Arepas & Squalls in Los Roques, Venezuela

I'll always have trouble understanding why when people age they become more risk-averse. Statistically speaking, aging tends to shorten your life; so with less life left wouldn't you take more risks?

I mention this because many of the other cruisers we meet are older than we are and we are constantly being told "Don't go to _______, it's not safe." The blank has been filled by some of the most amazing (and safest feeling) places we have ever been, including Haiti which we fell in love with and have written about in detail.

Which is why with everyone telling us not to sail to Venezuela it made us want to do just that. Don't get me wrong, Venezuela is currently experiencing extreme hyperinflation in an economic crisis - we spent a lot of time researching our visit and decided unfortunately to only go to the offshore islands of Los Roques and not to the mainland. We made this decision in December 2016, with the knowledge that the political situation there could change on a dime (or 300 Bolivars when we arrived) and we might have to leave with little or no warning. We did end up leaving a few days earlier than we would have liked but it had nothing to do with the political situation or how safe we felt - it was weather related.

We had our best sail yet over the three days to Los Roques from Martinique. It was our first downwind sail and a welcomed change from beating into the wind! We had perfect weather, didn't hit a single squall and our autopilot worked quite well for most of it. Since we have spent most of the time hand steering, and have had to run our engine a lot when beating into the wind, we forgot just how much power an autopilot uses! This is especially true when under sail and not charging the batteries with the engine. During our sail to Los Roques, we had periodically turned the engine on to put a little juice into the batteries over the three day trip but apparently we overestimated our batteries and left charging them a little too long. On the last evening before arriving we tried to turn on the engine to power the batteries but the engine wouldn't turn over! We wanted the engine to turn on for anchoring when we arrived the next morning, so to conserve what little power we had we turned off everything except our navigation lights - this meant back to cursed hand steering! As we rounded the point of the main island, Gran Roque, we tried to fire-up the engine but the battery was too low. We were tired from the three day sail and a sleepless night hand steering and we didn't have any accurate charts for the area so we weren't thrilled at the prospect of anchoring under sail in fairly strong winds with coral reefs all around. Luckily the change in the point of sail as we rounded Gran Roque meant that our wind generator was ripping!! Sailing with the sun on our panels and the wind generator flying gave us just enough power to turn the engine on - what a huge relief!

Los Roques is an archipelago conveniently located north of the mainland of Venezuela, near the Dutch island of Bonaire and about 72 hours from Martinique. The check-in process has several stages to it and apparently they are supposed to be done in a certain order. I'm quite sure we messed up the order but no one seemed to mind and it all worked out in the end. However, between arriving and anchoring, checking-in and exchanging money our first day was eaten up! One of the first things you need to do when arriving (after checking in with the coast guard) is to get some money exchanged. The park fee and the immigration fee have to be paid in local currency. Luckily everyone and their brother is in the money exchange business. Unluckily a cruise line had arrived that morning and its passengers had been into town to change money. The small island had literally almost run out of cash in local currency. We spent over an hour walking around asking places where to change money and EVERYONE was out. We finally found a "spa and nail salon" that had some Venezuelan Bolivars left for sale. For US$100 we got to watch not one but three young woman, with very long and fancy nails, skillfully count money at lightening speed. When they were finished, we got an entire large shopping bag full of money! It takes SOOO long to buy anything if the place doesn't have an automatic money counter because it all has to be counted out by hand!

Bag of cash

Counting our money

Enjoying a beer after all that money counting!

Along the "check-in" route we were able to pick up a map and plan out which islands we wanted to see. After a wonderful sleep in our own bed (instead of cockpit naps) we woke-up refreshed and went to check out the main island of Gran Roques. We walked up to the top of the island for some spectacular views - this also gave us a good idea of where some of the other islands were that we planned to visit!

Nomads is the last boat on the right :)

After the walk up the hill, we need to refuel with a homemade arepa stuffed with cheese!

Since James' birthday involved blowing up an autopilot computer and furthering our autopilot disaster, we resolved to celebrate it later and pretend his birthday was on a different day. Well this seemed like the perfect opportunity to celebrate! Gran Roque is full of posadas and they each have restaurants - many are on the beach and candle-lit. We didn't realize but most of them only cook for their hotel guests, but fortunately we found one that had space for two more people.  It was incredible!! For US$12 we BOTH had a four course meal with wine and mojitos!!! The food was excellent and we came to learn that Venezuelans can seriously cook - every meal we ate was perfect.

