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Diane's DiaryMay 3 Saturday Well, the one thing Larry tried to fix the head didn't work so now he'll try somewhere else. Naturally, the stores are closed and we doubt they'll have the part anyway. Sure hope this gets fixed soon- it's not pleasant using the bucket but what are you going to do? We ordered water baby to give us water but by 9:45 they still had not come. Finally, Jak answered the radio and said the tide was to low for them to fill it up. OK, I understand that, so why didn't they just call us to tell us that? We would have left to go shopping almost an hour ago. We had a very expensive day today! We went to Sigo, downtown Porlamar, and Sambil Mall. Larry found a watch he wanted but naturally it was a lot more money than I would have spent on one. But it's a sailing watch by Casio and does compass, barometer, temperature, race clock etc. I personally do not think he will use half the features it has but this is what he wanted so we bought it. We wanted to go to this nice restaurant recommended to us but it was closed- probably because of the holiday on Thursday many business closed down Friday and Saturday also. Anyway, we ate lunch in Sambil mall and both went off the diet. I think we are just getting sick of it. Anyway, we had a pizza that was pretty good. A very thin crust though and I wish the crust was thicker. We also went to the 3pm showing of "the Pianist" which was absolutely superb! I highly recommend it. If you haven't seen it go- it was absolutely one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. It was extremely powerful. We even had popcorn in the movies. The movies cost $2.50USD- up from $2USD last year but still a bargain for a first run movie in a really nice new movie theatre. We got back to the boat around 6:30pm and had a light dinner. May 4 Sunday Neither repair on the head seems to have worked. We went in to call a local guy everyone recommended but he said to try Don- the co-owner of Jak's restaurant. OK, but today is Sunday so we'll have to wait until tomorrow. I went to play domino's but Larry didn't want to come. Afterwards, everyone went to this Dutch restaurant for dinner and Happy hour. Larry still didn't want to go so I went by myself with another cruiser. The restaurant owner is really trying to please the cruisers and wants us to come- unlike Jak's it seems. He had beers for 400B plus a nice bar-b-que dinner for 8000B ($4USD!), which included a buffet of potato salad, salad, cucumbers, hamburgers, sausage, meat and pork chops. He gave us free appetizers and the food was very good. It was well worth going to and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. For the price, it was unbelievable- I had dinner and drinks for $5USD! Can't remember when I went out for those prices to a beachside restaurant in the US! The only drawback is the dinghies had to be pulled up high on the beach and when we left, it was dark and very windy so it was a little difficult getting the dinghy off the beach. Larry really didn't want me to take the dinghy myself as it's so heavy and he was right- it would have been difficult getting it off the beach. So, I just got a ride home with someone. All in all, it was a nice cheap day out. Now if we can only get the head fixed, we'll be on our way! May 5 Monday We went into see Don at Jak's restaurant first thing this morning. He was not able to fix the part himself and suggested we order another one from the US. It made sense to us as the piece was bronze and was odd shaped. So, now we are stuck here awaiting the part. Great! He said it may come by Wednesday but I'm not going to hold my breath over that! We were both very disappointed but we thought we might have to order another part. We spoke to Don for a while after we ordered the part. In the afternoon, I did emails and the finances. There's no sense in me shopping for any more provisioning until we know exactly when we will leave. We stayed on board tonight and had a delicious dinner of red snapper, snails and salad although the snails were not nearly as good as we both remembered- don't know why. May 6 Tuesday Since we aren't leaving for a few days, I went shopping by myself into downtown Porlamar while Larry stayed on Destiny doing boat projects. He hates to shop anyway and I just wanted to stroll along looking at all the shops. I did get some good deals though- 3 good quality Margarita T shirts for 13.50. A real steal as in the US, tourist T shirts go for at least $20 each! I also bought a beach cover-up for $7.50, pink, that's very nice. I wish I had bought some more of those! But I wasn't sure how good it was so didn't want to buy to many. But we'll be back to Margarita and I'll just buy it then. I also