Bonaire July 2014
For all of you who by now think we have either sunk or
been captured by Venezuelan pirates - no
-we are alive and well and have just had a rather hectic few months.
We arrived in Bonaire on Sunday 6th July and
most of Monday was taken up with checking in at customs and the marina and most
importantly at Yellow Submarine, the dive shop.
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| Where we get our tanks filled |
Here we purchased our dive
passes and air card, which has gone up to $120 for 20 fills. Still a good price
as we can use their facilities to wash our dive gear, free wifi and coffee and
as much information and advice as we need. Once again they give us the location
of a frog fish, practically under Galene!
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| Yellow Frogfish |
Tuesday was spent sorting
out the boat, washing off some of the salt and putting up shade covers, etc and
getting out the dive gear. The cockpit was full of all our dive gear when the
Coastguard arrived and boarded us! They were very friendly and just rechecked
all our paperwork and photographed our passports and Galene. They said it was
in case we ever went missing they would know what they were looking for? We finally
managed a dive at 16:30 off the boat and found the frog fish. As you can see,
not very well camouflaged.
The next few days were a
flurry of shopping and preparation.
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| A Queen Angel fish just under the boat |
My brother, Ian and his wife, Louise were
coming to spend his 50th birthday with us. I felt very honoured that
he was coming all this way to spend his birthday with me.
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| Happy Birthday IRB! |
We had a lovely week with
them. They were the perfect guests and really enjoyed boatie life.
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| Yes we are here! |
We did some
dives off the boat and dinghy and then hired a twin cab pick up to do some more
distant dives and so they could see some more of the island.
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| Dinghy diving |
Shore diving came
as a bit of a shock after just climbing down Galene’s ladder or slipping off
the dinghy into the sea.
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| Shore diving team! |
Most entries were shallow over sand and rubble but as
you got deeper there was sometimes quite a surge to contend with. This combined
with an abundance if Fire Coral made one super careful!
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| Midnight Parrot fish |
There was usually a lot to
see even at the entries in 1 -2m, as many Parrot fish inhabit this part of the
reef as well as many small fish, sea fans and anemones and eels.
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| Yellow headed Jawfish in the shallows |
We all agreed
the best two dives were Salt Pier and Fish Hut.
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| Atmospheric Salt Pier |
Salt Pier for the atmospheric
scenery with light coming down through the pillars and a very dense and diverse
fish population. This was where we saw a huge Midnight Parrotfish and a Rainbow
Parrotfish.
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| Bait Ball |
At Fish Hut we found
ourselves inside a huge bait ball of Mackerel Scad being mercilessly shadowed by big Bar Jacks and Horse Eye Jacks.
They would just all swirl gently together then suddenly a Jack would pierce the
ball and grab a fish. The whole school would veer and swirl away as one and
then just resume their slow and rather grisly procession. This and the Turtles
and Spotted Eagle Rays made this the number 1 for us.
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| Spotted eagle ray |
Shoreside, we took them to
the local restaurants and bars, watching the Football World Cup Semi and the Final
at Karels.
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| Saving the reef while eating lunch! |
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| Lunch 'in the wild' |
Bobbejans excellent ribs was dinner on the first night. Wednesday
all the cruisers get together at Bistro de Paris for Dive Masters burger night,
so Ian and Louise got to meet lots of other boaties eating good French style
burgers.
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| Our Last supper with Ian and Louise |
We had a delicious birthday dinner at It Rains Fishes, a really nice
restaurant in a restored old merchants house. They have their own fishermen so
the fish is always literally the catch of the day.
Ian and Louise stayed on
Galene for the first few nights and then had a few days of luxury at Eden Beach
Resort. We enjoyed it too, as we could use all their facilities as well
including a nice kitchen in their apartment, so that made nice convenient lunches
some days.
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| Going down on the 'Hilma Hooker'! |
Too soon, their week was
over and we started our preparations for sailing to Curacao where we would
leave Galene when we flew back to Europe. No more diving but a few more social evenings
with friends old and new. Trying not to buy much more food, but needing enough
for the next 10 days or so was taking a bit of thought. I knew we would not
have much time in Curacao so did not want to waste time going to the shop.
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| Venezuelan fruit and veg |
We sailed on Thursday 24th
July for Willemstad leaving at 07:30 and sailed all the way in a nice easterly
4/5. Having started with the genoa and mizzen, we later handed the mizzen as it
kept turning us into the wind. After sailing 45 miles we were tied up at
Curacao Marine by 16:30, to be greeted by Rocky, the boatyard manager. He
remembered us from last year which was nice.
After a hectic weekend
preparing for our summer layup and haul out, we were lifted out at 1600hrs on
the Tuesday, our taxi was booked for 1700 to take us to the airport, the flight
at 2100 with Air Berlin to Dusseldorf, then on to Zurich and a train to Vevey,
our first stop in our summer family and friends tour! I think we will need a
holiday!
We spent 2 months in Europe
visiting family and friends and apologise to those we didn’t manage to catch up
with.
Arriving back in Curacao at
the beginning of October gave us another hectic few days getting things ready
for the start of the season when we will sail back to Bonaire before heading
North after the end of the Hurricane season.
