Farewell Aruba, Welcome Bonaire

After 4 months I finally sailed from one island to the next again. On Monday evening it became clear that the wind would be lighter all week. On the Leeward Islands it always blows from the east, you see, except when a hurricane passes further away in the Caribbean. But outside hurricane season it’s guaranteed 100% easterly, always, and at 25 knots beating into it is no fun at all. On top of that there’s a constant westerly current of 1-2 knots. In normal times sailors hardly ever go from Aruba to Bonaire, but these are not normal years.

Back in November I still thought we might salvage a more or less normal season, and I had my eye mainly on the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas. There, on the west side of the islands, where you want to anchor because of the wind, it is shallow to very shallow. That would have meant that we could finally have an anchorage to ourselves again. Since Marion would only come for a few weeks, I would fill the rest with crew. But to get crew to come over it has to be attractive for them, and most of the Bahamas can only be reached by flying via the USA (it’s only half an hour from Miami or Fort Lauderdale). For Dutch people that is completely unattractive right now, because you first have to spend 2 weeks somewhere outside the EU, Aruba for instance. On top of that the Dutch government has been discouraging travel with travel bans, testing requirements and travel advisories. So it’s still the ABC islands; our guess is that KLM will keep flying there for quite a while.

Anyway, first let me catch up on what has happened since 21 December. Updating the blog dropped off the radar for a while.

On the 22nd Arnold and I moved the boat to Palm Beach. That’s the area with the high-rise hotels full of Americans. Very touristy, with people booking rides to go parasailing or on a ‘banana’ behind a speedboat, or a ‘romantic’ sail on a boat with 1 tiny little jib and lots and lots of booze. Great fun to be anchored in surroundings like that for once! In the evening, very cool, a 200 m dinghy ride to the MooMba Beach Bar, then casually stroll from your dinghy onto the terrace. Not just fun when you’re 22! Unfortunately, the next day I had the bright idea to lower the keel a little to make the boat lie more quietly, and the hose to the starboard rudder decided that was the moment to burst. 20 litres of hydraulic oil in the cockpit locker, and the keel thumping on the bottom. Oops! Quickly got Arnold ashore; I’ll phone around and tell you where you can buy oil. Unfortunately it was just closing time, but Rishi of Varadero Aruba still answered: sure, just drive to the yard, and there was Mundo, the night watchman and jack-of-all-trades, ready with a big 5-gallon drum of oil. A bit too thick, admittedly, but fine. Then laboriously poured it back into the system litre by litre, disconnected the rudders, and luckily the keel came back up. In the days that followed we rediscovered how differently and laboriously certain things work on an island like this. There is a company that has hydraulic hose and can crimp fittings, but they don’t have our fittings. So… new hose on the old fittings, then. Refitted the hoses and, hooray, the rudders go up and down again too. In hindsight there had already been all sorts of signs that this was coming, but I had missed them; now I know better.

After a few quiet and pleasant Christmas days with Arnold, he went back on the 28th and so would arrive in the Netherlands on the 29th, the day from which you had to arrive with a PCR test unless you came from the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. So we reckoned he didn’t need a test, and so did Copa Airlines, with whom he flew to the transit airport in Panama, but KLM in Panama saw things differently… Yes sir, just arrange a test yourself. But he wasn’t actually allowed to leave the airport, because Panama also required a PCR test for entry. Catch-22, or what’s that film called where someone sleeps at the airport for months? Luckily Copa sorted it out brilliantly: 3 days in a 5-star hotel with food and drinks paid for; he and the 3 others with the same problem only had to pay for the PCR test. On the 31st, for the second year running, he was on a half-empty plane back to the Netherlands! Well, another real adventure.

Meanwhile I was spending more and more time with the 2 German boats, Baradal (Uli and Martina) and Intrepid Bear (Stefan and Astrid). A number of times we were all hosted, really super kindly, by Ingolf and Enrita. Ingolf runs the local concrete plant and Enrita, a born Aruban, gives get-creative-with-ceramics sessions to Arubans and tourists. We did have to head home in good time, though, because the curfew meant being home by 11.

On 2 January Marion flew in from a damp, cold Netherlands. 30 kg in the suitcase, 20+ of which was boat stuff such as a new turbo for the engine. The plane was surprisingly full, about half. Together we explored Aruba’s natural sights, such as an early-morning walk to the north-east coast, the Arikok National Park, little fish nibbling at your feet, and rock formations with a gorgeous view. What stands out everywhere is how friendly and pleasant the Arubans are. The landscape is a kind of semi-desert with lots of cacti and other vegetation that can survive the dry periods, which can last for years. This year that was absolutely not the case: it just kept raining, at least 1 day a week or more. Actually I quite liked it; you can see nature exploding to make use of the temporary surplus of water, so little flowers everywhere. Besides, it’s a bit cooler, especially right after a shower, and the boat is nice and clean.

