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.