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Diane's Diary

Venezuela 2004 - Part 17

(Note: We lost 2 months of Diane's logs, July and August of 2004, when the computer she was using crashed. We may get it back at some point and if I do, I'll insert the text before this part.)

August 30 Monday 2004

We left at 9am to take the free shopping bus to Sigo. The bus doesn't leave until 9:30 but it's hard to get a spot at the dinghy dock so you need to arrive early. I called Mom and Dad as the phone calls here are half the price of the store in CM mall- 430B/minute there vs. 200B/minute here. In PLC they were 230 minute as there's tax there. We bought some booze, pharmacy items, food, etc. and managed to spend over $100 very quickly. Think we'll have to cash in some more money, as we don't have enough Bs. We only had about $350 worth when we left PLC. We know we want to buy more rum, beer and booze as its much cheaper here than the mainland.

In the late afternoon we had a rum tasting contest with Mima. Mima told us they had changed the taste of our favorite cheap rum - St. Theresa Gran Reserva. We did a taste test, and sure enough, they had changed the formula and it didn't taste as good as the previous year. The cheap $1 bottle didn't taste much different from the Gran Reserve so we decided to buy that instead. We actually liked the Cacique rum much better than the St. Theresa now but that's what you call "premium" rum- that's $2 bottle! We save about $1 bottle by buying the cheaper stuff called Superior - not bad and we always mix it anyway. We seem to go through rum very quickly also! Anyway, we decided to go to Jak's for dinner since I will be cooking so much when we leave here. It was as good as usual although I couldn't get calamari as there was only one left so Larry had it. I had the mixed grill and that was pretty good also.

August 31 Tuesday

I took the free bus into Rattan by myself this morning. The B is down to 2400 here- ouch! But we will need to exchange about $100. I also noticed almost all the food prices are either more expensive or the same price as PLC. So, you definitely don't get any bargains here except for booze, which is definitely a lot cheaper than PLC. Anyway, the Rattan bus was air-conditioned and they have a room in the store set up for "VIP" members which we are part of. Free booze, Internet, TV, papers, etc., it was very nice. They didn't have this last year. I don't think it will last long because a lot of the French cruisers I saw were drinking everything, using the free Internet and not buying much. I also noticed the store didn't have nearly as much merchandise as last year and hardly any gourmet imported goods like they used to have. I am sure this is because of Chavez and his price controls on foreign currency. I put everything away immediately when we got back so we could get rid of the cardboard boxes ASAP. We know they definitely have roaches in them!

September 1 Wednesday

I took the free bus again today. I wanted to price shop between Rattan and Sigo to know where to buy my things. Now since I have been to both stores I know. I want to buy the last fresh meats and fruits and vegetables the day before we leave so they will stay freshest longest. Looks like that will be on Friday and we will leave on Saturday. There is a TS Ivan that we are watching closely as it's track is on the same latitude we are on now. The forecasters say it should track north of here but we'll keep a watchful eye on it. Anyway, I managed to spend another $200 on food and booze. Hope Destiny doesn't sink with all the stuff I'm buying. So glad we left things in storage in PLC! Oh, some prices: Bailey's-22500B (at 2400 that's 9.38USD), St. Helena white-7700, red 7500, rum Superior-2500, Etchart wine 9850 (this was definitely at least 12000 or 12500 in PLC), 3 pack of Cacique rum-4750 bottle ($2) bottle. When I got back, we spent the rest of the afternoon putting everything away. It was extremely hot out so I'm glad I did most of my provisioning in PLC where I had the AC on to work on storing my stuff.

September 2 Thursday

We had asked diesel man to come to our boat today and sure enough he was here at 7am. We got 120 liters diesel or 32 gallons so we used much more than we thought. However, I don't think the boat was on full when we left PLC, as we didn't want to take a partial jerry jug while we were still in PLC. We also got 9 liters of gas. We paid about .19/gallon for the diesel and .31/gallon for the gas. How about those prices!!! Still much cheaper than Bonaire and we need to get more in Los Roques to make sure we are tanked up before we leave there! Anyway, Larry, Steph, Judy and I went to Sambil mall for the day. Judy needed to make some phone calls and we just wanted to look around. We did get another bottle of Chandon champagne for 24,800 or about $10USD. So we now have 3 bottles of champagne - our anniversary, my birthday and New Year's. We all had lunch in the food court and Larry and I had lunch at McDonald's. We won't have it again until we return to VE in several months. Anyway, we got back to the boat around 3:30 and I just read and rested. I have not been sleeping too well since we got out of the marina so was tired. I'm sure it's a combination of the heat and not being used to the sounds at anchor again. Also, the fishermen go zooming by our boats in the crack of dawn and the disco from shore blares all night. Not exactly a peaceful anchorage! Anyway, Larry helped hoist Steph up the mast in the pm.

