May 2008

Log 20 May 2008
When you are working towards your dream the picture usually has a foundation mostly built upon a footing of beam reaches, white sand beaches, being lapped with turquoise waters and gilded with palm trees and fuelled with hope for some type of freedom from the day to day grind of modern progress. These are the thoughts that keep you going, building the cruising kitty, working the weekends trying to get off the treadmill of the proverbial rat race. But every once in awhile some incident you hear or read about casts shadows onto the dream, bleeding a bit of dark paranoia into the frame. Is there somewhere floating just below the surface, some washed overboard shipping container with your boats name written on it? Or in some ram shackled town is there a poor kid with a rusty machete or gun whose whole existence is ground with the reality that he will never escape his existence and in trying to better it maybe cast fate to the wind by attacking one of those North American cruising boats bringing him into a juncture with you? Even the smallest and poorest of cruising yachts can look like Mother ship North America to a poor fisherman. These thoughts are the confidence killers that will kill a dream and make you stay in your sanctuary thinking better the devil you know. But read any large urban centre newspaper and you could make the argument not to leave your front door. Several times in our lifetime whether it was marriage, the self building of our house or leaving the warmth of a weekly pay check to start our own businesses, you just have to find the faith, close your eyes and step into the void. That now was the threshold we found ourselves standing on. All winter we had met boats up and down the island chain who expressed some interest in going to Venezuela. It was agreed to rendezvous in Grenada for mid May. The idea was that there would be safety in numbers. The first leg of the trip was in safe waters off shore to the Los Testigos a small island group off the coast. But in January the previously safe islands had had an incident with a boarding and shooting.
Venezuela is home to the Bolivian revolution now sweeping through
several South American countries. Run by Hugo Chavez who first tried to topple the government in a coup in the early nineties he was elected in 1999 on a populist agenda. Saviour to some, devil to others, in any case leading a country going through all the turbulence brought on by a social revolution. In this case the turbulence included exploding crime rates fuelled by a lot of anti American rhetoric by Chavez in his war of words with President Bush. Not exactly your idea of an away from it all place. But in order to go west from the south east Caribbean you have to along the country’s’ shore and islands or at the least cross its outer islands before coming to Bonaire. Usually we go home to Canada in the summer during hurricane season to visit our children and parents so for us vessel storage was also a big issue.
As mentioned in the previous log Moon Goddess came into Grenada and announced that they had been boarded by pirates. Evidently they had been trying to make Grenada from Margarita Island and not making any headway against winds or current had turned south to the Paria Peninsula. This peninsula is no go territory with the western world’s highest piracy rate. Definitely a no go zone. The US State Dept www.travel.state.gov.com as well as www.noonsite.com sailor’s information page all urge extreme caution and avoidance of going anywhere along this coast. They first got into Carupano but then settled on the next bay to the east Port Santos. Some time that evening they were boarded by three men. Luckily only the berth hatch was open and they were able to shut that in time. The boarders then started to pound on the hatches trying to gain access at which point the skipper fired a flare gun out through a port to attract attention while calling a mayday on the vhf radio. A restaurant on shore answered and promised to stay in contact while calling the Guardia. Needless to say the crew were shaken and the skipper spent the rest of the night in the cockpit armed with a couple of improvised Molotov cocktails and awaiting a further attack. Nobody on shore ever responded.

Of course this was all broadcast on the morning radio net in Grenada and totally alarmed everybody who were planning the trip. There was one meeting at the Prickly Bay Marina where the Venezuelan consulate attended as well as cruisers who were familiar with Venezuela. This was an information meeting only. We did not attend
as in our minds we were a go anyway and in our experience, these gatherings can only turn the temperature up. A meeting was then called at the Grenada Yacht Club with the ten boats who were interested in going. The issues were talked over and those who wanted to go discussed the timing and the hows and whys such as departure time, radio channels and lights. One boat decided that it would not leave with us but sail directly across to Bonaire. It was a hard choice for everybody and in the end four boats dropped out. I can’t say I blamed them because I was plagued with doubt myself and nobody comes cruising to find trouble, you come to get away from it. I kept getting the feeling that I was going to a gunfight armed with a comb. That left five boats for the trip with four dropping out and one deciding to head straight across the outer islands to Bonaire bypassing the mainland altogether. We already had friends there who assured us that that with the proper precautions we should be alright, but there are no guarantees. Plus we wanted to see the country and wanted a drier climate to paint our boat which we plan to do ourselves with the supplies we had already purchased in Grenada. We were going to roll and tip the hull after fixing the area around the shrouds where the boat was showing her age and use. We’ve had already fixed the inside structure by lengthing and strengthening chain plates knees in Trinidad the year before.

The group decided to leave around 6:00 PM and do the 85 miles as an overnight passage to Los Testigos. All boats were to meet outside the lagoon Saint George’s. All five boats left but at about 5 miles out one boat turned around with mechanical problems on its auto steering. They decided it would be too long a night for hand steering if the conditions kept up. We felt that these were normal conditions leaving the island of Grenada which was always rough in the beginning due to the shallow shelve on the south end of the island for the first five or six miles. We were running a double reef main with the jib rolled to the reef mark. After a
couple of hours we fell away from the lee of Grenada and the wind altered just enough that we couldn’t hold our course without the main starting to smother the jib. We still had a bit of moon shedding some light so I decided now or never for getting the main down. Sea Cycles lines are on the mast not led back to the cockpit so you have to go forward for any work on the main and the crew hates seeing the skipper leave the cockpit at night even if he is insured. After discussing the manoeuvre I was allowed to snap on the harness and go forward. We didn’t want to head up to luff the sail so we were going to try first on a dead run with the wind behind hopefully luffing the sail from the back. For you non sailors, the main cannot have any pressure on it when hoisting or dousing so the usual tactic is to turn the boat’s bow into the wind to take all the wind out of the sail. Deb brought the boom into the centre and the boat down to a dead run and then I hauled down the main easily leaving only the jib which filled out nicely. For the rest of the night it was fairly smooth sailing we averaged five knots gently yawing from side to side as the following seas lifted Sea Cycles hourglass transom up playing on the rudder which in turn would pull the auto-pilot over a point or two before finding her way back to the rhumb line, one of the few drawbacks to an older full keeled boat with a matching full barn door rudder.
First light broke the islands in the distance. In English Los Testigos means the witnesses? The three other boats, Joint Venture a sister ship, Gladys and Vagabond were about a mile to the north. As we approached the islands of Los Testigos we noticed huge flocks of birds mostly what looked like frigate birds and boobies riding the thermals above the islands. I don’t believe I have ever seen so many in one spot, certainly not ocean birds. Reaching the anchorage across from the coast guard station we dropped the hook, checked in, had a swim and hit the sack. The next morning at first light we lifted the hook and with no wind stared to motor sail towards the island of Margarita. Waiting till we were away from the other boats we decided to try a couple practice rounds from the flare gun which if we had to would be our only defensive weapon. We had a number of expired flares and not having
shot the flare gun off for years since a demo back on Lake Ontario we gave her a go and shot a couple of rounds off. Shooting straight out the flare bounced across the waves a pretty scary looking deterrent. Around noon we approached the city of Porlamar and came into view of the city with its high-rise profile. Quite a visual change from all the towns on the islands of the eastern Caribbean.
To be continued.....