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Diane's DiaryOctober 10 Sunday Dolphin Street was supposed to leave today but they are also tired so stayed another day. I was up at 6am in time to see a beautiful sunrise with pink skies just before the sun rose. I didn't get a good night's sleep and just think I am over tired. So, today will be a real day of rest. No cooking, just relaxing. I did about 12 emails this morning. It's difficult keeping up with all our correspondence. Larry emailed his brother, Heidi, and 2 other friends but I emailed everyone else. Larry went snorkeling by himself out on the reef - I was just too tired to go. I tried to take a nap but just couldn't sleep. Dolphin Street came over around 5 to cook their dinner. I was glad I had the leftover casserole to heat up in the oven or else we would have had to cook after they left at 6:30. That would have been too late to start cooking dinner, So, I will save the conch and fish they gave us and cook it tomorrow. I read the dive book we got from our course last year. Since we haven't dove in almost 9 months we need to practice a few things when we start diving again. Thankfully, we don't have to rush as we plan on staying in Bonaire for about 2 months. This time we would like to rent a car and see the island. Also, we already have our dive certificates so don't need to take a class and look for equipment like we did last time. So, I imagine we will be doing more diving than last time. I would like to do some night dives and the Hilma Hooker wreck dive again. October 11 Monday The wind has really been up since last night- about 15 knots, which is the most it's been for several weeks. Dolphin Street came over to say goodbye around 8:30am. They will go to Sotavento today and than to Bonaire tomorrow to get their propane fixed. They wanted my English Matrimonial recipe, which I wrote down for them. We have enjoyed their company but it will be nice to be by ourselves for a while. Strange how last year we had no other cruisers with us but this year there are many more. It could be that we are several weeks earlier this year so that could be the difference. Anyway, since there's so much wind and we can run the water maker full blast, I decided to do the laundry. Steph had said if you can keep up with it and just do a little at a time, it's much better and easier on you. Unfortunately, I haven't done the laundry for several weeks now so we do have a lot to do. I did 2 sheets, 4 pillowcases, 2 big towels, 8 washcloths, 2 kitchen towels, 2 bathing suit cover-up shirts, 2 Larry's t shirts, 1 bra, 1 underwear, 1 pair shorts, etc. so it took me several hours. I try to use as little water as possible but we had a lot of dirty clothes so we had to run the water maker for 4 hours and now we are still down to less than 1/2 tank. We will have to run the water maker for around 4 hours every day now until we can fill the tank up again. We went snorkeling in the afternoon and today was the best visibility yet. Don't know if it's because of the increase in wind. I made the fish and conch for dinner and it was great! We spent a quiet evening reading. Although we enjoyed the company, it's nice having the anchorage all to ourselves. October 12 Tuesday We were going to leave today and head to a north anchorage that Avatar gave us the coordinates for. However, it was such a perfect day and we love it here so we have decided to stay another day. I made bacon and eggs for breakfast. I did 11 emails this morning and worked on my logs also. We ran the water maker from 9:30-1:30- we are trying to catch up from all the water I used doing the laundry in additional to our daily laundry needs. We probably need to run it for 4 hours a day for several more days until we catch up. We are fortunate we have enough electric to run the water maker without having to run the engine. Water is a priority but watching TV is a luxury- we need water but can do without TV. Thankfully, we have lots of books to read. The wind is light - East 7-10 and about 80% sun so we are getting good amps- not as much as we would like, but enough so that we don't need to run the engine to charge the batteries. I made a shrimp with feta cheese and onions for dinner- delicious! I am reading another book about Bush- called "The Book on Bush". It's OK but is not as well written as the "Bush at War" book and is a little boring. I sure hope he does NOT get reelected President! I am also reading another David Poyer book Steph gave us called "Black Storm" - definitely not as well written as his previous books but still worth reading. We have both read a lot of books since we left PLC! Glad we have lots! We'll have lots of books to trade when we get to Bonaire. The book swap at the Carib Inn had the best books to trade so I'll bring them there. Or I'll see if aother cruisers have books or DVD's they want to trade. We snorkeled the blue hole this afternoon- great! October 13 Wednesday - our 19th Wedding Anniversary! Happy