did some grocery shopping but all in all it was a nice morning off the boat. I also stopped by Vemasca to get some more B's for my US cash. May 7 Wednesday I left around 10am to go to Unicasa- the expensive but good supermarket. I decided to get my haircut and a pedicure and manicure. I misunderstood about the price of a haircut- that was correct except if you want a wash and blowdry that was extra. Also, she didn't cut my bangs short enough even though I told her to cut them again. She didn't seem to understand that cruisers don't get their hair cut very often! So, the cut, blowdry and wash was around $10USD- I pay a lot more for this when I'm home. Also, I got a manicure and pedicure for $5USD for both! I pay about $20 for both of these at home. I enjoyed getting a day of beauty but they were VERY slow and I was in their until 2pm and still hadn't had lunch or went shopping! I wrecked my new nails in Unicasa though and was angry about this. I probably should have let them dry more but didn't have any more time to wait since I had been in the store for so long. I stopped at Jak's to see if our boat part came in and it did! No one at Jak's even called us to let us know it was there though! So, we could have had it much earlier in the day instead of at 3pm. However, we were both really shocked it arrived here so quickly! We were due to go over to S/V Spice Island Lady for drinks and didn't want to pass it by as we had both cancelled a few times already so Larry said he would just fix the head tomorrow. We went to Spice Island Lady for cocktails and had a wonderful time. May 8 Thursday Larry fixed the head this morning and it appears to be working! Yea! Maybe now we can leave here! He worked on the head from 8-11 but all appears to be well. We went to CM at around 11am and didn't come back till around 4! We didn't even have a chance to have lunch. Larry went to the Internet café and stayed for several hours doing updates to the website, finances and research. It was about .60USD per hour so it's the cheapest we've ever seen. Even phone calls were very cheap; 129B per minute to the US= .07 cents per minute! I couldn't call that cheap in the US! So, I called Mom and Dad and spoke to them for a while. It was nice to hear their voices, as it had been a while since we called. But, I wanted to call for Mom's birthday and Mother's Day. We sent both Mom and Aunt Mary flowers so hope they enjoy them and get them! Anyway, I picked up my laundry - for 7.5 KG it was 7500B or about $3.75 - that includes wash, dry and fold! I didn't open the laundry there to check it since they had it all sealed in a plastic bag. However, later I found a pair of Larry's shorts missing and they ruined one of my sweat socks probably by putting the items into a bleach mixture too soon! So, I think I will go back to hand doing laundry or doing it myself the next time! It wasn't worth the aggravation, they ruined and lost clothes and I had to wait a day before it was done. Anyway, I did put some shopping away but not all of it. Obviously, we aren't ready to leave tomorrow but will leave the following day. This will give me a chance to put away everything and for us to get the boat back to "sailing" mode. We got so much stuff at CM we actually ran out of money and I will need to go back tomorrow after I cash some more money at Vemasca. We bought 8 bottles of wine for MIMA and 2 bottles of JW Black that Giulio wanted so we used up a lot more cash than we expected. May 9 Friday I went back to CM in the Am and bought some more food I couldn't get yesterday. Then, we decided to go to Jak's for lunch since I will be cooking myself the next 2 weeks or so. We got water delivered to the boat. After lunch, I put all the food away and we got the boat ready for passage. We decided to bring the dinghy up on deck since we wouldn't be going to shore in Juangriego. We like the town and would love to stay except it will be Saturday when we arrive and we will be tired from the passage so won't go to shore until Sunday. Unfortunately, everything is closed on Sunday so it's not worth going. We want to get up to Blanquilla ASAP also. By the time we finished everything, we had a light dinner and went to bed early since we will be up early in the AM. We need to go back East for about an hour, then north for 3 hours and west for an hour. The winds are lightest in the AM so it's best if we leave ASAP after first light. There is lots of fisherman around here without any lights so it's best to wait till light to see them. May 10 Saturday- Happy Birthday Mom! Even though we can't be with you today, we just wanted to let you know we are thinking about you and hope you have a terrific Birthday! Hope you got the flowers we sent and you like them! Anyway, we