La Blanquilla, Los Roques, Aves de Barlevento & Bonaire

Whew, we're halfway there! Only 400 miles to go. We left Grenada about 3pm on Friday afternoon (Nov. 20) We changed our minds at the last minute after speaking with Chris Doyle, who is a writer of several guide books for the Caribbean. He told us of a recent "incident" (pirating), which happened to a cruiser in Los Tostigoes, which was going to be our first stop. We decided to give that little island group a pass. It's too close to the mainland, which is where you run into all the problems. We had a 24 hour trip ahead of us with our first stop being La Blanquilla, a very small island far enough off the coast of Venezuela as to not be a problem. We went "stealth", that is, with no lights as we didn't want to draw any attention to ourselves.We saw about 5 boats in total throughout the night with the closest one being about a mile away. The sail was pleasant enough, 20-25 knots of breeze directly behind us. It's the 2 hours on, 2 hours off shifts that are so tiresome. If you want to get from point A to point B, there is no way around the overnighters. We recouped from our journey & headed out for our 2nd overnight passage. This was a 115 mile sail to Los Roques. We lucked out once again with a beautiful night. We saw squalls in the distance & kept our eye out for the lightening, which was over the mainland. Did not see another boat all evening. The Venezuelan outer islands have been a very pleasant surprise. They're quite tranquil. Los Roques is an archipelago group of about 50 little islands. You could stay there for a good couple of weeks exploring new places the whole time, but unfortunately, we were only there for 2 days. The few boats we have run across either mind their own business or are very friendly yelling "Hola Canada!!" Only one boat was a bit problematic with 3 drunken fishermen coming up to us looking for some rum. I just played ignorant claiming "No comprendo" & they finally went away. We then moved on to Los Aves, the last group of islands off the coast of Venezuela. It was about a 35 mile sail from our last stop on Isla Carenero in Los Roques. The island we anchored off, Isla Sur in Aves de Barlovento, is a bird sanctuary & there were hundreds & hundreds of birds nesting in the mangroves. Most of the species were a variety of boobies - red footed boobies, brown breasted boobies, white tailed boobies, purple peckered boobies! It was all quite beautiful to see & hear. We were the only boat there. As soon as we put the anchor down, we had a little visit from a couple of local fishermen. This time they wanted to trade a red snapper for some rum, coka-cola, cigarettes & something else which I could not figure out, but once they left, we decided it was food that they were looking for. These guys have absolutely nothing & I felt really bad that I didn't give them something to eat. Anyway we had a delicious dinner of snapper in garlic butter & they got a 3 finger shot of rum & a couple of sodas. Good trade! This was the first night that Peter said he actually felt like he was out cruising again. We left the next morning & had an 8 hour sail to Bonaire arriving Thanksgiving Day. Bonaire is about the halfway point to where we meet up with the kids in Cartegena. We felt in a celebratory mood & went out for dinner at "Richards". Richard was on his way from Maine to sail around the world when he stopped off in Bonaire for a crew change. He wrote to the crew telling them not to bother coming because he fell in love with Bonaire & decided to stay - that was 20 years ago! Bonaire is just beautiful - totally pristine. The buildings are all brightly colored & the people extremely friendly. Everything is in Dutch, but the locals speak 4 languages, luckily one of them being English. My Dutch is a little rusty! We've had some repairs to do, one of them was to fix the head, which has finally happened! Our dinghy is undergoing repairs - it was delaminating & had a fairly substantial leak in it. It's only 2 years old. The sun & salt are just brutal on these things. We'll stay here for about a week & then its onto Curacao, & Arruba. Both of these islands are supposed to be quite industrial & not nearly as nice as here. We've got some friends flying into Arruba on Dec. 6th & they will be sailing with us to Cartegena, leaving a couple of days before the kids arrive. It's going to be very busy. Well, just thought I'd let everybody know that we've made it safe & sound & here's to the next 400 miles!