Anniversary! Since we are not near any restaurants I will just make us a special meal instead! We were up at 7am. I made some special treats for today- sour cream corn muffins- we only have a little bit of sour cream left now. They came out too greasy- but they were good anyway. If I make them again I would decrease the oil used from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup. I made a chocolate cake for dessert and cucumbers and sour cream- our last cucumber! We went up to the north anchorage using GPS coordinates Avatar gave us. I HATED it there - it was extremely rolly and the only place to anchor was close to the reefs - not good in a wind reversal so hope we don't get one. The boat was bouncing up and down like a rocking horse. Larry went snorkeling to check out the anchor and than continued to snorkel. The wind was E-SE about 10-12 knots so we were getting lots of good amps. The wind gen loves 10-15 knots the best and does well up to 20 but doesn't do well after that - it gets too hot and starts to free wheel. Anyway, we ran the water maker again from 9:30- 1:30pm so we are making progress toward getting the tanks full again. I still need to wash the chair covers and slipcovers but want to wait until we fill the tanks back up again before I do this. We went snorkeling on the reef after lunch and it was one of the hardest snorkels I ever did- the current was very bad and if I stopped kicking, I just got swept back. I definitely am NOT thrilled with this place and would not recommend it. We think Avatar likes it as they spearfish and we saw bigger size fish up here. We had a nice bottle of Chandon I bought for $10USD in Margarita and had a nice celebration. When we get back to PLC, maybe we'll go to a nice dinner at El Morocco to celebrate - a nice dinner in Bonaire would cost us about 3- 4 times the cost of PLC! We'll definitely leave tomorrow and head back south- to the island or maybe the blue hole again. We'll leave Barlovento within the next week. October 14 Thursday The boat was rocking and rolling so much I couldn't get a good night's sleep and came out to sleep on the settee. The boat was rolling less here but I still didn't sleep very well. I really don't like this place at all. We left at 9:40am when we had good sun to leave. I was worried we would have a problem getting out of the anchorage since we had reefs so close to us but it really wasn't too bad. We had enough light to leave the anchorage but we should have waited a little longer to leave as there really wasn't enough light to see the reefs really well. We would have gone to the island but it was only around 11am when we approached the blue hole and we thought we didn't have enough light to clearly see our way into the island. So, we went to the blue hole again and decided to anchor there for the night. We would have gone into the water right away as it was perfect with the sun except we were running the water maker and wanted to continue with it while it was still on. We need to run it about 10 minutes when we start it to get the salt water out of the line so this is wasted water. It doesn't pay to start it up, run it for an hour, and then shut it off unless we have a lot of electric. Last year we were only running it every few days so we were never keeping the tanks full. This was primarily due to lack of wind- since we didn't have enough even to charge the batteries. Once you fall behind in making the water it's difficult to recover. We have been running the water maker 4 hours per day for the past 3 days plus today and are still not caught up yet from all the water I used for laundry. A boat went into the bay we were going to anchor in- hope he leaves tomorrow, as we really don't want any company! I got 2 big mature conch today plus one yesterday. Larry doesn't want to kill them on the boat since it makes such a big mess and gets all over the boat so we'll wait till we go to the island tomorrow to open them up. There are definitely not too many mature conch left anymore- it's a shame how they have been so over fished, you can see huge piles of shells on the island. I finished the David Poyer book- it was OK but definitely not up to his earlier work. I made sun-dried tomato, beef burgundy over pasta for dinner. I made it with Brinkman Farms canned meat and it really came out very good. Unfortunately, we only have a few cans of the beef left- though we have lots of chicken and turkey left. Our favorite Brinkman Farms is the ground beef and canned meat- I wish we had more of those left! Anyway, I went to bed at 8:30 since I didn't get a good night sleep last night. October 15 Friday I woke up with a very sore back- don't know if I just slept on it funny. I also suspect the mattress we have for our bed is starting to go- it's not nearly as good as a bed mattress and we are sleeping on this every night. We wanted to wait till around noon to move- when the sun is the highest so we can clearly see the reef. I made cheese omelets for breakfast and we