday evening someone was anchored there but if they move off we may occupy the spot.
Finally, we’ve decided we’ve lost a good deal of the stored curries and English breakfasts laid down during our recent trip to the UK and South Africa. All the recent exercise must be working.
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