Slow-Mocean: Aruba

Well it's been a long and eventful summer. Not much to do with cruising unfortunately but were back now. We arrived back in Curacao to find the boat in great condition. The desert climate of the island makes for a great storage site. No mildew or mold in the boat and everything seems to be working fine. We completed epoxy coating the saildrives, cleaning and waxing the hulls and we finally relented and raised the water line a couple inches to allow for all the extra weight the boat has taken on over the last couple years. It's kind of like the defeated feeling you get when you buy pants a couple inches bigger than the ones you used to wear. Weight is a bad thing on a boat like this because it slows us down even further, as if that were even possible. We found our new dive tanks hidden away in the back of the storage room and all of the other parts we ordered while away were delivered to us as we arrived. We finished the bottom paint between rain showers and finally after about a week we relaunched the boat. All in all we have had a great experience with Curacao Marine services, so if you need a yard while in the ABC's we have to say we had a good experience. As good of an experience as one can have in a boat yard anyway.

We spent another week in Spaanse Water so we could at least get some wind and dodge some of the mosquitoes which seem to have had a bit of a population explosion during the rains. We got the sails installed and I spent some time replacing the generator end again. This time I hope it lasts a bit longer than the two years we got out of it last time. Who knows. We did have a honda generator shipped down just in case. The next couple of years will likely have us traveling in less than ideal areas for parts shipping so we decided to just play it safe.

Having been away for 5 months we were a bit nervous to get back out and sail as I expected Sunny to get sick and if the water was anything like what we experienced from the Aves to Bonaire I would likely have some problems as well so we waited till the winds were forcasted to be mild and left Spaanse water at 3:30 in the am. It was fairly easy to navigate with the full moon but it would be nice if someone could mark the edges of the channel at the mouth of the harbor. Once out of the lagoon we motored in the lee of the island for a couple of hours until the sun emerged. The wind came up with the sun and we raised the sails in anticipation of a great sail. The sea was fairly calm with a gentle 5'swell from the NW. Of course once the sails were raised the wind died. So we motor sailed most of the way with exception of a couple squalls that bore down on us and gave us some good wind. Once we rounded Aruba I headed for the main harbor to check in and the wind was on our beam. We sailed beautifully all the way to the harbor. I called Aruba and asked where exactly the dock was and they informed me that we passed it some time ago and needed to head back. I knew that wind was too good to be true. We turned and motored back into it for a few miles.

After the formalities were finished we anchored at the end of the runway in Oranjestad.

One of the tasks we accomplished this year was to change our hailing port. We used the old Concord, NC since we got the boat not really being concerned about representing NC, but we were constantly being asked how we sailed it from Concord,which is landlocked, and Carolinians were always coming by to talk about Carolina which we simply don't know much about. So having extra time to deal with the coast guard we changed the the hailing port to Seattle. Once our hook was down our work paid off. A guy came up to the boat and yelled, “Hello Seattle”!
Nice. He was from Portland, OR and before you know it we were invited to Thanksgiving dinner the next day with all the trimmings.

After an extremely busy summer which ended with a month of remodeling and a two weeks of fitting the boat out we finally are relaxing and enjoying Aruba.