still have about two dozen eggs left. I also made taco salad for lunch with the last of the sour cream. We only had a few packaged tortillas left so I decided to make some myself. I had never made them before but one of my cookbooks gave the recipe so I decided to try it. They were excellent and we both really liked it. They are so much better than the packaged ones. The only problem is that they are a little time consuming to make- you have to roll each one out and than cook each one separately. I made 12 tortillas so this definitely took some time. However, we both really liked them so I will continue to make them. Since I have lots of cheese and salsa we can start having some Mexican dishes we know very well and love - quesadillas and chilaquiles. We became familiar with these from all our trips to Mexico. We have been to Mexico about 15 times, and love it and the food! We went back to the island that day. The principal reason we came back here was to burn the garbage. There's a nice fire pit here to burn it and we know there's nowhere on Sotavento this good to burn garbage, so we needed to do it. We haven't burned it since we got here about 2 weeks ago and we have a huge bag of plastic and 1 of garbage. We also have a huge can and bottle bag but we will wait till we are offshore and get rid of them over board than. We anchored in the second bay, as we didn't see how we could get into the first bay. I think the sketch chart in Doyle's cruising guide is just a little off so we anchored here instead. The only problem is we are anchored in 30 feet of water with a reef directly in back of us. So, if we drag, it's right into the reef. While it's very pretty in this bay, we usually don't like to anchor in water this deep. We had to put out 120 feet of chain just to get 4 to 1 scope. We had a problem with the windlass - actually we got to the end of the chain (we only have 120 feet) so were at the rope rode. The problem was the end of the chain got twisted in the locker and Larry had to work on it to get it out. But we seem to be OK. I made some focaccia bread for dinner again tonight- it came out OK but needed to be cooked longer. I think the proper temperature cooking it in a glass corningware dish, is 400 degrees for 20 minutes- I'll let you know if this is correct the next time I make it! Anyway, we spent a quiet evening just reading. It's a good thing we both like to read so much or we would definitely be bored out here! October 16 Saturday I woke up at 7am when the wind increased. We had so much wind the voltage was over 13! I didn't want to start running the water maker until Larry woke up as I didn't want to wake him up. But, by 7:45am we had water running into the tanks. We ran the water maker until 10:15am, the tank wasn't full but we wanted to go to the island to burn the garbage. It took about 1.5 hours to burn it and we got back to the boat around noon and had lunch. We ran the water maker again until 1:30pm when it had already been finished but we didn't know it. It couldn't have been overflowing for too long though as the bilge pump didn't go on. Nevertheless, we try not to just waste water, as we hate to waste water and electric unnecessarily. We snorkeled from 1:30-3:30 in the reef next to our boat- it was OK but not that terrific. We also cleaned the waterline on the hull and the dinghy again. We're getting lots of growth on the hull- we definitely need to do a haul out soon! October 17 Sunday Another bad day in paradise!!! Actually, the wind is down to around 5 knots and there's not a lot of sun. We ran the water maker this morning but think we may have to run the engine this afternoon. Larry tightened the belt on the alternator; I made biscuits and cleaned and pounded the conch so we can have it for lunch. It's a big conch too so this should be good for the both of us! I don't think I talk enough about the cooking we do out here. Almost all of the food we make has to be made from scratch, as we don't have room in our refrigerator to buy prepared food. You really have to have a lot of cookbooks and know how to cook or you'll be eating cereal as one couple we knew did! She couldn't or wouldn't cook (I will not mention their names to protect the innocent- that and they may be reading this!) so they ate cereal all the time. Needless to say, when we were with them in the Tobago Cays they only stayed a few days as they didn't have much to eat. I have spent a lot of time reading and cooking with my various cookbooks as help but I already knew how to cook. I just had never cooked things from scratch like bread and tortillas before we came cruising! However, cooking takes a lot of time and I spend many hours a day making food and doing the dishes since we have no dishwasher. Anyway, we do eat really well out here and I'm glad I know how to cook. I wouldn't want to leave here just because I didn't cook and we had to eat cereal all the time. Today we are having conch fritter for lunch and spaghetti carbonara for dinner. |