Sun setting behind St.John's hills

Sun setting behind St.John’ hills Wide and spacious St. John’s Coral Bay harbour is mostly home for island workers. Living on boats, they row or motor in their dinghies in the morning to the dinghy dock and from there drive to work or take local bus. On St.John driving is on left side of the road, probably inheritance from Britain, who claimed the island at one point in history. The bay doesn’t give you a typical Caribbean sight. Five or six boats, wrecked and abandoned after the hurricane, are caught in the mangrove, that is lining the shore. The name Coral is not justified in this part of the bay, but just outside of it there are beautiful anchorages and many white beaches, separated by coral reefs. We anchored in front of the beach, relaxed, enjoyed the scenery and caught enough fish to last us through the long stretch, planned for tomorrow.

Sunset on the wide sea

We left Bonaire early Wednesday April 21st in a light 15 kn wind, that was predicted to come from ESE. It was E, pushing us more N that we wanted to go. One might say that the first two days and nights were uneventful. But can you really say that, when you are watching the sun rise from the dark sea, staining it pink at the end of the day? And when the silver flying fish shine in the moonlight? We admired and enjoyed the beautiful blue Caribbean sea, always changing shades, laced with white foam and then calm as if waiting for something to happen. Yes, calm. After two days of steadiness, the wind died. Of course we like light breezes or strong winds, that force us to shorten the sails. We like short refreshing squalls. In the calms, the sails are trembling in the confusion, the auto pilot stops working, the tension on board rises. The wind left us for the night, but in the morning light breeze filled our sails again. Early Saturday morning the hills of Puerto Rico appeared. We avoided the island by sailing to Vieques and in the mid day anchored in Ensenada Sun Bay. We chose it remembering the peace and quiet we enjoyed there last year. In the evening loud voices, speech like, coming from the beach, surprised us, then singing, chorus and the soloist. The event ended with fireworks. We rested on Vieques two nights, relaxing, catching some fish. On Monday the 26th we moved on to St.Thomas, anchored in the small Flamingo Bay and on Tuesday we sailed on into the Coral Bay on St.John.

The Young

The gulls on the shore are making love, their screeching voices and flapping wings announcing the arrival of new life. There is enough fish in these clear waters for generations to come. We are relaxing in the cockpit after a rush getting the sailboat ready before dark for an early morning departure. We've said our goodbys to our friends here, promissing to keep in touch, and to come back, escaping another New England winter.

Rain

After months of drought the sound of rain drops on the fiberglass deck woke us up. We harried to make sure all the hatches were shut tight, then settled in the cockpit to enjoy lightning drowning into the sea. Heavy drops were making their way down the dodger and the sides of the cabin in brown straems, untill all the dust was washed off in a sudden downpure. At the daybreak, the sun rose as if nothing had happened during the night. We stayed in the Harbour Village Marina, where the calms allowed us to replace the old main sail with the new. We lasted there two nights under the invasion of mosquitos, flying from the lagoon across the street. Beside the nasty beasts, the stink arose from the lagoon, connected to the sea by a narrow stream, at every low tide. Even though, we enjoyed watching pink flamingos feeding in it's shallows. We are on the mooring now, where the mosquitos can not reach us, swimming off the boat in the sea, that is in April almost as warm as the air.

Maturity

We are back on Bonaire. We were suppose to leave moody New England spring weather a week earlier, but missed the plane departure by a day. There is a reasonable explanation for that. Living on the boat many months, we became careless of the hour of the day, day of the week. Our days start at dawn and end at nightfall. Light is more valuable then time. We only look at the calender, when we fill out the entry form of the island, we just anchored at. We know it is Sunday, when the island shops are closed. So, a week late, we are here again for a few days, until we prepare the boat to sail East. Connected to the Internet, we send notices of our arival to the kids. We scan our mail. Lately we are getting old folks jokes in our E-mail. Why??? First, we ignored them, then, Polde decided to read one, but couldn't. "Nada, have you seen my glasses anywhere?" "Yes", I replyed, "but I can't remember, wherë."