Laguna Grande, Golfo de Cariaco

Cruising is: sitting in the captain's seat
Enjoying the tropical summer heat,
In one hand holding an ice cold beer
The other on the wheel to steer,
Captain Sid leans over kissing his wife,
Saying "isn't this a good life"

Here we are again in probably the prettiest anchorage along the Venezuelan Mainland Laguna Grande, well protected and just so colorful and when Maxine the wind generator shuts up for just a couple of minutes it's just quite and peaceful, the only thing you hear is the chirping of cicadas, frolicking birds, the squawk of herons, the splashing of small fish somersaulting out of the water, the ripple of water gently slapping the dinghy, the wind starting Maxine to run again and a "pissssst" -- "pissssst"
- "smack" -- "smack" -- "pissssst"……. Sid sure is keeping very busy here, in one hand he has a fly swatter, in the other a can of bug spray, "pissst" -- "smack", and then he has to think about which one to set down for a couple of seconds to pick up his cocktail and take a sip before continuing the battle with the flies. Don't know what it is with this place, sometimes we're here there are no flies at all and other times sooooooo many. Well, it keeps Sid busy LOL.
We left Coche at 3 AM, the wind was blowing a steady 12 knots and a 1 foot swell with a one knot current pushed us towards the Araya Peninsula, of course with the motor running (to make water and pump up the batteries) and the jib out. The reason we leave this early is to be able to reach Laguna Grande before noon as around that time the wind starts blowing 20 to 25 knots and sends a long fetch of choppy waves towards the entrance of the Golfo de Cariaco making it rough for us to head right into
it. We arrived just a little past 11 am and twenty minutes later the wind started to blow, wow just on time again. At the moment there are several tropical waves in the Caribbean, with lots of clouds and showers. According to Eric we should be having rain right now. What we see is the beautiful mirror image of the blue sky on top of the water surrounded by the colorful red, white and brown hills. Hope it stays this way. We will let the next wave go buy before we venture further up into the Golfo.

Isla Coche

Wow, shocker! Has Margarita gotten expensive, it's not the shopper's heaven it used to be anymore. Some of the food is as expensive as in the States if not more and liquor has definitely gone up BIG time. The Carta Roja rum we used to buy for 6 BS, 7 max is now 13 BS. My favorite champagne went from BS 14 to 21. It doesn't help either that the BS are now at 3 to 1 dollar, when we left it was still at 5.
Checking in is easy now in Margarita, you don't need to have an agent anymore nor have to take a taxi to get the official stamp for the paper work. My suggestion is to check in first thing in the morning (9:00) when the door opens, as I did, most officials were not there yet, so they took our paperwork and told us to come back after 3, easy enough for me. Others who went later were at the office about 1 to 1 ½ hours to do the whole process. Cost is BS 40 for the boat and BS 80 for each person plus
BS 20 for something else, so we paid a total of BS 220, in Puerto La Cruz they don't charge the extra BS 20. Not many boats use Juan anymore to check in, don't need to anymore, it's simple enough, but he still will tell you that you have to check out in order to go to Puerto La Cruz. Once you are checked in you are checked in for the whole country and are good to sail around. Juan was complaining to me that he's business is suffering due to the fact of nobody checks in with him anymore, he even tried
to tell me that it would be cheaper to check in with him. He just charged some cruisers 280 to check in. My thought to that is he had it coming as he,s ripped cruisers off for too many years and still does. There is not one boat here that speaks kindly of him, not even the taxi as they have to give him a cut of their money they make from us. Juan has his fingers into everything, even Pedro the dock guy he hired has to give him a part of the tips we give him. I have to mention too that he tells the
cruisers that they HAVE to pay Pedro BS 2.50 whenever they come or go, no matter if Pedro helps in anyway, really?!
Not too many boats are in the anchorage about 1/3 what we usually see but then it's still early in the season, most will show up next months when the tropical waves will have intensified. The anchorage shows her true face as it is rock n roll city. At the last Hash in Trinidad Sid sprained his ankle pretty bad, it was good until two days ago, we went swimming around the boat and cleaned some sea grass off the hull and the following morning Sid couldn't stand on his foot. It was swollen again and
he was in agony for a couple of days and so we staid for the tropical wave. The wave brought heavy wind (25 knots) out of the SE and brought rollers of 4 feet straight into the anchorage. Just glad we have the flopper-stoppers, although one broke and needs to be fixed. Still with just the one up we sat more comfortable in the water then the rest of the boats who were rolling from ear to ear. They all looked like little rubber toys being tossed around in a huge bath tub, it was not a pretty sight
and I felt sorry for them even though we didn't have the most peaceful sleep either. At this time of the year one wave after another is headed from the African coast to the Caribbean and every 4 to 5 days we feel the effect as they bring us heavy wind and rain. Our original plan was to visit the outer islands of Venezuela but the tropical waves have strengthened already we decided it was safer to just head to the Golfo de Cariaco where we have possibilities to find safe anchorages especially if one
should develop into a low or worse. We waited for Sid's food to feel better and headed to Isla Coche, and had another nice sail of about 4 hrs. Another tropical wave is underway and we did not want to spend this one in what a cruiser calls it Rollamar (Porlamar). We're anchored in front of the resorts in Isla Coche, along the long white sandy beautiful beach. Even though the wind is blowing at 18 knots the water on this side is a calm as a little pond, no matter how strong the wind will blow. The
wave should hit tonight with wind predicted to blow 30 knots, we had some thunder clouds around us already last night. It's so nice to have a good night sleep again in a calm environment.

