Bonaire

We finally started our journey westward. We departed Martinique and arrived in Bonaire 97 hours later, a trip of 472 nautical miles. The waters around Bonaire are a marine park and boats over 12 feet are not permitted to anchor anywhere. There is a decent-sized mooring field but when we arrived we found it full, fortunately a boat was leaving and flagged us down. Great timing! We haven’t done a whole lot of exploring yet, we had some major boat issues to deal with before relaxing. Our refrigeration started to malfunction around midnight the day before we arrived. It took several days to get that fixed. We came very close to losing all our expensive frozen food we bought in Martinique, including several bags of shrimp. Along with the fridge the stove broke so we had to rip apart the 40 year old stove. There was a bunch of other little things to deal with but everything seems to be good now. And just as we got the boat issues put to bed, tropical storm Don forms and heads right for Bonaire. The mooring field is great in the normal trade winds but any clocking of the winds can make it quite dangerous. We called the marina and got the last available slip! We got into the marina, tied up the boat, cleaned and prepped, then we checked the weather and found TS Don had dissipated. Oh well, better safe than sorry. There are supposed to be some gusty winds and heavy rain tonight and some clearing tomorrow so we may move back out into the mooring field in a day or two. We have done a little snorkeling and I finally got to dive again!

Bonaire is beautiful so we plan on staying here for a few weeks. After this weather blows through we will get settled again and venture out to see the island.

Crossing the Caribbean sea…whole lotta nothin’ for four days:

We did catch this nice little Mahi. Grilled half that night and froze the rest:

Stove issues:

Mooring field Kralendijk:

Waterfront Kralendijk:

Karel’s Bar and Restaurant which is also a dinghy dock. You tie up your dinghy and climb up into the outdoor dining area and walk out to the street. Nobody gives you second look…

Dea Latis:

Quite a few of these around, they are harmless and usually run away if you get close:

Mooring blocks in 20 feet of water:

There is a fair amount of commercial ship traffic here. Tug boats:

Customs and Immigration where we checked in:

Snorkeling:

The water is really clear:

Tanya:

The sea floor drops off sharply from 15-20 feet down to hundreds of feet and not too far out, thousands of feet deep. The bow of our boat was in 20 feet of water, the stern was 40 feet.

My first dive post back surgery…and it was in Bonaire… It had been over a year since my last dive so I paid for a refresher dive…it was epic! The dive was instructional/supervised so I didn’t take pics. Next time.

That’s it for now. Once the remnants of TS Don blow through we will get out and see Bonaire (and go diving).