October 2011 - Curacao to Trinidad - Page 3

14 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao
We both felt a little “dull” this morning, so we had a very quiet day.  I read some more about Pactor modems and offered Bob $200US for his.  He’s going to have a think about it.

We’ve been given a couple of old cruising guides for sections of the east coast of the States.  After our conversations yesterday about Nova Scotia and the east coast, Glenys started reading up on routes and places to go.  I realised that I hadn’t got a clue about the geography of the area, so I spent the afternoon on the Internet finding cruising web sites about Chesapeake, Maine, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and then looking up where places are on Google Earth. Don’t you just love the Internet…

We confirmed that it can be cold, wet and foggy in June and July, so we’ll aim to get to Chesapeake in June, take it slowly and see how far we get.

As an added complication, we need to get US visa for our passports.  Normally, UK citizens can enter the USA under a “visa waiver” programme, but that only applies if you come with a recognised airline or shipping company.  Arriving on a private yacht is a bit more complicated.  To get a B1/B2 visa, we need to fill in an online questionnaire which asks all sorts of questions about our past including a list of all the countries that we have visited in the past five years.  In our case, that’s quite a few.  

Once the questionnaire has been submitted, we can then apply to have a “face to face” interview at a US Embassy.  The only ones in the Caribbean are in Caracas, Trinidad or Barbados.  There is no way that we’re going to Caracas, which is the third most dangerous city in the world; Barbados is another 120 miles upwind; so it looks like we’re going back to Trinidad for a couple of weeks.  Perhaps we’ll be able to go to Tobago this time.

The result of these investigations is a set of slightly modified plans:

15 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao
I had another go at receiving weather faxes and managed to receive a full page, but there is a lot of noise on the signal.  I’m going to have to take apart all of the radio antenna and ground connections, clean them and make sure that they are tightened up.  There seems to be a fair amount of electrical noise from the laptop and its power supply, so I think that I’m going to have to methodically put noise suppression on all of the leads around the chart table of which there are many.

Glenys went into to town to do some clothes shopping, while I had my windsurfing lesson.  I did okay considering that I’m a fifty five year old duffer and haven’t done it for fifteen years.  The winds were a bit too light, but I managed to plane a couple of times.  I’ll rent a board a few more times and then think about buying one.

I took the opportunity of having a mega clarinet session while Glenys was out.  I’m doing a bit better and have started to play tunes on sight.  I can play the notes, but there are several ways to do many notes and I’m struggling with choosing the correct fingering for the different sequences of notes.  At least my lips are getting stronger, so I last more than a couple of minutes.

Rob from “Arita” came over and introduced himself.  He’s a friend of Timo and heard that I needed a shaft puller, which was nice of him.  I told him that I’d already bought one and we chatted a while.   He and his wife, Lauren, are heading east to Los Roques at the end of next week. They’ve had a seven day forecast that says the wind will be light for the next few days and then come south westerly – an ideal time to go east.   We might go with them.  Rob invited us to their boat for a beer tomorrow.

16 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao
I spent three frustrating hours filling in an on-line Visa application to go to the States.  The Internet connection was very slow, probably because it’s Sunday and everyone is surfing the Net.  Glenys then spent two hours doing her application, but at least they are ready to submit to the Embassy when we get to Trinidad.

I had another go at the windlass.  My new, expensive puller fitted perfectly and it was easy to move the shaft 30mm.  Then it jammed.  This was my nightmare scenario – I’d pulled the shaft out so much that it seemed impossible to get it back.  I struggled for ten minutes trying to move it, but no joy.  In despair, I sat in the cockpit reading the manual while Glenys made a sandwich for lunch.

I finally decided that the shaft has pushed upwards, instead of pulling the gearbox down and just managed to get two nuts to hold enough that I could pull the two parts together.  Six big blows on top of the windlass with a hammer and my karma is restored – a working windlass.  I reckon that I’ve damaged a shaft seal and bearing, so I’ll order a new set of parts and hope that the damaged ones last for a couple of months.

After the trauma of the windlass, I chilled out for the rest of the afternoon and we went to “Arita” Rob and Laurie for a few beers.  The seven day forecast is still predicting westerly winds, so we’ve decided to leave here on Thursday and head straight for the Windward islands and then to Trinidad.  It means that we’ll be missing out on re-visiting the beautiful Aves and Roches, but this is too good an opportunity to miss.

17 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao
It’s the start of another week.  We had very light winds this morning and the forecast is still looking good for leaving on Thursday.  We now need to get ourselves ready for the trip back east.  It’s 420 miles to Grenada and we’ll have a 1 – 1.5 knot current against us, so we’ll probably only average 4 or 5 knots.  By my calculation, we’ll be at sea for 4 or 5 days.

We caught the supermarket bus and went shopping.  I walked down to Caribbean Fasteners, but the bolts are still not here.  They are apparently in the country and should be here tomorrow.  I’ve given up and will get some in Trinidad.

