So here we are back at sea after after 8 months on solid ground - A very early flight from England on 11 January, created a bit of a last minute packing panic and we shoved our washbags into hand luggage, completely forgetting latest restriction! So after a long day travelling, we eventually arrived safely back at the marina Bahia Redonda in Puerta La Cruz, with much lighter bags as Louise lost various beauty products at each security gate passed through!
We were hoping to stock up and set sail pretty much straight away but as ever boat life conspires against one – the generator didn’t work. So Mark spent 8 hot, sweaty days trying to fix the generator but eventually we decided to leave without it working, very sadly as it means we can’t run our deep freeze so not able to stock up with Venezuelan prime beef but we consoled ourselves with several cases of Chilean wine instead! Having time on my hands I decided a trip to the hairdressers was required, unfortunately now sporting very interesting shade of blonde hair – a mixture between durcell battery orange & footballers wife white !!
So a 5 am start on 23 January in convoy with our sailing friends ‘Sarah Grace’ (the Yerbury / White family) to Tortuga. It felt fairly strange to be at sea again after our long break back in the UK, especially as it was very ‘rolly’ sail there, we arrived mid afternoon to ? dropped the anchor back in turquoise seas, white deserted sand beaches, however not quite the same paradise as we had experienced in May last year due to the howling 30 knot winds, even though temperature is between 28-34 C, it is winter in Venezuela at the moment.
The next day we celebrated Chris’ birthday from Sarah Grace in typical Brit style – 2 dinghies loaded to the gunnels with stuff, hours spent making a camp, windbreakers extraordinaire constructed, a lot of time discussing the best way to murder the lobsters, a great bbq supper, sand everywhere then a bit of a panic to pack up everything up realising the sun was going down!
We then sailed overnight to Les Roques, arrived early in the morning and very gingerly picked our way through the Reef, we had nominated ‘Sarah Grace’ to go first as Sophy had boasted of an ability to use a lead line, a few scary moments with the depth reducing to less than 1 metre under the keel a bit of reversing we both dropped our anchors in 3 metres of water in Los Mosiquotos. After few days spent here visiting the Turtle sanctuary and generally lolling around, we set off again for the Aves archipelago. Mark unfortunately had to forego the bone fishing experience he had promised himself in Les Roques due to 30 knot winds every day – fly fishing – just wasn’t going to happen, fingers crossed for Cuba though!
As the wind had dropped a lot Aves proved lovely with plenty to keep ‘twitchers’ happy, lovely snorkelling, more bbqs on the beach sampling the Barracuda caught by ‘Sarah Grace’. Due to rapidly going off meat mountain on ‘Jem’ we haven’t started the fishing expirement again but were delighted to hear over the campfire that Sarah Grace, who have been sailing as long as we have, are still to catch as many as the 7 fish caught by us! Also we were delighted to meet some other cruisers who had been sailing for 10 years and had only caught 3 years – we felt proud of our 7!
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