Wednesday, February 17, 2010

On the mooring

2010-02-17 100504e
It's life on the moorings now. There are two rows of boats, all double tied to moorings and swinging in 15-25 knots of breeze. Bonaire is very dry so a lot of dust, and a few mosquitoes, blow off the land and onto the boat. But the water is clear and the fish abundant.

Today we picked up Christian and Josie-anne in the dinghy and motored over to No Name beach on Klein Bonaire (aka Little Bonaire). It was blowing 20+ so the downwind ride to the island was very quick and relatively smooth. Although at one point we plowed into the back of a wave which took us off a plane and buried the bow into the wave, filling the dinghy with water. Fortunately everyone shifted aft, the bow lifted and we didn't sink the dinghy. We beached the dinghy, walked east until the powdery sand ended, then put on our fins/snorkels and kicked out. We went though about 40 yards of very shallow water with lots of coral which was a really challenge with lots of wind and a big chop. Once we got off the ledge, the bottom dropped away like a cliff.

As we snorkeled along the edge we saw an amazing array of fish and Fay got this great shot of a big parrot fish. But we also saw barracuda, trunk fish, angelfish and all manner of tropical fish, mostly super-sized. And turtles! We saw at least four different turtles,
Klein Bonaire turtle
Again, Fay got this great shot of a turtle that swam right up to her. Bonaire is called the Divers Paradise and we can see why; there are lots of fish!

The ride back was very wet. The first ten minutes we had a fire hose coming at us every 20 seconds as motored into the 20-25kts of breeze at 5-10 knots creating 25-30kts of apparent wind. Very wet and wild. The breeze is supposed to lighten up a bit later this week so we're looking forward to a second trip.