Isla Margarita

Los Testigos in our mind is a must stop, what a beautiful island group. If we had known how beautiful the Testigos Islands are we would have stopped on our way to Venezuela from Grenada. The snorkeling was amazing with the best visibility. Especially one spot will always be imprinted in my mind the beautiful elk horn coral surrounded by at least 15 different types of tropical fish, the ones you see in aquariums plus a big tropical trigger fish, just leisurely swimming around the coral and looking
at me the same way I was looking at them. I was going to go back to the place and take a photo but I wasn't even in the water for 10 seconds when I noticed a huge barracuda eyeballing me. He was about my size and started to approach me, that did it with one jump I was back in the dinghy, forget the photo! Another snorkel spot we had groups of fish follow us, no matter how often we changed course they did the same, if we stopped they stopped, it was funny. Now and them if we were separated they would
glance over at Sid then rush over to him, then stare over at me and rush back and as soon as we swam back to the dinghy their companions would swim towards them and they mingled as if they were telling them all about our outing, it was really neat. On the other side of the reef is a sand dune that reaches from the other side of the island to this side. We hiked it over to the other side, what awaited us was the most magnificent desolated beach with an incredible view over the other islands. The color
of the water changing from light blue to turquoise to dark blue was just amazing. On this beach we found several tracks of Leatherback turtles and nests and the cutest little tracks from the hatchlings towards the sea, I sure hope they all made it. The tropical wave that hit us brought us a lot of wind and rain and strong wind followed for several days. The wind was howling through the rigging and the anchorage was rather on the rolly side, but the scenery made up for that.. We stayed four days and
caught the best day to head for Isla Margarita before the next wave will hit us this coming Wednesday. We had a great. It's been a long time. We had a constant current of one knot with us, that is always welcome but rare. We sailed and surfed an average 6.5 knots with the highest surf speed of 8.7 knots over ground 7.6 through the water. The last two hours before Margarita the wind got calmer and so Sid made his configuration of sails with staysail (port), Jib (starboard) wing on wing and mainsail
(starboard). The mainsail was feeding the wind to the staysail and that one sending the wind to the jib. Not just did it look good we sailed with 6.2 knots through the water dead down wind and were more stable with the 6 foot rollers. We sailed the whole 48 miles with NO motor running, which is something we don't get to do too often. Once more we are anchored in Isla Margarita waiting for the next wave. While we wait we will do some shopping after all this is the place to get everything in Venezuela.

