High Times In Bonaire

Family time, Harbour Village's beach

 By Caribbean party island standards Bonaire is a very quiet place. As far as we know there isn’t a tourist attracting night time hot spot to be found anywhere. The local bars don’t seem very interesting and there seems to be no live music to found other than the small but rather good jazz group that plays Wednesday nights here at the marina restaurant. Ahh, there was one night of hell on the other side of town in the local stadium where some disc jockey “music” was being played at about 160 db. Luckily we are berthed far away and up wind.

The "floating hotel" with a"red hot" dinghy

But do we care? No way, we like the quiet. We dive almost everyday and we’re getting to be friends with the crew at WannaDive which is a very nice operation. They do our tank fills and we do an occasional boat dive with them.  

Suited up for a shore dive

We have great gelato at a nice place in town. We have a  happy hour libation at the marina bar with like minded folks. We know where to find excellent pizza and great ribs. The trades are always blowing and although its in the eighties every day it cools down into the seventies at night and there’s a cool breeze through the boat for good sleeping. 

Monkeys on board

The main event since your last update has been a visit from my niece Julie LePrie, husband Russ and their two kids Owen and Jack, ages seven and five. They stayed with us on the boat for five nights and then next door at the Harbour Village Resort for the last two evenings. Great fun was had by all! We showed them the island and spent two days on the beach at the Plaza resort snorkeling, diving and using the Plaza’s lovely facility. 

Look out below

All for the price of a $15 cabana. We had an afternoon at Jibe City where the boys played on the beach and Julie took a wind surfing lesson. Then a couple more days on the Harbour Village Resort’s beach with more snorkeling. The boys made friends with the iguanas. We had a morning dinghy ride each day. They think our dinghy is definitely hot stuff. Owen is an avid fisherman so I managed to get him onto a couple fish off our docks. Julie and Janet talked about everything and kids and Russ and I solved the world’s problems.

Prior to lift off.

Mutton Snapper

Atlantic Thread Herring

The family that fishes together........

He does, however, have entirely too much faith in the future of self driving cars. Now me, after a lifetime of monitoring aircraft systems that should be in a “nothing can go wrong” mode, I am probably far too cynical and have little faith in automatic systems unless monitored by at least one very professional person who’s awake at all times. The future will tell.

Chad and Jerry

So it was lonely after they departed. We miss them all and we miss Jerry and Chad and our cruising friends. And we’re beginning to get homesick after four months on the boat. The stem balls for the stainless steel rod rigging that forms our lower shrouds, the shrouds we will be replacing, are supposed to be at the supplier in the Ft. Lauderdale today. If he does receive them he’ll get the new shrouds shipped tomorrow and we’ll have them in a couple days. A day or two of work on the rig and we’ll be ready to depart only a few days later than we had planned. Then it will be off to Cartagena with perhaps a couple stops enroute, then to the San Blas islands of Panama and then Panama itself.

Wish us luck

Love to all,
Bill & Janet Wickman
SV Airstream