One afternoon Uli and I drove to Ingolf’s company with the Hoyt boom cylinder and the new seals Marion had brought. The suspense was huge when the cylinder came apart: would it really just be the seals, and could we repair the cylinder? Without that cylinder the jib works much less well, and we would have to replace it with all sorts of auxiliary lines. After half an hour it was open and, indeed, damaged seals. A few more hours of toil and the thing was back together. Thank goodness! Ingolf wouldn’t let us pay him anything, nor the men who had done the work. What a country! Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it, because I still had to sort out air pressure to pump into the single-acting cylinder. After some puzzling it turned out the 6 to 8 bar from a compressor was nowhere near enough. Luckily I still had the mini dive set on board. After a few more trips to the hydraulics man, who converted more and more bits of the dive set, and to the hardware store for 1/2" filler nipples, and carefully increasing the pressure, at 30 bar it was finally right: the cylinder comes up, but not too hard, and the pressure hasn’t risen too much, so we have enough left over to push the boom down when we’re sailing. Hooray!

There was also some golf with Jeroen and Jeannette of Fidelis. I gave it a go too, but by the 1st hole it was already clear I was going to hold everyone up far too much, so I appointed myself caddy. Well, that is, tearing around in one of those little electric carts. A beautiful golf course in a beautiful spot. Marion played quite a lot here — and certainly more than in the Netherlands, where the courses were closed! We also had a truly fantastic Sunday brunch with Fidelis and Pitou at one of the luxury hotels. Apparently they don’t have much going on on Sundays, because it wasn’t expensive — fixed price, 4 courses with pseudo-champagne and coffee for USD 75 per couple…

The boat jobs turned out to be (far) from over. The hydraulics were working again and the turbo Marion had brought was quickly fitted, but during a sea trial we turned out to have problems with the battens and the mainsail, so we called in Marisol again via Varadero. Marisol is the only one on the island with an industrial sewing machine suitable for sailcloth, and she can do quite a lot, but scheduling is clearly not her strong point. Meanwhile the weeks slipped by and it looked as if we weren’t going to make it to Bonaire together. At some point we simply decided to stay on Aruba a while longer, which is no hardship. After six weeks that flew by, Marion boarded the blue bird again, to come back in May.

By then I had finally got the mainsail back, and Stefan and Uli helped me bend it on again. Now we also discovered why the yard had needed to glue the battens: some of the receptacles (the piece of aluminium at the luff end of the sail that the batten sits in) couldn’t rotate properly. So we either fixed them in the right position or got them moving freely again. Unfortunately one broke in the process, so that still needs replacing.

We worked until the afternoon, did 1 boat job in the afternoon, and then it was evening again, which meant socialising on one boat or another almost every night. Truly awful. Fortunately even Uli has now seen the green flash.

And so February went by, and suddenly it was March. For the first time in months the wind changed: 15 knots from the east instead of the usual 20-25. So on 4 boats all sorts of things were suddenly sped up, fixed, wrapped up etc. in great haste, to sail to Bonaire before it started blowing again. Ingolf, who long ago skippered charter boats in the Mediterranean, was keen to come along. That was great for me, because it meant I didn’t have to go single-handed. On Wednesday a PCR test and saying goodbye to everyone we were leaving behind, on Thursday customs and immigration, and off we go! Unfortunately, 6 hours in, the headboard of the mainsail broke. That headboard is attached to the mainsail with webbing — regular readers know we already had problems with the jib’s webbing back in 2015, so I wasn’t entirely surprised. So no more mainsail for now, but luckily this can be repaired well on Bonaire.

On arrival, Luuke and Robbert of Eight handed us the mooring lines, on a mooring they had quietly been keeping for us with a fender, and then quickly off to customs and immigration. No problem at all, welcome to Bonaire. Unfortunately I had to leave Ingolf behind for a bit, because Luuke and Robbert had planned a grand welcome on Eight for Fidelis and me. Great fun! Many bottles of white wine later I somehow made it back home in the dinghy, where Ingolf helped me back aboard.

Today Ingolf and I hoisted Uli up the mast to retrieve the headboard, shortly Stefan and Astrid are coming over for dinner, and tomorrow we’re invited on Eight. As you can see, it’s a real ordeal here…

Well, I’ll leave it there for now; I’ll dig out some dreadful photos of fun activities to go with it!