were up at 5:30am to go. Larry had to take the bridle down and lower the dinghy (if we keep it tied down we don't get any air in our "bedroom") so this took over an hour. We finally got under way with the sails raised at 6:45am and the wind was still light. We motor sailed east for an hour before we finally headed north where we cut the engine and sailed. I did NOT take any seasickness meds so got a little seasick but not too bad. I just have to remember to take these meds EVERY time we go out in the ocean. Anyway, we had a nice sail north for about 3 hours until we could finally get past the island and head west again. Yes, a nice downwind sail. We were about 30 minutes away from Juangriego when the wind suddenly picked up and it started to howl! It gusted up to 30 knots. We finally got the jib in but Larry had a really tough time rolling it in with all that wind. Finally, we sailed into Juangriego where it was still blowing. We were lucky we had the dinghy up on deck as we might have lost it with all that wind. Anyway, there was 3 other boats there- 2 local. We dropped the hook near them around 12:30 and settled in. It continued to blow like that for the rest of the day. We also had the disco going all night again- remember this was Saturday night, so both didn't get a good night's sleep. Usually, it's so nice and peaceful in here also. May 11 Sunday- Happy Mother's Day Hi Mom, hope you are enjoying your special day- just wanted you to know we are thinking about you and wish we could be with you. Hopefully, we'll be there next year! Anyway, we both didn't get a good night sleep between the disco playing until the early hours and the chain really banging from all that wind. The water is filthy here so unfortunately, we can't run the watermaker even though we have all this electricity. We got up at 4:15 both ready to go. But I was extremely tired from the lack of sleep and all the activity we did. It was pouring rain and it was still pretty gusty in here so it definitely must be a lot worse out there. We talked about it and than decided not to leave. I tried to get back to sleep but couldn't. The wind howled the entire day with frequent gusts up to 25 knots here in the harbor so I'm glad we didn't go. It's a long 60-mile trip and there's no reason for us to get ourselves beaten up. I did some emails and updated my logs but mostly we just took it easy. May 12 Monday We were up at 3:30am as I set the alarm clock for the wrong time after I set the alarm portion. I had wanted to set it for 4:30am. We were both tired from all the wind yesterday but decided to go anyway as the wind had subsided greatly. We left the anchorage at 4:45- about 15 minutes before it started to get light out. Yesterday, with all the rainy overcast conditions, it didn't start to get light until almost 6am so we were glad we waited till today to leave as we had much better visibility. We were very concerned we wouldn't see any unlit fisherman. We had very light wind and seas to begin with so we motor sailed for around an hour. I wanted to run the watermaker to get the tanks full again, but since we are using the starboard tanks, the water has to run into jerry jugs as there is no way to fill the starboard tank with the watermaker. Larry didn't want to do this, so we didn't. Anyway, I took the Sturgeron so didn't get seasick. The winds finally picked up East- NE to around 10 knots. Only about the last hour did it finally pick up to around 15 knots. The waves were low also - about 3-5 so that was good. I finally got Larry to put out the fishing pole. About 15 minutes after we did we caught a 15lb tuna! We were so excited. The darn thing actually bent the reel itself as we were probably going to fast. We got the jib in but couldn't sheet the main in since Larry had to jury rig a boom preventer. The new preventer works but it's hard to get the main in quickly. Anyway, I got the gaff and cheap horrible rum from Martinique to kill it with. Something happened to the reel, it jammed so Larry had to bring in the line by hand. We got the fish onboard but didn't bleed it enough. Next time we'll know better. Anyway, we put him in the refrigerator and went back to sailing. We arrived around 2:30 after a nice 9.5-hour sail. There was only 2 other sailboats here and no one was near the fisherman's camp which is supposed to be the most protected part so that's where we anchored. We were both tired but did a few things like put the anchor down (this helps right- especially since we were anchored near reefs) got the canvas up, raised the dinghy so we could get some air. Larry bled the tuna he caught and filleted it all. We had a nice tuna dinner and some drinks. After, it was early to bed. We were glad to finally be back in Blanquilla! |