Back on the boat, I did a few jobs.  I changed the primary fuel filter on the engine.  I know that it’s dirty and I think that we’ll be doing a lot of motoring on this trip.  I also spent a couple of hours tracing and cleaning the earth wiring for the SSB radio.  We have a separate grounding system leading to a sintered plate bolted on the outside of the hull and it’s important to make sure that all connections are clean and tight.  It’s a frustrating job because any improvement is very subjective and it’s difficult know if it’s better or worse.

18 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao
I was up early at 0640.  Cleaning the earth connections on our SSB radio seems to have made a difference, because I managed to hear a weather forecast from “George” for the first time.  I am also having more success with receiving weather faxes from NOAA.  The weather still looks good for leaving on Thursday.

I spent the day catching up on a few small jobs and getting ready to leave. We ran the water maker and filled up our water tanks.

At half past five, we were preparing to go out for a beer on “Flawless D” when Glenys heard a strange vibration.  A bit of investigation showed that the fresh water pump was running constantly.  I’d left the watermaker flush valve on (again!) and dumped all of our water overboard.  I’m gutted because the tanks were completely full.  We started the water maker running and went for a commiseration drink on “Flawless D”.

19 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao
I went into Willemstad and cleared out.  The Immigration office is on the other side of the harbour and there’s a floating bridge that swings open whenever a ship wants to enter or leave.  Today the bridge was open while a navy frigate was leaving, so I had to catch a ferry across.  It’s free and quick, so it was a nice change from walking in the beating sun.

When I arrived back on the boat, I found that Glenys had been running the water maker for over two hours and had almost got the tanks full again.  Five minutes later, the water maker high pressure pump stopped.  Panic!  I tried to start it again but no joy.  The pump and the motor were very hot, so I guess that it had over heated and stalled the motor.  I hope that the pump is not seized because that will be very expensive.  I left it to cool down for a few hours, but it still won’t start.  Ah well, at least we’re going to Trinidad where I can easily get it fixed.

We started to lift the anchor to get some fuel, but it was snagged on something.  We tried the old tricks of motoring backwards and forwards, but no chance.  I donned snorkelling gear and dived down to find that the anchor chain has tied itself in a half hitch around a ½” steel bar sticking out of an old concrete mooring on the sea bed.  It took me five minutes to untangle it.

After filling up with diesel, we did the final jobs to get ready for sea and put the dinghy on the deck.  “Flawless D” came for a farewell beer or three.

Glenys and I have been picking at each other for the last couple of days, while we prepare the boat and wait to head east.  I’m worried about the weather. The forecast is for the wind to be northerly and then become variable as we head towards the Windward Islands.  There’s a weak Tropical Wave approaching the islands, which will pass over us on Saturday or Sunday.  My big worry is that there will be thunderstorms and squalls and give us bad weather like we had coming down to Curacao.

Alba is ready to go.  We have full fuel tanks, which will allow us to motor for four or five days if we need to.  Our water tanks are nearly full and we have enough food to last a couple of weeks.  I’ve checked the engine and done all the small jobs, so all I can do is wait.  The anchorage this evening is glassy smooth, with no wind at all.  I suspect that I’m not going to sleep well. 

20 October 2011   Spanish Water, Curacao to Trinidad (Day 1)
We had a restless night.  A few mosquitos took advantage of the airless night and found us, so I was up at one o’clock rubbing anti-histamine cream on bites. Then it rained at five o’clock, so had to get up and check the hatches.

I checked the weather at seven o’clock and nothing much has changed, so we pulled up the anchor and left at half past seven.  We picked up a ten knot north wind, which gave us a lovely sail along the coast of Curacao.  I rigged up the stay sail and we managed to go along at 5 knots in the flat sea.

Unfortunately, the wind dropped as we cleared the end of the island, so we started to motor sail towards Bonaire.  A pod of Common Dolphins came to play on our bow wave and stayed for twenty minutes.  After a couple of hours, we ran into a big squall system, which gave us rain and 20 + knots from the North, so I got wet through while reefing the main sail.  Once the squall had passed, we had a welcome 12-15 knot northerly wind, which allowed us to sail for another 2 hours.

As we were approaching Bonaire, we could see a massive squall to the south of the island, right in our path.  By this time we were committed to going around the south of the island, so we just went into it.  It looked worse than it was. The wind went slightly over 20 knots – bizarrely switching from the north to the south west in about 2 minutes.  We had very heavy rain, so I took the opportunity to have a refreshing shower and collected some water in our tanks by creating a small dam with a towel around the deck filler and letting the water pour in.

The sun came out as we passed the south end of Bonaire, but the wind was from the north east at ten knots.  We were planning to pass to the North of the Aves, but decided to go around the south side to take advantage of the more easterly wind.  Unfortunately, the wind was less than ten knots, so we had to motor sail.  I went down below to work out the new waypoints and put them into our GPS and was attacked by some damn mosquitos that had stowed away, so I had to “Bop” the whole boat.

During the night, we passed to the south of Les Aves and then turned more North to pass to the North of Los Roques.  It was a fairly quiet night with a couple of patches of 20 knot winds as we went under big Cumulus cloud systems – nothing bad, just a few anxious moments staring into the darkness.