08/01/09
What a disappointment!!! We left Isla Margarita as planned last night and headed on a direct course towards Trinidad. First I have to back up, we heard that the weather window had changed from Thursday/Friday to Wednesday/Thursday, so we hustled all day to get to Porlamar, did some shopping, filled up with Diesel and got the boat ready for the long trip. All came along easy except the Diesel guy had no Diesel, not till the next morning. Luckily he came through for us, instead of pulling up in his old boat he picked up our jugs on the dock and returned them a little over an hour later, which by then was already 7 pm. Now we still had to get all the fuel back on board and into the tank, get together with Heart Jump to make plans about our trip, take a shower, make dinner, square things away. It was a hectic day and by 10 pm we finally hit the sack to get 1 ½ hours sleep. We then left as planned at midnight. Weather prognoses were perfect with a 2 day window, 10 to 15 knots of wind and 3 foot seas. At first leaving and coming out of the lee of the island it was just perfect, 5 knots of wind with a gentle roll of wind waves, oh yeah we can do this. That unfortunately changed drastically fast and within one hour we had still 5 knots of wind but sea state rose 6 t 8 footers plus the wind was right on the nose. We did the Caribbean two step; two forward and one back. Sid took the first watch and I could not sleep the boat was tossed around so much. Third hour one squall after another hit us with heavy rain, at least they didn't have any wind involved except the last one. After 4 hours of this mess and talking back and fourth with our buddy boat Heart Jump we decided to maybe head towards the Testigos, that was a joke as this tack was even worse then we already had so lowered our heads, pulled our tail ins and turned the boats around and headed the 18 miles back to Isla Margarita and that was another 3 ½ hours rough trip. We listened again to Eric and Chris's weather prognoses and they said that we should have 10 knots of wind with 3 foot seas, wrong. They also said that there should be some moderation the following day but in the night we should see some 17 knots of wind. A bit frustrated we have to acknowledge that we may be stuck here for quite some time, at least one week if not longer; which is a problem as we are checked out of the country already. We're going to wait until tomorrow and try to sail to Los Testigos if that fails we'll head back to Isla Coche and hang out until we get a window.
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