September 3 Friday

Last trip to the supermarket today and we will leave tomorrow. However, we are watching TS Ivan out in the Atlantic and its not heading north at all as it has been predicted. They say it's supposed to track north toward St. Lucia but when it started in the Atlantic it was SOUTH of our latitude and hasn't moved north much. It's still a long way out there but we will have to watch it. It should be here around Tuesday. Larry came to Sigo too and called Eric. We stored all our things when we got back. We do this immediately so we get the cardboard off the boat right away. We went over to Mima for dinner along with Fred on Global Ombaka for a goodbye dinner. The wind has been completely dead here but today it really picked up and the boat is rocking and rolling. Thankfully, it stopped blowing so hard around 8pm or we would have spent a very uncomfortable night sleeping. I exchanged another $40 here so exchanged a total of $240USD at 2400- Ouch!

September 4 Saturday

Larry said we should leave tomorrow instead as we are just tired from running around buying and storing everything. I could see his point so I agreed. Also, he promised to help Judy put the fuel from her jerry jugs into her tanks. I made a big pot of chili so we could have some food under passage. I also defrosted the freezer again - since it's so hot out here, we drink more fluids and are in the refrigerator more so more hot air is entering it so it needs to be defrosted more often. Waterbaby came by so we could buy water - the price has gone up to 10 cents a gallon so it's the same price as Bonaire except there you have to go get it. This is very convenient as they deliver it right to the boat. However, it's not so cheap but it's better than walking down the long dock just to try and fill jerry cans. We got about 70 gallons of water. Anyway, since we can't keep up with our water consumption with the watermaker since we don't have much wind, it's just cheaper to buy water.


At 1pm, we went with Mima to Jak's restaurant for a goodbye lunch. We hauled our dinghy up on deck and will leave in the morning. We are still watching TS Ivan, which is now a hurricane. It still hasn't turned north yet although all the forecasters seem to think it will. We'll go to Cubagua and see what happens with it. If it looks like it's getting closer, we'll go to Laguna Grande.

September 5 Sunday

Well, Hurricane Ivan is really threatening us and at its present latitude is aiming for a direct hit at us!!!!! I would have left today, went to Cubagua and waited to see what happens. However, we don't want to just leave Tom and Steph and especially Judy. They could do the trip if we have to leave by themselves but 2 more people helping bring up the anchors and helping sail the boat would be great. Survival doesn't have a windlass at all and Steph had a really hard time getting up the anchor by herself before - she had to have Judy help. We are all monitoring the storm very carefully and will decide by tomorrow whether to leave or not. We have 3 different weather forecasters we are listening to as well as the weather faxes over the ham radio. It looks like we will get about 35 - 45 knots of wind here but the wind will be clocking all around and this anchorage is notorious for dragging as the holding is poor. So we'll give it to tomorrow, getting all the forecasts we can and than decide. I did lots of emails this morning but when I used my computer in the pm, found it wasn't working. Larry tried to fix it but can't. Why couldn't this happen in PLC where we could get it fixed? Now we will both have to share 1 computer so this will be harder.

