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Diane's DiaryNovember 11 Thursday It rained very hard 3 different times during the night so I was sorry I didn't have my buckets out to catch more water. We woke up very late- around 9am and actually missed the nets. That's a first for us but we didn't sleep to well having to open and close the windows and it's hot in here since we're not getting much wind. Larry walked back to Kooyman this morning as we need to get some more screening. I sprayed the entire boat for mosquitoes and then closed the boat up for a while like the instructions said. I had to put all the kitchen pots and pans outside so they don't get contaminated with the insectide. Pat and I took a walk into Harbour Village to see what the water looks like- we can't see it from our boats. The wind was from the W-NW about 12 knots with very choppy seas. Even the dive boats didn't go out so you know how bad it must have been- they lose revenue when they don't go out so it has to be really bad or they wouldn't cancel. All the cruising boats except 3 came into the marina and we watched them rolling. We were very glad we made the decision to come into the marina- it was definitely the right move. Even the cruise ship had to leave the Town dock- whether they were ordered to go I don't know but they had to be pinned onto the dock. The Wanna Dive dock looked very dangerous and there was no way we were going to get our tanks into or out of the dinghy so no diving today. We had lunch and afterwards sewed more screens from 2-5:30pm. Larry sewed a screen for the companionway and I did it for the main hatch. We had soup for lunch, as it actually is a little chilly out. I also made some grilled cheese. We watched some movies at night that Ishamel lent us. November 12 Friday We got some more rain again last night- I filled up 2 buckets again but 1 didn't get any. S/V Zahi asked Larry to help her with the dinghy as she had a problem with it so he went over for about an hour. Then we walked over to Wanna Dive to look at the water- it's still rough but appears to be getting better. The wind is still from the NW though. We were going to a cooking school for my birthday lunch and had made the reservation for today as they only do lunch twice a week. We took the dinghy over to the Club Nautico marina but even though the dinghy dock is on the inside, the dinghy was not safe there and kept hitting against the dock as the seas is still very rough. So, we decided to bring the dinghy back to the marina, as we didn't feel comfortable leaving it there. Sally from Zahi happened to be walking by and she said that's where her boat was when the storm came in and it went under the dock. That really cemented it for us and we decided to bring it back to the marina and walk. From the marina though, we had a very long walk up to the restaurant and had to detour several times due to flooded streets. The lunch was OK but certainly not terrific- I don't think I would go back. But it was certainly a good price for what you got- mushroom soup (though a very small cup), very small salad (lettuce is very expensive here), chicken skewers with peanut sauce, (very small pieces and the chicken was very overcooked) with rice but fabulous homemade vanilla ice cream with black cherry sauce that was very good. The meal for both of us was $20. Afterwards, I tried to walk to More For Less supermarket close by but it was closed for lunch. I did find a VE small store near it that had really nice fruits and vegetables so I bought some. Larry went to Carib Fasteners and then to Budget Marine and I went to the supermarket in town- Cultimara. We must have walked at least 4 miles today and we were totally exhausted by the time we got back to the marina. We got back around 4pm, listened to George and then went into the pool. I made a sun dried tomato beef burgundy over couscous for dinner and it was very good. We continued watching "Das Boot"- it was very long at over 3 hours so we have been watching a little bit each night. November 13 Saturday- my Birthday!!! Larry gave me 2 nice birthday cards, the dress and a cute little ceramic Santa Claus that is absolutely adorable. I made bacon and eggs for breakfast, then made my wonderful sour cream banana cake which is just dynamite. I also cut up and prepared the last conch for lunch. I marinated some lomito for dinner. We picked up the dive tanks and were going to dive again except the wind was from the West and it looked like it was going to storm out again so decided not too. Larry went aboard Ishamel to help them with something and I went too until it started to rain. I came back to Destiny to catch some more water. It absolutely poured out! My 3 buckets were already full so I started catching water in everything else we had - empty soda bottles (I only had a few of those), Tupperware, pots and pans. I even gave water to Ishamel since we had so much. I filled up our empty 5-gallon jerry jug- I wish I had thought of filling this right away as I quickly filled it up. Anyway, we had a nice bottle of champagne that I had bought in Margarita- Chandon that was superb! We had a nice dinner of lomito, green peppers and onions. Anyway, it was a nice birthday. I only wish the weather was better so we could go diving some more. This bad weather is getting to all of us. At least here in the marina we have TV and electric so don't have to worry about how much electricity we are using. November 14 Sunday More west wind- this bad weather is getting ridiculous! The wind is about 15 knots form the west- it got so bad some of the boats that had already left the marina came back inside. Even some of the dive boats were canceling their trips. We had so much water I did some more laundry and have all caught up with the wash. We are definitely using a lot more clothes here than Los Roques and Las Aves as there we were