The birthday boy

From Gran Roque we traveled to several of the other small islands that make up the archipelago. Each one is similar but has it's own feel. Only a few have restaurants or in fact people there. Others are totally empty and secluded. Even Gran Roque has sand roads and the only vehicles are work trucks - everyone else walks or bikes.

Main street on Gran Roque

The islands are the perfect combination of friendly, kind people, amazing restaurants, and stunning beaches and water with no one but yourselves around.  We spent almost two weeks sailing around the islands, relaxing on the beaches and snorkelling and swimming in the water.  We were so shocked at how cold the water felt to us! We have become massive wimps who are accustomed to swimming in bathtub temperature water. We couldn't believe how friendly the people were - as we encountered people having beach fires and cooking we were offered lunch on more than one occasion since they had cooked so much food!

The only excitement we had was when we hit the most ferocious squall either of us have ever encountered.  We were a narrow channel with shallow reefs on either side which were uncharted - we could only navigate by looking for the light-blue water of the shallow areas. We noticed a very dark cloud approaching quickly but didn't think it would be much different than other rain that had fallen over the past few days. We decided to head out of the channel towards a tiny spit of sand (the classic deserted island) so we could anchor and go for a swim. All of a sudden it started pouring so hard we could no longer navigate by sight. The wind cranked up to 53 knots (98km/h!!!), the strongest we have encountered so far. Hopes of going to our deserted island evaporated but neither of us cared - we were so worried about being blown into a reef. James turned the boat into the wind and increased the revs to try to hold us in place. The rain was so strong that our cockpit drains were no match for the volume of water and the water was sloshing all around - I could barely see my hand in front of my face the rain was so intense.  Once James had the bow into the wind I thought I was going to be blown over the wind was so strong! It was all we could do to retrace our path on the chartplotter towards the narrow channel but without being able to see anything we had no idea where the reef was! We turned the boat around again for another loop, almost impossible in this wind, and held 'er steady in the squall. After about 30 minutes the wind and rain subsided and we could see from our track that we had come within 10' of being washed up on the reef - phew.

The islands are full of very cute dogs and everyone seems to look after a few strays. All the dogs were curious and friendly and were very fascinated with our dingy pump.  They also enjoyed the shade of our beach umbrella and were only too happy to sit with us. They weren't shy and if we got up to swim they had no problem stretching out, taking up all the space in the shade and making a bed on our beach towels!

While we were there the Venezuelan government decided to discontinue the 100,000 Bolivar bank note and didn't give a whole lot of notice that they were doing so. We had no idea this was happening until our friends Noomi radioed us and asked if we had any trouble spending our notes. We had noticed a massive line up at the town bank but that was all. Noomi had to spend the notes they had that day otherwise they would have been worthless - this meant a shopping trip for Ana where she bought several dresses. What did Nomads buy?!? Diesel. Lucky me. Although at CAN $0.10 a gallon it was still pretty exciting! The story behind the discontinued notes is that the paper and size of the bill is the same as US currency and some mob or another is washing the bills and making counterfeit US currency.  A few days later the government said they would continue to use the bills for a few more months since people hadn't had time to turn the bills in and also the government hadn't printed enough of the 200,000 bolivar notes so the country was running out of currency. The inflation was mind blowing - on day one a beer cost CAN$0.30, one week later it was CAN$0.75!

The "Christmas winds" were starting to build and after listening to the weather on our SSB radio we decided in order to make it to Bonaire for Christmas we should make a move - we had a whole season last year full of sailing in rough weather and would rather leave two days early than fight all the way to Bonaire. We headed to the main island of Gran Roque to check-out and to get one more Arepa from Mama Julia.

On our way to Bonaire we stopped at Aves, another Venezuelan island and it was just as beautiful as any island in Los Roques.

This was the destination we were most excited about for this season and it didn't disappoint. We had a fantastic time in Los Roques and hope we can go back again. If you are contemplating a visit there don't hesitate to contact us and we'd be happy to answer any questions!

Christmas decorations in the main square

Conch Christmas tree

Nomads en route to Los Roques

Anchored at our own private island

Autopilot is a dirty, dirty word

Yes, we are now in South America. But a little behind on the blogging, so let's rewind to November. (Do the new generations even say "rewind" anymore? They would have no idea what they are winding!)