September 6 Monday and September 7 Tuesday

We were up at 5am when some showers came through the anchorage and woke us up since we needed to get up to close all the hatches. We got back to sleep and it started to rain again about 6 so we just got up. Is this a feeder band from the hurricane already? We listened to all the forecasts. Larry and I decided to go even if Mima and Survival didn't want too. We were not happy with what we had heard from the various weathermen we listen too. We called Mima around 8am and yes they decided they wanted to go also. We quickly got all the boats ready to go. Thank goodness we were pretty much set to leave. Larry and Tom helped haul up Judy's 2 anchors. How Dave ever got by without a windlass is a mystery to all of us. Anyway, we were all finally underway at 9:30am. Steph and I helped Judy on Survival and the guys went solo. However, looking at the charts, we had over 50 miles to go to get to Laguna Grande and at this point, we weren't going to make it by dark. Laguna Grande is not a place you want to enter in the dark so what should we do? We decided to stop at Coche, get more weather and this way at least we would be closer if we needed to continue or just head back to Margarita if the storm had moved further north. The only problem with this is we needed to pick up Survival's anchor again and without a windlass this is very hard. We got to Coche around 12:30pm but it took another hour to get around all the reefs and enter the harbor. When I went back to Destiny, I tried to sleep, as I knew it would be a long night. After the weather at 5:30, I went for a "shower" and walk with Steph on the beach. The hurricane is still tracking to the south and looks like it will hit Grenada now so we all got together and decided to leave at night so we could arrive at LG in daylight. Also, the feeder bands of the storm are expected in here sometime tomorrow - late morning or early afternoon. The actual hurricane will be at night - naturally at night! Why don't they ever hit in the daytime? The guys will just have to go solo and I'm sure this will be very tiring for both of them but we don't have any other choice. Doing an overnighter even for two people is tough, as you definitely don't get the proper rest but alone is even worse - especially when you are not used to it.

Steph cleaned Survival's prop in the afternoon as the boat was going much slower than Destiny or Mima on our way to Coche. Sure enough, that seemed to be the problem as she was going much faster now. We were actually motoring about 5 knots so this was good. No one put up the sails on any of the boats as the guys were single-handing, and we ladies were not familiar with the boat. Besides, we weren't interested in sailing at this point we just wanted to get to the anchorage before we started getting some feeder bands from the storm.

It was approximately 20NM to the tip of the Arraya Peninsula and going at 5 knots we made this in approximately 4 hours, 11NM down the Araya Peninsula, and 15NM East to Laguna Grande. The trip down the Araya Peninsula was the worst part as there are lots of unlit fishing boats here. Tom was in the lead with Larry behind us. However, at one point, we could no longer see Tom's white stern light due to all the other white shore lights in front of us. We did just fine though. We made the turn into the Gulf at approximately 4:30am - less than 1 hour before first light. We were very lucky as we had absolutely no wind for the entire trip and the sea was like glass. Just before the entrance to Laguna Grande we saw a sailboat hard aground with his bow pointing right into the rocks. We think this must have just happened the night before as the people were still aboard. As I said before, this is definitely not an area you want to come into at night! At this point, we really could do nothing to help them. We turned into the bay at Laguna Grande at 7am and were settled into the same anchorage we were in the last time with only 1 other boat here by 7:30am. Later that morning, we had to move Destiny as I thought she was too close to Survival - especially if we got some strong winds. Later, 2 other boats came into the bay. We tried to lie down as we were both tired but both of us didn't sleep at all - there was no wind at all in here and it was very hot. Actually that's exactly what a hurricane hole is supposed to be - no wind inside it. That's very unusual as it usually starts to blow every afternoon in here and then the winds die down come nighttime. I think the hurricane was already starting to affect the weather pattern here. By 11am, the sky had clouded up and it started to rain. It rained in great big buckets and we had never seen it rain so hard. Several times we could barely see to the end of Destiny!!! We found the dodger and bimini were leaking badly. Guess they both need to be water proofed again. We were able to catch a lot of rainwater, which I'll use to wash dishes. Oh, I forgot Judy's engine started to make funny noises on the way here. We called the guys but since the fluid levels seemed OK and we could see nothing on the engine, they said we should just leave it. We didn't have time to tinker at sea with the engine with a hurricane approaching!! We had heavy rain on and off all day but very little wind although the boat was constantly doing 360's around our anchor. We couldn't sleep all day so just went to bed at 8pm. The wind increased at most to 15 knots during the night, but that's as high as we got. Later, we found out from other boaters, that Porlamar had up to 40 knots mainly from the W-SW which was not good as this is where the anchorage is exposed from, 6-8 foot waves in the bay, lots of boats dragged (including our friend Fred on Global Ombaka) and 3 boats went aground. One catamaran said the waves were so high they were crashing over his dodger! Needless to say, I am so happy we made the right decision to come here. It was definitely the right move to make.

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