Early yesterday morning three of the boats around us left together, including the French boat on which the horn had been sounded the night before. I suspect they were a group all together and maybe it was all three crews partying previously. Soon after, the fourth boat left leaving us all alone in the anchorage.
At 8am (7:30am Chavez time) we listened in to the coconut telegraph. We were delighted to hear our friends on Jackster and Inspiration Lady sign in for the first time. When we signed in we requested contact with Jackster after the net. We agreed a frequency and after the net had closed we had a nice long catch up. It turns out they were in Tortuga and planning a night passage, along with Inspiration Lady, to Los Roques. We were able to share our experiences with them and perhaps influenced their itinerary. Even though they’re close by it looks like we won’t be able to meet up in Los Roques. Our stay in Bonaire will be long enough for them to catch up. We learned that they needed a spare part for their generator. They had no email setup yet on their boat so were unable to get to work on this. I offered to help out. After we finished talking I sent a couple of emails off. Big thanks to Paul for identifying the dealer in Bonaire for us. I also requested a quote for the spare to be Fed Ex’d in.
After Helen had finished preparing her latest batch of yogurt, we decided to go ashore for a walk. In the dinghy we had to pick our way through a reef to reach the shore. We climbed over the dunes to the south side of the island. At this point the south shore was all broken coral. It was possible to walk over. The coral turned rock had a metallic clink to it as we walked over the pieces of varying sizes carefully watching our steps as each piece was loose. Close to the shore the pieces were smaller which made them easier to walk on.
As we walked we hoped to catch sight of some pink flamingos. We had seen three flying off while sailing towards the island the previous day. They were the brightest pink flamingos we’d ever seen, almost bordering on orange. But no such luck. We soon came upon some mangroves which forced us to follow a track slightly inland to go round. The ground was now sandy but covered in two types of plant. One being a mat with bulbous leaves, presumably to retain water. The other plant was keen to transfer spike burs into our shoes and feet. Every now and then we had to stop to pick them out.
After our short detour we could see ahead of us what looked like a perfect beach. And it was. It was clean, empty, surrounded by turquoise waters, had an interesting reef nearby and best of all, it looked to be a great anchorage. We decided there and then that we’d move the boat around as soon as we were back on. We continued along the beach to the west end of the island. A sandy strip, in some places awash, connected us to the next small island on which a lighthouse was placed. We figured we could carry on the trek after we’d moved the boat.
Carrying on round to the northerly side of the island we again came upon the regular trash washed upon the shoreline. They say diamonds are forever. They’re wrong – it’s plastic bottles. We eventually reached the dinghy and returned to Dignity. I had planned on switching the primary fuel filter as the engine had given a couple of coughs the day before. It was only a short way around to the south side so I decided to delay this work until after the trip.
Once we were motoring I began to regret this decision. The genset fully stopped about three times before we thought to switch fuel tanks after which all was fine. In some ways it’s not too big an issue. There is no loss of propulsion as the batteries supply the current while the genset is restarted. We ease off on the propulsion while restarting to conserve the charge but beyond that the resiliency of the system is pretty good. The worry now is that we picked up some dodgy fuel in Margarita. The odd thing is is that the tank which caused the problems is the one that needed a small top off. The one that received the most fuel was the one the genset ran ok on. A puzzle to ponder over the next few weeks.
Rounding the island with the lighthouse and heading towards our destination we discovered, to our dismay, that the perfect beach was now occupied by holiday makers arriving, D-Day style, in small motor boats. A beach can’t be perfect and secret.
We anchored a little further away from the beach than we would have wanted. It turned out to have a bit of a swell from the side so we vowed to move in closer when all the boats and holiday makers had departed.
I replaced the primary fuel filter. It was a bit dirty so a new one should help. However, they should last 200 hours, not 50. Not good. I can’t be sure if it’s the fuel in Margarita that’s dirty or the fuel we picked up in Petit Martinique. I’m not sure what we can do bar letting the filters strain out the crud.
We spent the afternoon reading. I’ve also restarted my Spanish studies putting in an hour or two for the last couple of days. After most of the visitors had left the shore we did move in towards the beach by about 250ft and anchored in 7ft of water. I snorkeled the nearby reef. While the visible reef was mainly dead, in deeper water the reef was living including plenty of elk horn coral which is nice to see. Out on the far side of the reef I saw a large barracuda and wondered for a while if I should later go out in the dinghy and fish for it.
Back on the boat, with the solar panels no longer producing any power, we fired up the genset fed from the tank that appeared to cause the problems earlier, for a wash. It ran for 45 minutes without a murmer so the filter change had improved things.
The incident with the genset impressed me in terms of the systems resiliency. Many boats with one engine install parallel fuel filters so they can instantly switch to a clean one in situations like this. We don’t need this as we’ll always have the time to motor to safety on the electrics or at least change the filter in time. With a self priming genset, changing a filter is not time consuming nor difficult.
However, we do tend to tap the drive bank to cover our energy debt during the day. Now that we’re running the freezer again we never make enough on the solar. We cross charge to make up the deficit and rely on a combination of regeneration and genset running (when motoring or doing the wash) to recharge the drive batteries. This means, though, we’re using our motoring contingency to supplement house use.
This thought process is finally tipping me in favour of supplementing our solar energy with a wind generator. We may be leaving the strong trades for a while soon but every little helps. Our large capacity house bank permits a lot of give and take so I think this would work well.
Our thinking as of last night is, despite the tourists, to stay here another day. We have the place to ourselves for many hours in the day which is priceless. Not often we’re somewhere so nice and so secluded. We’ll walk (wade) over to the lighthouse this morning then play the rest of the day by ear. At 8am we have agreed to chat on the shortwave with Jackster to share what we’ve learned. I now have a quote for the part to be shipped in but no contact with the genset dealer yet. They may be close enough for VHF contact.
My charts for Caya de Agua are a little off although they were good for the rest of Los Roques. Not sure how accurate google maps are but here’s our position.
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