We are currently at Islas de Las Aves, Venezuela. I am hoping to get this message typed up and out before the computer crashes and burns completely. The keyboard has gone goofy and you wouldn’t believe the gyrations I’m going through to make this work at all. Pointing and clicking seems to be working fine but a few of the keys don’t work at all and 3 or 4 of them are giving 2 for 1 (letters for keystrokes) and I’m having to go back and take the extra ones out. The display screen has been turning into vertical lines every few days … I have about 18 red, blue and green pixel-width solid lines down the screen … only 1006 left to go! Anyway, each message I send from now on may be the last. When that does happen I’ll contact someone via the radio and ask them to send an email to Jim explaining that we’ve gone back to the dark ages (it would be SO 20th century to be out here without a computer!)

Now back to what we’ve been up to: We left Bonaire on the 15th of August and had an easy sail over to Curacao. We had never intended to go that far west but we’re both glad that we did. Curacao has been an amazing combination of laid-back cruising and modern civilization. Most cruising boats hang out in the extremely well protected natural harbor of Spanish Water. We met up with Neil and Rosie from “Dreamcatcher Mariposa” and Rob and Deb from “Cavu” and met several other new and interesting folks as well. We quickly figured out the public bus system and were able to get around pretty well for 70 cents each. One afternoon we went to downtown Willemstad to the movie theatre and saw “The Perfect Storm”. We were as impressed with the modern 6-plex theatre and we were with the movie which we both thought was an excellent interpretation of the book. We’ve enjoyed eating out at Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, The Green Mill (a restaurant chain from Minnesota similar to Chili’s and TGI Fridays) and, most of all, Baskin-Robbins. However, we did make an amazingly incredible, super-duper blunder one night. We accepted an invite from Bob and Kathy on “Briana” to go to an Indonesian restaurant along with 3 single-hander cruising guys. There is some Dutch name for the restaurant’s specialty but interpreted in English it’s “rice table” and it consists of a big plate of rice and about 20 different meats, sauces, spices, etc., that they spread out and you put as much of as many as you want on your rice and that all sounded kinda neat and different and it was very nice and all tasted very good and we all had a great time … and then we got the bill. Now, Bob and Kathy had eaten here before and had really liked it and had wanted to share the experience with us and so when we had all arrived she simply asked if we all wanted the “rice table” thing and we all said “sure”. BIG MISTAKE. Should have looked at menu. Didn’t. Bottom line: $50 … U.S. … each. OUCH!!!!! Bob and Kathy are and remain dear friends but it was too late when we discovered that they sail on a much different budget than any of the rest of us. We spent our remaining time in Curacao contemplating things like “how many trips to Baskin-Robbins could we have made for the cost of that dinner”.

Our greatest success while in Curacao was when we completed painting the cove stripe on our boat. Yep, it’s the same color on both sides now! You may remember that we started this project way back in Trinidad, got half way done and decided that we would rather paint it gray instead of dark blue and have been sailing around for the past 6 months with a half blue and half gray boat. Sure glad to have that done!

We decided last week that it was time to get on the move so we cleared out with Immigration on Thursday and weighed anchor on Friday with plans to go only as far as Klein Curacao (“Little Curacao”) and continue the next day on to Las Aves. Since we had relatively calm winds and seas (a big advantage when you’re going to be sailing against them) we decided that we’d only stop at Klein Curacao long enough to fix and eat dinner and then continue on overnight … and that’s what we did. We dropped the anchor behind Isla Palmeras in the Sotavento archipelago of Las Aves the next day (yesterday) a little after noon. WOW, what a place! We haven’t seen such beautiful combinations of blue and turquoise waters and little sandy islands and vast areas of coral since the Bahamas. Fifteen miles to the east is the Barlovento group. We hope to spend as much time as we can (at least until our supplies run low) exploring these areas and test-driving all the anchorages. The fishing and lobstering are reported to be excellent here which should extend our supplies to some degree anyhow.

Well, that’s all for now. Even if the computer keyboard quits entirely we can still RECEIVE email so how about dropping us a note and letting us know what’s going on back there!

David and Claudia
aboard “Ma’alahi”
9/17/2000 1815