Bugs in Bonaire

16/01/10

Greetings from hot, sunny and very windy Bonaire, one of the Netherlands Antilles.

In the last blog, I told you about the cockroaches. Well, they’re still with us in spite of putting down traps and spraying liberally. We have resorted to Boric Acid mixed with white sugar in the hope that we can wipe them out for a while. We check everything we bring on board, which is just as well, because a packet of cereal I was about to open had dead moths inside the cardboard and, even worse, live ones inside the inner package!

Bugs apart, we’re doing all right. We spent Christmas in Carriacou. We went to Midnight Communion at the Anglican Church and sang all our favourite Christmas carols. Although we recognised the service, there were no wardens to greet the congregation and no hymn books or prayer books were handed out. It seems the church did not have many. The microphone did not work so we hardly heard a word of the Sermon and all the singing was unaccompanied.

On Christmas Day, I mentioned to Jeremy that I kept smelling gas. Sure enough, there was a very small hole in the washer inside the regulator and the bottle, which took two weeks to be filled in Trinidad was almost empty. Most of the gas had escaped harmlessly overboard, with just the occasional whiff coming through my porthole. We weighed anchor after a late breakfast and went to one of the best bays in Carriacou called Anse la Roche. Here we met one family and one couple and, amazingly the couple were from the north east of England, where the man had attended the University of Sunderland (Jeremy’s home town!). We treated ourselves to wild salmon fillets for our Xmas meal, with English potatoes, carrots and cabbage. No Xmas pud though, just yogurts for afters.

We had the morning of Boxing Day to ourselves anchored off the beautiful Sandy Island, where we swam and snorkelled. By the afternoon, there were 6 yachts so we left for our night time anchorage in Tyrell Bay. The only other island we visited off Carriacou was the uninhabited Mabouya Island, where we had to land the dinghy in breaking surf, which I don’t like at all, having been ejected from the dinghy twice before. Fortunately, all went well this time.

I had been waiting for some medication to arrive from the UK and it had not arrived but on our last day in Carriacou it was there at the post office. So, we could leave without needing to return. We sailed to Union Island, which is part of St Vincent and the Grenandines (SVG). We checked in with Customs and Immigration, paid our fees and continued to the island of Mayreau. The next day we did a 6 or 7 hour sail to Bequia, where we spent New Year. The fireworks on Old Year’s Night were very good. Jeremy blew loud tunes on his grandfather’s bugle and many boats, including a cruise ship, blasted their horns. Earlier, we had been ashore and I surprised Jeremy by dancing with a Rasta man while he was buying drinks from the bar! A steel band was playing and people were just dancing on the sand. We had no problems gatecrashing an expensive restaurant, where there was a blues singer, although the people at the table were a bit surprised when we joined them as uninvited guests. Everyone had finished their meal, so we didn’t feel too bad.

We left Bequia on 7th January, after a brief trip to St Vincent to fill up with fresh drinking water. Bequia was in the middle of a drought. We had a 3 day passage to the Venezuelan Islas Aves, which are a handful of isolated, scattered islands and reefs in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. We snorkelled in crystal clear water just before sunset. The next day we followed “The Grand Princess” into Bonaire. She was the cruise ship seven of us were on in the Mediterranean to celebrate Mum’s 80th. She beat us into port by about 3 hours!

Here in Bonaire, you have to use the moorings as no anchoring is allowed. The whole island is a marine park. The water is very clear even here in the capital, Kralendijke, where you can snorkel to the shore and see reef fish right next to the sea wall.

Our son-in-law, Ben continues to improve and once again, thank-you to everyone who has kept him in their thoughts and prayers these last two months.