CURACAO
I’m writing this in Curacao airport, as I sit waiting for my flight home to Sydney. Penny left last week for “down under”, to catch up with her mum who was back in hospital and leaving me to put the boat in storage for 6 months.
The plan is to return in late November after the hurricane season has passed to complete the final leg of the circumnavigation, heading through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific hopefully arriving home by September 2010; four and half years after we left Lightwave’s factory in May 2006.
We had a great time in Bonaire, which is a diver’s paradise, everything is geared for the scuba diver, including drive-in air tank filling stations. We both ended up doing our Padi’s open water course as Penny’s had lost her confidence and it has been over 30 years since I did my diving course. Also, our high pressure hose on the dive compressor blew so without qualifications it was impossible to fill our tanks. The course was most beneficial and I think we learnt a lot from it.
From Bonaire we headed for our final destination of Curacao about 40 miles of good downwind sailing. But as usual things don’t always go as planned. On arrival at the entrance of the marina we discovered that we had no power in the port engine and at the same time there was a burning smell coming from the starboard engine. Not a good position to be in when you are trying to navigate up a river with a 25 knot wind blowing. After limping into the marina we discovered our port propeller had fallen off and a wire on the starboard alternator had burnt out. The good news we were just about to be lifted out of the water and the mechanic was at hand to sort out the problems – the bad news is we are up for a new prop.
Penny and I are now signing off for the next 6 months so watch this space from December onwards…
