Log 28 January 2009 – We got caught by the Christmas holiday period. For three weeks everybody would be off including all the yard crew. We had a chance to make the cut off date for splashing the boat, but we felt rushing would just cause some kind of screw up.
It had also become evident that we weren’t going to have enough of the West System epoxy to get the hull faired the way we wanted.
Unexpected problems with the cockpit bulkheads and the backstay chain plates had used up a large portion of our supply. The fairing (smoothing and finishing) was a concern especially with Seacycle's darker reflective blue paint where the finish is a lot less forgiving than a non reflecting white hull. Acting like a mirror the deeper colours telegraph any imperfections and we were worried about what was going to show through the paint job after all the effort. When finished we were pleasantly surprised with the result.
One other issue came up when we discovered that our throttle linkage had frozen up with rust. No amount of WD or gun lube seemed to free it and of course it is in an almost unreachable spot without dismantling all kinds of gear so we had to get creative. In the end we managed to get to three quarters cruising speed and the issue was put into the good enough for now category.

Jean Mark is the proprietor of Medregal and during the holidays got to satisfy his culinary urges holding two great dinners, one at Christmas and a bigger one at New Years.
All the Swedes, some who have built houses here, ended up quite merry and blowing of some cabin fever and exhibiting some kind of repressed Viking id started a game of pool toss.
Nobody was safe! By the time the shenanigans had started we had turned in and we were safely ensconced in never never land. Eventually the yard crew returned and on January 12th we splashed the boat. Because of all the recent rain the grounds were soft and moving Seacycle was a slow morning long process as the crew took their time slowly working their way down the yard by laying boards and filling spots with gravel till we were at the launch ramp. There I put the last of the anti-fouling paint on the spots where the jack stands had been for the last six months and finally Seacycle after seven months was floating.

What a relief to finally be back in the water. Medregal sits on the north inside shore of the long arid Araya peninsula which separates the Caribbean from the Golfo. The Golfo, nutrient rich and teeming with fish is only eight miles at its widest and about twenty miles long. Its southern shore rises up quickly into what are the north eastern Andes. Mornings here are very calm till the land starts to heat up. By ten in the morning the land has heated up enough to really get the wind moving. By late afternoon you can get rains as the accumulated moisture hits the mountains and start to dump, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The sailing here is good. Strong dependable daily winds with little fetch leaving a relatively smooth surface. By evening everything is calm, very still and then in the morning the whole process starts up again. At night with the stillness and shore side lights twinkling on the water Medregal can be a very pretty sight.

Expecting a quiet and relaxing night we watched a DVD and turned in. Around midnight we were brought out from our sleep by a lot of argy bargy in what sounded like some kind of attack. Apprehension fuelled by a bit of terror in my stomach and thinking battle stations I did my groundhog varmint thing by sticking my head up out of the hatch to reconnoitre. Outside the boat yelling and some sort of drumming were happening. At first I thought it was some kind of bandito dinghy rustling gone bad like had happened a few months earlier but I was greeted by the sight of a couple of small local boats with flaming, smoking torches who were beating on the side of the boats trying to round up and scare the fish of which there is a multitude into nets they had set up in the bay. Of course the route proceeded through all the anchored gringo boats to let us know they were working. Calming our nerves we headed back down to sleep.
We had planned to take the por puesto(minibus) into Carriaco for one last load of provisions, but then bandits started to rob the road basically hijacking it for three days even robbing our driver Jorge’s por puesto full of locals who were relieved of their shirts, socks and shoes. Jorge got slapped around a bit when he resisted but wasn’t any worse for wear. More ominously they asked where all the gringos are. We figured we would take that as a sign and since we would be in Puerto la Cruz soon enough we would just give this a pass. The policia eventually rounded all the bandits up.

We took Seacycle out for a sea trial sailing across the Golfo to San Antonio working all the sails and looking for problems. On the first run across after shutting the engine down I went forward checking the rig and while looking out past the jib I was gifted with a look at a whale shark swimming and feeding up an eddy that was filtering its way into the Golfo. Quietly, almost too quietly while feeding. I called out to Deb at the helm and she quickly bore off while we watched the whale disappear into the current in the stream. We were almost certain of what we had seen because of other local sightings but back at the internet we definitely identified it by the small dorsal fin. Until we researched them we had no idea they are common in Venezuelan waters.

Finally after three months we were ready to go. We lifted the hook at 4am on January 24th and set off down the Golfo in the dark keeping a good lookout for fishing boats that don’t normally use lights here. By dawn we were close to the entrance at Cumana where a fleet of small fishing boats crossed the entrance working the tide change. By lunch we were off Mochima and decided to go into the bay for a look see but after 20 minutes in we figured we were wasting time on the bigger picture and headed back out. Weaving our way through the small islands just offshore we finally came into sight of Puerto La Cruz and heard our phone ringing. The caller turned out to be Arnaldo who had driven us to Medregal two months earlier and was waiting at the marina where we had rented a slip off him for 12 dollars a day. We came slowly into the marina and after an easy docking we went off for a meal with Arnaldo at the chicken shacks just outside of the marina gates.
To be continued...