Tag Archives: abc islands

A Lighthouse, Shipwrecks, & Dolphins

We got up early the next morning to swim ashore and go exploring before the herds of people arrived. The water here is gorgeous, clean, clear, and cool. Underwater we were treated to several flounders, box face puffers, an eel, turtles, and tons of tangs. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the tons of dead choral and sea fans on the bottom of the ocean. We unknowingly, brought a buffet to Klein as the fish loved the remaining soft algae on the bottom of our boat. After our swim, we dropped off our snorkel gear ashore and headed toward the lighthouse.

Great sign, but unfortunately it is all in Dutch.

Mermaid Tours makes so much money they invested in “$” rims for their trailer.

The original lighthouse was destroyed in a storm so they built this 2nd lighthouse in 1850. It used to be a vibrant coral pink lighthouse which is now abandoned with graffiti written surfaces. The wooden staircase is still in tact and has 5 flights of 11 stairs each that take you to the top. Below are two rooms that used to house the lighthouse keepers with no natural source of running water, it must have been a desolate place to live and work.

Walk to the lighthouse on Klein Curacao.

Front of the lighthouse.

The windward side of the island is a graveyard for boats. Looming on the beach is the hulking rusted remains of an oil tanker named Maria Bianca Guidesman, which ran aground in the 1960’s. She gradually eroded away by the merciless waters and now only half of her stern is left.

Matt walking toward the shipwrecks.

Part of the stern of the tanker.

Tanker parts strewn along the windward coast.

More pieces of the tanker dotting the coast line.

Right next to this old wreck is a fairly new wreck of a once beautiful Super Amel. Not sure what happened, but she has no keel and very little bottom left.

Matt climbed aboard the Super Amel.

By the time we walked back to the other side of the island and retrieved our snorkel gear, the beaches were crowded with visitors so we headed back to the boat. The rest of the day was dedicated to chores. Matt had a 4200 project from hell (that is a type of glue) which turned into multiple projects and I hit the water line. Over the last few days, Matt had cleaned the lines, props, anchor chain and barnacles, so I decided it was my turn to clean the water line. It is not a difficult project, just tiring as there is not much to hold to while you are trying to swim and scrub the side of the boat (while not removing any of the ablative paint) in a fairly strong current. It was pretty green on the interior hulls which required several scrubbing passes. In the meantime, we had 6 day charter boats come to the island (Mermaid, Jonalisa To, Breeze, All Boat Charters, Queen Ann, and a sailboat with a crappy sail bag that you couldn’t read). Lucky for us, they all headed back around 4p and left us to our little piece of paradise.

Sugar Shack on anchor at Klein Curacao.

The next day, Matt made breakfast as I battened down the interior in preparation for the bumpy ride back to Bonaire. We left about 845am, raised the main and pulled the jib with 2 reefs in both and headed out. Coming around the south side of the island we had gusts up to 25-28 knots and seas at 2-3 meters. With the engines (1500 RPMs) and sails up we averaged about 4-5 knots, a little slower than we are used to but it made the trip more comfortable and dry. About 10 miles into our 23 mile motor sail, the waves and wind calmed down a bit allowing us to increase our engines (up to 1800 RPMs) and speed to about 5-6 knots which shaved off 2 hours on our trip. It was a beautiful day, blue sky, puffy clouds, several birds, but no fish on the hook. We trolled the entire way and caught nothing, not even a nibble. We did however, get a huge pod of dolphins which stayed with us for over 20 minutes.

Over 2 dozen dolphins came to play with us.

So cute to watch them surf with our bows.

Thoroughly happy with the dolphin sighting, we pulled into Bonaire only to discover there were no moorings available. Since you cannot anchor anywhere on the island this proved to be a problem. Matt dropped the dinghy and drove around until he found a temporary mooring. It is not an “official” mooring, but it will do for a few days until another one opens up.