Los Testigos Islands in Venezuela

I don't think we were quite ready to leave Trinidad yet after all we haven't had a chance to slow down and relax after all the frustrating boat work was finally done. But instead relaxing we did some last minute things including provisioning and cleared with customs and immigration. We tried to be out of the slip by 13.30 but that never happened, sometimes I think time speeds up and you slow down just so you don't make the time limit. By the way the authorities here are real sticklers, when you check
out you have exactly 2 hours to leave and you have to leave, you cannot even go to one of the islands first and wait up for weather or relax, you MUST leave. Of course just about 20 minutes before we headed out of the slip the wind started to blow with strong gusts and knowing Paradise does not back up well, especially not out of a slip we were a bit worried, rightfully so. The channel between the opposite slips is very narrow and we watched numerous boats get in trouble trying to get out of the
slips because of cross winds, even hitting other boats. As soon as the lines were off the cleats the wind pushed us against the dock, pinning us to it and of course as soon as we were out of the slip the strong gusts didn't allow Sid to spin the boat slowly around instead it pushed us on the beam towards the shallow water at the end of the docks. No matter what Sid did the boat would not turn around and you can't goose the throttle otherwise you'll end up hitting boats. It was a hopeless situation.
Luckily one of our neighbors had the dinghy ready in the water and just in time before we reached the shallow end pushed our bow around and we were out of the channel, ufff were we lucky. Not even in case of heavy wind, customs will not let you stay one minute longer, you have to leave. Out in the big open anchorage we had to calibrate the new autopilot first, that took a few rounds, we were hoping that it worked as there was no return to get it fixed unless we would check in again and pay quite
a bit of money to do so. Luckily it worked. The wind was gusting up to 28 knots, not what we needed especially to get out of the Boca, the channels between Trinidad and Venezuela which is nothing but rip currents and miserable for any small boat to come through. First we were going to go around all the islands and up the main channel but the water looked so calm between two of the islands we gave it a shot and headed out, even though everybody said not to attempt it. That was a good call as the water
was calm and the further out of the cut we headed the wind was a steady 15 knots and didn't gust through the canyons anymore. A current of 2 knots picked us up and shot us literally through the opening into the wild Boca. We did speeds up to 7.8 knots an impossibility for out boat, well under normal circumstances. At first it was really smooth ride but then the Boca opened its mouth and started to swallow us, well that's what it felt like. It took us at least two hours to get through this turbulent
mess and we were actually glad that we took the short cut as we had less current to battle with. As we finally arrived on the other side of the Boca of course we hoped the water would calm down, no such thing, it was a lumpy bumpy ride and this throughout the night at least not the wild ride we had through the Boca. We averaged a speed of 6.5 knots as a current was in our favor and pushed us with two knots all the way to Los Testigos. Towards the morning the weather calmed and we had to motor the
last couple of hours. Los Testigos are a delightful group of islands with about 160 inhabitants who live by fishing. The islands are fairly small but offer gorgeous beaches with sand dunes, lots of fish, interesting snorkeling and adventurous hiking. The Testigos make a convenient first landfall from either Grenada or Trinidad. The beach we anchored in front reminds me of one of those water color paintings of lonely beaches. Immediately upon arrival a friendly French man approached us by dinghy and
invited us to a gathering on the beach the same day. Immediately we jumped into the dinghy and drove across to the little village to check in with the Coastguard. This was probably one of the funniest checkins ever, we chat and joked with the guard and they gave us permission to stay here for 3 days or until the weather was good again, we still had that tropical wave coming. This is just a temporary check in the real one is in Isla Margarita so they give you a time limit which usually is 48 hours.
At 7pm we went ashore and joined all the other cruisers, 3 French boats with Swiss people aboard, 2 Canadian, 1 Argentinean and 1 American boat us. We had a good time until the wind started piping up and just a few minutes later a heavy downpour followed and ended the party. Here we are again in a tropical place to work on the boat LOL. Well, not really we are just tidying up the mess we didn't before we left. Sid needs to hook the water maker back up and has some other little odds and ends to fix,
but that's it, the rest will be relaxing.

Leaving Tridad

Doesn't our new cockpit table look awesome?

The Saga of boat work continues, the floor was finally done on May 27^th 4 ½ weeks after it should have been done. Then of course just as Sid wanted to varnish the power went off for two days. He put on three coats of bottom coat and the third one wouldn’t and wouldn’t dry and left us sleeping outside in the cockpit or one night. That was actually very nice as at 4.30 in the morning the parrots awoke us, it’s just so much fun seeing them fly off squawking with each other, it’s quite noisy. The galley counter top still needed to be done and we started to run out of time. They kept telling us oh no problem we’ll get it done. Last Tuesday we got a phone call from Sabrina, the secretary of Fortress that the galley counter company wanted to see us, because they had a major problem. The problem was the color we chose they had no glue to match it and you could see where they glued it together and we were asked to choose another color. So a lot of frustration later we finally got the counter top finished, after almost 9 weeks and one day before we’re leaving. The counter looks great but we are not happy wi

th the lid for the fridge as it has gaps everywhere which is letting the cold air out, so that will have to be fixed when we come back. We are at last minute things before leaving this afternoon.

Of course we did another Hash which was again a hit, although the scenery wasn’t as spectacular as all he other hashes but it was a tough one.

Lonely Phil (his wife is in Canada at the moment) a helicopter pilot here in Trinidad, took us for a fun ride. First we did a beautiful hike in a near by bay with spectacular views, then to Maracas Bay for the yummy Shark and Bake and up to Fort St. George above Port of Spain from where we could see not just Port of Spain but also Chaguaramas where we staid and all the islands.

We also had all our Trini friends over on the boat for a lime, the funny thing about hat was the last hour they were here a pungent dead fish odor was lingering in the cockpit and wouldn’t go away. After everybody had left I went looking for it, I though maybe it was caught under the dinghy, wrong.

Our Trinidad visa is expiring this Thursday and so it is time to leave. A tropical wave with lots of moisture is underway and will hit Trinidad early Thursday morning so we need to buggy today to stay ahead of the wave.

We had a lot of frustrating moments here but also met lots of wonderful people and had a great time and got to see some of the most beautiful places of this island. We will be back next year to find out what the carnival is all about.