predominately in bathing suits most of the time. Here we need to dress when we go into town so we use a lot more clothes. In the afternoon I spent several hours working on my logs - I'm up to 11/9 so am not to far behind. Dolphin Street and us walked up to the 7pm diving show at Buddy Dive except the paper was wrong about the date - there was no show on Sunday - the show is on Saturday night! So we walked all the way up there for nothing and rushed eating an early dinner also. It has been listed in the paper for Sunday for a number of weeks so wish they would change it- it gives the tourists a bad impression. November 15 Monday The wind was supposed to be from the East today. It did start off that way but than switched to the SW with 100% cloud cover, thunder and looks like more rain again. When will this bad weather stop? This is getting ridiculous now- everyone is just plain sick of this weather. Several locals told us it hasn't been this bad in over 60 years! Just our luck! But it really is boring here when it rains, as there is nothing to do. There is only so much reading and TV you can watch. Our week is up in the marina tomorrow but we don't know if we will leave if the weather is still bad. We went out to Klein Bonaire and dove at Nearest Point. This was the WORSE dive we have ever had! I helped Larry get into his gear as he said he was having problems getting into it by himself. The mooring ball here is in deep water and you have to swim over to the reef. This means it's hard to tell where to come up from the dive, as you can't see the dinghy from the reef. When we were going down, I could tell the current was very strong as we descended. I signaled to ascend, we did and I told Larry I thought the current was too strong. He said it wasn't that bad and just to go deeper. I should not have listened to him and discontinued the dive like I wanted too. Anyway, we dove but it wasn't a great dive and I wouldn't come back to this site again. We passed a whole bunch of divers coming towards us on our way back so knew a dive boat must be on our mooring also. I had the feeling we were going to fast, I was not finning at all and thought we should surface. I kept telling Larry I was getting low on air. He was not listening to me on this dive. My intuition told me we were past our mooring. I finally got him to stop; we did our 3-minute safety stop, and surfaced far from our dinghy!!! We started to swim on top of the water as we both had very little air left. I was finning very hard while on my back- when I stopped I went backwards. I was definitely getting scared, as I didn't think we were going to make it back to the boat. If we had enough air left, we could have descended to around 20 feet and went forward - but we didn't have enough air. Fortunately, the dive boat on our mooring with us saw us and got the attention of another dive boat nearby. The dive boat got near us, told us to hang on and dragged us back to the long line the first dive boat had out. Fortunately this was the same dive boat we had met up on Petrie's Pillar - he said he recognized our dinghy so joined us. Thank God he did! He told us to get up on his boat, relax and helped me take off my gear. We did. He than helped us get our stuff into our dinghy as I was still out of breath. By this time his divers were surfacing and a great many were also behind the dive boat. Since they helped us we thought it was only fair to help them. We went to the furthest divers first. We tried to drag 4 divers at once but were not going anywhere, as they were too much for our dinghy. I told Larry we needed to drop 2 divers and we would take tow at a time. We did and rescued about 8 divers this way. The whole experience was very unnerving and we were just glad the dive boat was there to help us out! Netto, the local Captain Don's driver, told us we could have swam to shore then walked past our boat and drifted down on it. Good idea and I will remember it for the future. You learn something new with every dive. Anyway, we got back to the marina and were both very tired. My arms ached where I held the line for the divers. I think the other divers appreciated our help. The local guy couldn't have been nicer - we were very lucky they were there. I guess there's more safety when diving with a big boat as they have crew on hand to help out. Anyway, I was so tired we just ate dinner and watched some movies at night. November 17 Wednesday More heavy rain, 100% cloud cover and a very bad day. It rained so hard it flooded the salt pond across from the marina and the water came pouring into the marina's waters. It actually washed out a section of the road and they had to close the road! I caught more rainwater than I ever have before. I was filling the tanks and buckets outside in the rain for hours! At .10 gallon plus tax, water is expensive here so I was glad to get as much water as I could. I completely filled up the port tank- it had only been 1/4 full and then started working on the starboard tank. Larry helped me get the water into the tanks and I couldn't believe how fast we were filling up the tanks! I went to take a nap in the pm, as I was tired from getting up early and did a lot of work to fill up the tanks. I was just about sleeping when I heard someone call Destiny. Larry had gone for a walk to take pictures of the flooding so I knew he wasn't on the boat. It was S/V Caravela- they had a car and wanted to know if I was interested in going shopping. Of course I was! I thought of Spice Island Lady as they needed everything and a car would really help them out. I called them but they weren't home. So, we went shopping. It was a quick shopping as we didn't have much time but did manage to get to several stores. It was very nice of him to ask. They also had their company bring us the latest issue of Latitudes and Attitudes magazine as my article on "Sex, tans and Cocktails" was