by Pam Graham
December 1995
In Part 5 Kapalua II continued her sojourn in the Caribbean. This issue, we join Kapalua’s intrepid crew as they visit Trinidad and Tobago and cruise among the Venezuelan coastal islands before heading to Cartagena in Colombia and Panama’s idyllic San Blas Islands ...
Trinidad and Tobago lie at the southern end of the Windward and Leeward Islands. Trinidad has Scarlet Ibis, Nature Reserves and swamps, as well as oil and natural bitumen lakes. The city of Port of Spain is dusty and dirty, as all other islands, and the mixture of races produces some of the most beautiful and handsome looking people in the world. But the sea is NOT for swimming.
Tobago is quite different. We anchored in several different bays, out on the reef at Pigeon Point and later, when our friends had left, we went diving near Little Tobago and Goat Island. This was the highlight of our diving experience. Here we swam with the Manta Rays. These creatures had over 3 metre wingspan. They swam towards us and hovered effortlessly, catching plankton, whilst we stroked underneath their wings. They like the warmth of your hands. What a thrill! What a privilege!
Soon, when a friend from UK joined us, we were off sailing west along the coast of Venezuela. We stopped at several islands in Los Testigos, diving and snorkeling our way around, and two days later we were in Isla Margarita. Both these places are Venezuelan and the exchange rates were so favourable that we bought a brand new Rigid Inflatable Boat, a “Caribe”, which lasted until recently. We also purchased a Mercury 9.9HP outboard. Now we were really well set up for going great distances and diving outside the reef off a stable dinghy, all duty free! Wow! We did well there! We said goodbye to our visitor and headed off to the next islands.
The winds varied between strong north easterlies and gentle south easterlies. Mostly the trades were in place 15 to 20 knots but we sailed all day sometimes with 6 to 10 knots only, making 4 knots speed maximum. All right if you have time and in TIME we were Millionaires!
We visited Los Roques, a horseshoe shaped reef with many small islands dotted about. Lovely calm waters, white sands and turquoise blue sea, BUT disappointing when we went snorkeling as it was murky and much of the reef was dead. The Customs/Coastguard gave us a hard time and allowed us only 24 hours, so we sailed off to Las Aves, which consists of two sets of coral islands and a couple of Mangrove forests. Here we saw Masked Boobies with young in the nests, thousands of them. Here the Coastguard/Customs were delightful, spoke no English and we understood little Spanish so we filled in the forms by sign language! Again no good snorkeling and very high winds at night.
We had a gentle sail to Bonaire where we stayed a while as we had heard that this is the ‘Mecca’ of clear water diving. Imagine looking into the water and, at 100 metres below, seeing a wrecked ship’s hull perfectly. Almost seeing every rivet. We took up a mooring outside the main town and just looked down from our boat into the sea. The mooring was in 3 metres at Kapalua’s bow but the stern was a descending cliff of coral to 20 metres. We couldn’t get into our dive gear quickly enough. We spent the next week diving everywhere and also drove around the island to see the other shores. We were never disappointed.
After Bonaire our next stop was Curaçao. These islands are all administered by Holland. We found a beautiful sheltered lagoon where the friendly locals had a clubhouse, which we could use, and all drinks etc. were paid for on an honesty basis. We joined in the weekly races and caught up with a number of cruising friends met in other parts of the Caribbean.
A year earlier we had arranged to meet another musician/cruiser in the San Blas Islands for Christmas and we were liable to miss this rendezvous so we missed out on Aruba, the last of the ABC Islands, mostly because we were told it was mainly resorts and not very welcoming to cruisers. So we headed for San Blas. Unfortunately, the wind did not co-operate, as usual and we ended up in Cartagena, Columbia for our brief Christmas festivities, but we did get to San Blas for the New Year and had a rollicking musical evening seeing in 1996.
