Hewson’s “Sunday Island “

Sunday Island took off like a rocket as we departed Los Roques as we sailed down wind with two reefs in the mainsail and a poled out Yankee at 10kts. She seemed to be enjoying her freedom sailign downwind like a bird after being caged up in Trinidad for 6 months.

By now all the crew have their sea legs. We put out the fishing line and caught a few small tuna, then a Mahi. We maintained speeds over 10kts through the night. I spent most of the voyage diagnosing why my SSB radio was no longer talking to the Winlik station. And after re wiring the radio, checking the antenna, I finally found an incorrect setting with the USB network from my computer. The re wire was still worth it and now the transmition and recieve signal is better than ever!

The next day at dawn we entered the magnificent harbour of Curacao. The enterence to the yacht harbour is hidden amongst the cliffs, and is only 50m wide and difficult to see. Pirates looking for a hidden harbour to fix their ships and hide before their attack would have loved this harbor.

After anchoring in the harbour we headed ashore to check in to this Dutch caribbean island. Nobody seemed to know what checking in was or how to do it, so we went to the shop, go some fresh grocieries, and headed back to the boat to rest, deciding check in could wait for another day.

We met a french family that afternoon and spent the afternoon swapping travel stories while the kids played. The next day we decided to remain in harbour and do some maintenance, and continue to tidy up from the Trinidad experiance. We focused on doing maintence on the teak deck caulking that had not been done in Trinidad, and also repairing some glued laminated teak that had come apart in the heat of the Trinidad summer.

With the boat back togeather at sunset, Emilie and I enjoyed a beer, before getting an early night and waking up for our short 70nm sail to Aruba. After exiting the harbour we were happy to see our speed over ground was still 10kts and we arrived in Aruba at 4pm that afternoon, anchoring next to the airport for a quick swim.

The sight of Aruba did not tickle our fancy and nobody had any desire to go ashore and look around. The lsland seemed very developed in an ugly sort of way, with lots of influence from cruise ships and the oil and gas industry. With no desire to head ashore in Aruba, we decided we would take alook at Columbia, 200nm away. Regards Rich