finally published in the November issue. Anyway, we watched some more movies at night. We saw the last part of the old movie "Ice Station Zebra" which was very good. Then we watched an episode of the West Wing - we hadn't seen this show in a long time. It is nice to have TV again but we really don't miss it too much while we are at anchor. It was difficult to get to sleep with all the rain we were having as it just pounds on the boat! November 18 Thursday I can't believe this- we have more rain! This weather is turning into a nightmare! I feel so bad for people just down here on a week's vacation - all that money spent and such lousy weather! Anyway, overnight we had lots of wind from the East- NE and our anchor was now hitting the dock! This is partially because Ishmael is tied to our boat so definitely pulls us down! Larry had to get up and put another spring line on the boat as we were hitting the dock so badly. I collected more rainwater this morning- so much that our starboard tank is almost full! We decided to stay in the marina until this weather clears- we have the cheaper weekly rate now and have plenty of electric so this gives us something to do. Since we have so many clouds we would probably just have to keep running the engine to charge the batteries anyway. The marina is more expensive naturally, but it helps on wear and tear of the engine. Larry is working on a computer problem- he thinks it may just be full and we need to remove some things to free up some space. November 19 Friday Well, the weather seems to be clearing some - we actually have a bit of sun - not much though but we can actually see some blue sky! Remarkable - I don't think we've seen that in over 2 weeks now. We decided to stay in the marina for 1 more day, as Larry doesn't think there's enough wind to keep the batteries charged without running the engine. We definitely need the solar panels working also and right now we would probably get zero amps from them as we don't have enough sun yet. Ishmael and Dolphin Street both left to go out onto the mooring. I did some emails this morning while Larry helped Ishmael leave. In the pm, Larry went to the Internet café, as we had not been there in almost 2 weeks. I stayed on the boat as I was going to take a walk but it looked like it was going to rain so I didn't. Instead I pressure cooked some red kidney beans, made a big pot of chili, and made some more biscuit mix. It took me a while to make all of this and then do the cleanup. I also emptied the water I caught into more soda bottles. It did start to rain and really came down for a while so I was glad we were still in the marina. I caught another few gallons of water also. I watched some TV as I was cooking and cleaning so it was nice to have the TV to turn on. Oh, the movies we watched from Ishamel were: "My big fat Greek Wedding", (which we had seen before but was absolutely great) "A Beautiful Mind" (terrific), "Das Boot" (fantastic), and "Human Stain" (very bad). We also got ch 4 from NY so it was nice to see our hometown news. I wish we had enough electric to watch TV at anchor sometimes but don't really miss it when we don't have it. We decided to go out to dinner tonight for pizza. We had been there last year; the owners are from NY so it's like real pizza again. When we got there we found there back room was completely flooded so they only had a few tables available. We were lucky to arrive early at 6:30 so were able to get a table. We enjoyed the pizza but it was $20 with just 1 glass of soda- I just had water- so it was pretty expensive. But it was nice eating out for a change. Tomorrow if the weather is good, we hope to get out of the marina. November 20 Saturday It's a miracle - we finally see some blue skies! Hard to believe right? It's been over 2 weeks since we've seen this much blue sky. But we still have a lot of clouds. The wind is from the E-SE (although it's supposed to be from the E-NE) about 10-12 knots. Looks like we will finally get out of the marina today! We got everything set to go. We actually got some more rain last night and I was able to fill a few more soda bottles up. We actually have every container on the boat filled with water along with 10 soda bottles filled- that's almost 5 gallons right there! We also have the 2 jerry jugs filled. We didn't have to buy any marina water at all and have full tanks!! Now that is a big accomplishment and shows how much rain we actually got. I would never have been able to get that much rain if it wasn't for the awning- it really caught the water really well though it really helped if I stood out there with it. I guess I did a great job of catching water. Plus, we have all the laundry done also. We put everything anyway, took our last marina showers with unlimited water, paid the bill, had the marina help us get out of the slip, and were underway before noon. If you don't leave the marina before noon you get charged for another day. Anyway, the moorings are full and we got stuck with a terrible spot- 3 moorings away from Karel's Bar- on Friday and Saturday nights they have a band playing till the wee hours of the morning so I'm sure we will be up with this tonight. We are going to Spice Island Lady for drinks tonight- they want to know how to go back along the VE coast to PLC. They asked us to come around 4:30pm. By the time we got out to the mooring, had lunch, did a few things, it was after 1pm. It is still cloudy out and another dive boat told us visibility was still not great so we decided to skip diving again today. I caught up on my logs and Larry went to the Napa store but they close at 12 on Saturday so it was closed when he got there. We are rolling a little bit on the mooring but it's not too bad. Hope someone leaves a mooring on the north side tomorrow so we can leave this spot- it's terrible! Hope we are not up all night with the loud music! |