Our original "plan" back in Grenada was to install our new autopilot pump and then head to Martinique to weigh down our boat with French wine, pastries, and cheese. This route also allowed us to test our autopilot close to shore to ensure it was working before heading to west to Venezuela. As with most plans on a boat, that's not how it happened.

After weeks of hot, exhausting work on the boat and one more trip into St. Georges for a roti at Nutmeg Restaurant (where we embarrassingly knew all the staff and they knew our orders) and one more scoop of chocolate and nutmeg ice-cream at the Chocolate Museum, we left Prickly Bay in Grenada. We headed for the Underwater Sculpture Park just outside of St. Georges. The new Octopus (Made in Canada) autopilot worked like a charm. For the first time in eight months our boat was steering itself and we were freed up to adjust the sails, prepare gourmet meals, write blog entries, etc. The Sculpture Park is a Grenadian attraction that we have been looking forward to visiting since we arrived. We grabbed a mooring ball and hopped in the water to see some incredible underwater stone sculptures - a writer, the Nutmeg Princess, Jesus, and a circle of children holding hands. The sculptures are about 15 feet below the surface and unmarked so you feel like you are a star snorkeler as you "discover" each one.

Underwater Sculpture Park 

The next morning we said goodbye to Grenada to head for somewhere in St.Vincent and the Grenadines - about an hour into our sail we heard the high pitched squeal coming from our autopilot and the screen flashed "Rudder Response Failure". The original message we got back in March leaving the Bahamas. I can not accurately describe how either of us felt at that moment. James went down to take a look at the autopilot and I continued to hand steer. James tried several things but nothing worked for longer than about half an hour. We decided to keep going as far as we could that day in order to make it to Martinique (and a certified SIMRAD repair person) as fast as possible. After hitting a short but nasty squall we anchored in darkness in Bequia, SVG (the place where Customs threatened to impound our boat - we were super excited to be back).

When the sun rose on James' birthday we both got to work on the autopilot. Later that morning we took it our for a test drive. James was measuring the voltage to the autopilot circuit board and I was driving when I saw a new error message - one we've never seen "Clutch Overload". Turns out James' hand slipped and the voltmeter hit the circuit board and burnt the circuit. There was no fixing this without making it to Martinique. Happy friggin' Birthday! We were SO tired of hand steering that we skipped overnighting it and jumped from Bequia to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia - slept for a few hours then arrived the next morning in Ste-Anne, Martinique - home to Jacques, our favourite French repairman.

If you have not seen the animated movie "The Triplets of Belleville", stop reading immediately and watch it. Not only could Jacques easily be a character in this movie, but he is the most patient, helpful, and honest marine electronics person you can imagine. He is the guy that, on our first trip to Martinique, took one look at our SIMRAD autopilot and declared "It is what you say in English when you cook bread..." "Toast?" "Oui, toast."

Jacques now listened intently to our short-circuit story for a good 10 minutes, paying no attention to the other 8 people impatiently waiting to see him. He said "I can fix it, return on Saturday." We breathed a sigh of relief as a new autopilot computer would cost a lot of money and not fix the original problem. Technical note: an autopilot is comprised of a few important components - the hydraulic pump and RAM which physically move the rudder, the computer which decides when and how much to move the rudder, and the compass and position sensor that give feedback to the computer. All expensive, and all subject to harsh marine conditions.

While waiting on pins and needles for this repair, life was difficult. There was nothing to be done but eat baguettes, cheese, wine, and the occasional croissant if one was in need of a snack. When Saturday finally arrived we plugged everything in and held our breath - no errors! We quickly hoisted the anchor and set out on a test sail. However it wasn't long before we encountered the "Rudder Response Failure" once more. When Jacques saw us come through his door he sighed and rolled his eyes in the typical French fashion. He immediately had the diagnosis - air in the lines. But of course! Under a significant amount of pressure, any unwanted air will compress rather than apply force on the rudder, so we had to get that air out! Unfortunately there is no way to determine if all the air is out without going sailing in real-life conditions to get enough pressure.

So, every morning and afternoon for over a week we: sailed back and forth for hours in the bay near Ste-Anne, received another error message, motored back to the anchorage in despair, bled the lines again, and repeated. Now, in any other circumstances going for a leisurely sail in protected waters for a few hours a day would be quite lovely. But we dreaded hearing that inevitable alarm, which meant the next leg of the trip would be delayed yet again.