After checking the mooring and cooling off for a bit we headed in to clear into the country and have a cold one at Karel’s Bar.

Channeling Betsy Ross

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We have had a laundry list of sewing projects that we have been “meaning” to get to but haven’t had time. Maybe it is because there are so many and it is overwhelming, maybe because setting up the sewing machine is a “process” maybe because I was not 100% sure I remembered how to sew (since it has been 35+ years since I touched a sewing machine), or maybe it was just plain procrastination (and a combination of all of the above).

This week, I sucked it up and jumped right in. First let me tell you how we prepare to start a sewing project:

Matt pulls the sewing machine case out of the bilge
Pull out supplies from various storage areas: hot knife, extension cord, carpenter’s square, tape measure, scissors, blue tape, pencil, chalk, velcro, basting tape, shower curtains (for patterns) and fabric
Turn on inverter to provide electricity to sewing machine and hot knife
Set up machine

Sewing supplies

My first project(s) was to create new helm seat cushion back covers. Our current blue ones are stained, torn, falling apart and need to go.

Old helm seat back covers in blue.

Yep, we procrastinated long enough – these need to go.

So, I took the Starboard one off first, measured, double and triple checked the measurements, created a pattern, transferred the pattern to the fabric and cut into my huge 15 yard roll of Sunbrella Toast fabric.

Transferred my pattern to the fabric.

After I created my pattern on the fabric, and remeasured and cut the fabric with a hot knife to prevent loose strands. Then added basting tape to hold the hems cleanly to the fabric.

Basting tape for the hems.

Next, the female velcro was added to one side (we used velcro that had a sticky back side). Then I flipped my piece over and added the male velcro (so that when the piece is rolled they stick to each other).

Velcro applied to pattern.

Test, with just the basting tape holding the piece together, I take it outside and test to see if my measurements were correct. EEEK Gads! They are not! I had measured the circumference 7 3/4 but did not take into account an extra 1″ for the velcro overlap. Yikes. Luckily, I had not sewn anything yet so I had to go back a few steps, shorten my hem and create an overlap so that the velcro actually overlaps and sticks together. Yeah! Worked swell. Now the hard part – sewing.

I had not touched a sewing machine in over 35 years and was a little intimidated about using this one. But, Matt figure it out and walked me through a few things, tested using scrap fabric, fixed mistakes, tested again, fixed mistakes, rinse and repeat. Finally when I felt confident, I broke out the project piece and started sewing the velcro to the fabric.

Working diligently on getting the fabric, basting tape, and velcro through the machine.

Yep, I got this!

Almost done and feeling a little giddy, I start working on the last step which is sewing the end tie pulls into the left and right hems so we can pull them tight to hug the pole. Easy enough, little basting tape, hold the line in, shift the foot on the sewing machine to get a closer fit to the line and call her done!

Yep, the lines are askew, but not bad for a first project.

Finished the port helm seat cushion back cover the next day. The first one took me about 5 hours to complete from start to finish and the second one took me about 3.5 hours.

Completed port helm back cushion cover.

Super pleased with myself, I moved on to a much more complicated project – the outboard cover. I won’t bore you with a separate email on the outboard cover, just give you the highlights here.

It took me 7 times to create a pattern that worked – yep, that is 7 different patterns. Part of it was because Matt had a different idea of what he wanted for the cover than I had so once we got on the same page, we worked it out.

Since it was using two different fabrics and had many curves and uneven measurements, I taped the pattern to the cover to see if it would work before I cut my fabric.

Using a shower curtain, I created a pattern.

This is way beyond my sewing scope, but I am willing to give it a whirl. Keep in mind that this entire process is over multiple days and I have already been frustrated, recovered, frustrated, recovered, over and over.

After blood, sweat and tears (literally all three) Matt and I finished the project together. It was such a relief to have his help, logic, and different outlook and it made all the difference in the world. Let me tell you – this was a complicated project! Glad it’s done.