12/09/01 | In Bonaire

fish killers

We moved down to Isla Sur for our last day in the Aves de Sotavento, as Mike and Kim on Hallelujah had waxed poetic about the big dropoff (and big fish) on the island's south side. The dropoff and the fish were indeed impressive; huge schools of yellowtail snapper and various jacks cruised along the edge, and every so often we'd see a monster fish, a big horse-eyed jack or mutton snapper that we wouldn't dare try to spear, as it would no doubt laugh a fishy laugh and drag our weapon off into the depths. Britt quickly got a few small fish followed by a big snapper and an even bigger yellowfin grouper, at which point I told him he had to stop fishing. Since we have no freezer, we can't be too greedy. (My contribution to the groceries was one large squid.)  We spent the night on the west side of Isla Palmera, a rolly but easy to exit anchorage, and the next morning we were underway early in 12-18 knots directly behind us, heading west toward Bonaire.

As usual we trolled lines, and as has been unfortunately usual for the past month all we caught were a few stupid barracuda. (There's no such thing as a plain barracuda. They are all "stupid barracuda". Especially when they chew up your lures and bend your hooks and waste your time as you have to get the pliers and the glove and get them unhooked.) I guess we would have had a hard time eating all the fish if we'd gotten something big, but we can always make room for a little fresh tuna or mahi.

We arrived at the mooring field off Kralendijk at just about three in the afternoon. Nearly all the coastline of Bonaire is a marine park, and anchoring is prohibited, so all yachts have to either go to a marina or use a mooring. Fortunately, the price is reasonable (around $6 a night) and the area is well protected in prevailing trade-wind conditions. The moorings are on a sand shelf about 20 feet down, just 50 yards or so offshore, but the dropoff is so close that Windom's butt hangs right off over the edge. We found a vacant mooring near Joss. We'd met Cliff and Mary Ellen in Maine a year and a half ago and stayed in touch since, but as they had taken the offshore route to the Caribbean and we the "Thorny Path", we hadn't managed to catch up with them until now. (The closest we'd gotten was that we arrived in St. George's, Grenada about the same time they were leaving from one of the bays on the south side of the island, and we were able to say hi on the VHF, but that was it!)

Check-in, as typical for the Netherlands Antilles islands, was simple and free. On many islands, cruisers who carry weapons must turn them in to Customs for the duration of their stay. Bonaire takes this one step further by requiring spearguns to be turned in as well. We thought this wouldn't affect us, but after we denied having any spearguns on board, the customs guy asked, "What about slingshots?"  Well, we have a Hawaiian sling, so Britt nodded and said, "Yeah, we have one of those," and darned if the customs guy didn't tell us we had to bring it in! We were incredulous -- bring in our lousy little sling?  But yes, it was the law, so after we checked in with Immigration and went back to the boat, Britt returned to Customs with the Hawaiian sling.

fish janitors

Okay, so we are evil fish-shooters. But we tried to make up for it on Saturday, when we joined a group of Bonaireans and a few other yachties for a clean-up dive put together by Green Submarine, a dive shop which happens to be on the shore directly opposite our mooring. Cliff and Mary Ellen, who had gotten certified there, and John and Inge from the boat Althea (who we had met in Les Saintes) also participated. The area to be cleaned was the town dock, which had quite an impressive collection of old tires, beer bottles, and car batteries among other trash. Britt's best find was a fairly new cell phone. The challenge was to figure out which bottles, cans, and strands of fishing line were "trash" and which had become "habitat"; anything with coral growing on it or fish living in it was to be left where it sat.

Actually, diving under the dock was pretty cool. The coral and sponge growth on the dock pilings was phenomenal, orange, purple and green encrustations completely hiding the original material. We saw yellowtail snapper, grey snapper, sergeant-majors (one of whom nipped at Britt when he removed what must have been a favorite piece of trash), the ubiquitous parrotfish, black and yellow striped juvenile French angelfish, all kinds of little moray eels, and one torpedo-sized, tree-trunk-thick, stupid barracuda.

The Green Submarine hosted a nice party afterwards, with free barbecued chicken and burgers. Sort-of live music was provided by a one-man band who played along with lite jazz and Caribbean music background tapes and who freely improvised new and relevant words to old songs. (We never knew there could be so many songs about cleaning up trash!) John from Althea turned out to be an accomplished creator of balloon animals, and soon everyone was wearing balloon hats and singing along, "If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, wear a bal-loo-oo-oo-oon hat..."

boat chores

We did a nice, purely recreational dive with Joss this morning, but we're going to have to stop goofing off and start working. Our mail arrived on Thursday, and our wind generator parts should arrive any day now. We're just getting new bearings and a prop shaft; the manufacturer suggested that we repair rather than replace the chinkered-up blade, and that's exactly what Britt is doing right now. (Good old West System epoxy and fiberglass, shaped and faired with the dremel tool. Things no boat should be without.) The pole socket is at the only stainless-steel welder on Bonaire, who as it happens is shutting down his business for good next week, so our timing was very good! We struck out trying to find stainless U-bolts that would fit around the tubes of our arch, so we're going to have a second plate made for underneath the tubes, and have the plates drilled so they can be bolted together around the arch. With luck we will be in business again late next week, although the number of things that can go wrong are enormous, so we'd best not count our amperes before they hatch. We sure miss that wind generator. Running the engine every day is a drag, and the wind has been howling, a good 10-ampere breeze, at least!

I picked up a few groceries on Friday, but have yet to make a real grocery run. At least we've got fresh veggies to go with our fish now. We also have a month's worth of laundry, an empty propane tank that needs filling, and a few miscellaneous odds and ends to purchase in town. We looked into getting a new solar panel to replace the shattered one, but we'd have to order one and wait two weeks, so we will probably just move on after we've accomplished our short list of chores.