The Story of Curt and Curacao

Willamstad

From Bonaire we sailed to Curacao the day before New Years. We were met at the Customs office with snacks and alcoholic beverages to celebrate New Years - this should be the standard for welcoming boats! We enjoyed some local fried snacks and rum punches. We had a lovely lunch out in the capital, Willemstad, and watched everyone setting their fireworks off all day long (all you can see if smoke, no lights!). 

Snacks and drinks from Customs!

Out for lunch 

We went for a few nice walks and did a little snorkelling and soon realized it was more of a weekend destination as activities were slim pickings. 

Snorkelling a wreck 

Blue Lizard

We ended up spending longer than we wanted because the wind was way too strong to sail to Colombia. Thankfully our friends on Noomi arrived a few days after us so we had great company. After a couple of days exploring we started to become somewhat desperate for activities. One day we went over to Noomi’s with a bottle of brandy and busted out their sewing machine. The project was to repair one of our torn windscoops - not sure if the brandy made things better or worse as far as the sewing went but it was a fun day and killed a few hours! At this point both boats were desperate to leave for our next destinations.  

The day before we left James and I found a dog in appalling circumstances. He was very emaciated and wandering the streets with a thick nylon cord wrapped multiple times around his neck and legs. The cord appeared so tight that it would have been difficult for him to eat. Luckily, we found an AMAZING non-profit organization called Curacao Animal Rights Foundation (CARF). Within an hour of contacting them they had rescued the dog! They named him “Curt” after the man who rescued him and they gave him pain meds, food, de-worming and tick and flea meds, and had a vet check him out! Within one week he went from a trembling, snappy, sad dog to a happy, tail wagging adopt-me dog. I have kept in touch with the organization and love getting “Curt updates” - he has since been neutered and always seems very happy in the videos they send me. I posted Curt’s story on Facebook and explained that he is ready to be adopted and that most of their adoptions are done out of country since dog adoptions are not popular in Curaaco. My friend Gwen fell in love with little Curt and his story and is going to adopt him! The plan is for the organization to bring him, along with three of his friends to Maine, then Curt will continue onto Nova Scotia by ferry. By April 9th Curt will be a proud Canadian :) I love this story! 

Before

About 2 weeks after being rescued

Now after lots of love, food and medications!

What? It's how cold in Canada?!

While in Curacao we had emailed our friends on Aquavida to see how they were and found out they were in Bonaire and also planned to sail to Colombia. We we planning on leaving at the same time so we arranged to meet them in Aruba and to sail to Colombia together. Our sail from Curaco to Aruba was quite windy with some moderate sized swells and our autopilot was having a bit of trouble sailing downwind with that much force. Just as our autopilot failed a massive gust of over 40 knots of wind hit and span the boat around causing an accidental gybe, despite having a preventer line. The gybe caused the preventer line to whip through the cockpit and it broke the stainless on our dodger! We were just glad neither of us was hurt as the line flew through the cockpit and metal flew into the air! We were also glad the boom was fine and that we hadn’t ended up replacing our enclosure in Grenada! We hobbled into the anchorage in Aruba and Aquavida was waiting there with cold beers. We spent the next day making some minor repairs (we found a wooden dowel in a closet and used it to reinforce the broken stainless) and preparing for our passage to Colombia!