Passage From Carricaou to Bonaire

We raised anchor in Tyrell Bay just before noon on Thursday. Based on a distance of 400 nautical miles at 6 knots, we expected to arrive midday on Sunday and actual arrival time was 9:00 am, good planning on the skipper’s part.

Having consulted Chris Parker for weather routing we expected some squalls, winds in the mid teens and 4 to 6 feet seas for most of the journey with winds picking up to mid to high 20’s on Saturday along with 10 to 12 foot waves. Everything played out almost exactly as predicted and we had a beautiful downwind sail for the most part, those 12 foot waves were a bit uncomfortable.

We had also consulted Passage Weather and Predict Wind prior to leaving spoke twice daily with Chris Parker on the Single Side Band Radio. While underway we receive updated weather reports via email over the sat phone and can send out texts over our Delorme In Reach. All in all we remain well connected during passage.

We followed the rhumb line from Grenada to Bonaire. It was a downwind sail with the screecher and Genoa out, sailing wing on wing. We saw several squalls and brought the screecher in periodically. During the last 12 hours we focused on keeping boat speed down to time our arrival in Bonaire for after dawn. We turned off the engines leaving Tyrell Bay and they remained off until entering the harbor at Kralendijk.

Our first day out we were accompanied by several Dolphins for a while and later, a flock of small birds that wanted to rest in our cabin. Fortunately we got them out quickly and closed the screens.

We did continue our efforts at fishing, still no luck. We do continue to solicit suggestions on how to improve our odds, our latest was to string out some “teaser” birds, we started with three and lost them one by one. The only thing we’ve caught in the past month was a Brown Boobie, not exactly the huge Mahi or Tuna we were hoping for – it’s a bird…

There are several beautiful small islands along this route where we would have loved to stop. Unfortunatly concern for safety prevented us from doing so. They are part of Venezuela which has been unwelcoming for several years but some of the offshore islands had remained ok until fairly recently. We had hoped to stop at Aves and Los Roque but Noonsite reports they too can be dangerous. It’s unfortunate since they look to be beautiful places to explore but not worth the chance for us.

Happy to report we are safely moored in Bonaire and it’s beautiful!

(Not happy to report that neither of us did much work on our Grenada and Washington posts.)

~ Jeff and Mary ~