We took a break to clean the long-neglected underside of the boat. The marine life underneath was starting to outshine some of the nicest reefs we had seen. While coming up for air I noticed what I thought was some dirt in James' ear - until it moved! I thought "impossible" but it didn't take long to confirm that it was a moderate sized black crab that had previously been living peacefully on our hull before relocating to James' ear. In order to not freak him out, I calmly said "just wait here for a sec while I get the tweezers." In order not to freak the crab out, I had to quickly grab its leg and hurl it back into the sea while trying not to gag. Thank god it was a clean extraction - I had no idea how I would explain this at a hospital in French! After this we welcomed testing the autopilot again!

Good weather for the three-day passage came and went and with it our travel buddy. We had only reports of the first snowfalls back home to keep our spirits up. When we were able to use the autopilot for two hours without a failure we decided to try it on a longer passage. We embarked on an overnight outing to St Lucia which felt quite illicit as we did not bother checking out/in to either country. The autopilot did reasonably well, especially on the return trip as we didn't hear the alarm and the conditions were pretty challenging. We were ready to go!

Just a small matter of the weather... A strong trough was making its way into the eastern Caribbean that week and expected to bring some rain and strong winds to the islands. The storm was much, much worse than forecast and took everyone by surprise. At around 8pm the winds cranked up to around 35-40 with higher gusts - from the WEST! You may think, so what? The Ste-Anne anchorage has no land to protect it from west winds and when it starts blowing like that you start seeing eight foot swells heading straight for you and everyone else around you - pure chaos! Several boats dragged towards the shore, a couple of boats ran aground, friends of ours lost their dinghy and kayak, and all through the night boats pulled their anchors up and motored around waiting for the storm to subside. In the early hours things started calming down and we could relax. We had been spared.

While waiting out the bad weather we purchased a life raft from a Canadian couple and I felt much safer embarking on the three day sail with a life raft aboard. While chatting with the couple we told them we were headed west and they told us about another boat headed that way and that they were the same age as us - what?! Cruisers that same age as us?! We found them in the anchorage and went over for a drink. Their boat is Noomi and they were planning on heading to Bonaire but once we said we were going to Los Roques and they googled photos of Los Roques they decided to join us! Perfect!

Once the storm had passed out of the area, a nice period of calm weather was on the horizon. No thanks to SIMRAD, we were ready to go.

The Spice Island

St.Georges, Grenada

If Guadaloupe is the kitchen of the Caribbean and Dominica is its backyard, Grenada is its oversized thumping stereo system.  The calypso and soca beats could be heard well offshore as we pulled into the beautiful anchorage near the capital of St Georges.

Grenada is famous in the cruising community for a different reason - it is outside of the “hurricane zone”. Geeky tidbit about hurricanes: they start to form near the equator but they need to be far enough from the equator to start and continue to spin. There is no good definition of “far enough” but the boat insurance industry seems to think that anything below 12.5 degrees latitude, including Grenada, is good enough. (But just google “hurricane ivan” to see what happens when it isn’t…) This brings hundreds of boats to the island from June to October.

We joined the masses in July and started looking for a good place to leave the boat while we flew home for a bit to see friends and family. We settled on the Grenada Yacht Club, a little place in the heart of St Georges that accepted a few foreign boats and luckily they had a space for us. To make this amazing country even better, we were in the heart of mango season, and we returned from the “Mango Festival” with a gigantic bag of delicious mangoes for $3.00!  Even luckier, they were just down the road from some of the best roti we had ever tasted! We spent several days cleaning the boat and securing it to make it bug, mould, and storm proof. In case you're wondering "how dirty can the boat be?" These are a pair of shoes I found in the closet - the mold struggle is intense!

Ewwwwww

It was amazing to have my mum as another pair of hands as it made the hard work go so much faster. It allowed us to take a few short breaks with trips to the Chocolate Museum and walks to the waterfall in Grand Etang park up in the mountains. To reward ourselves for days of hot, sweaty, hard work we spent the last night in Grenada before flying home in a lovely small hotel. We relaxed by the pool and wandered down to the beach for one last warm ocean swim before heading back to Canada in the morning.

They don't call it "The Spice Island" for nothing!

We left Grenada having fallen in love with the Spice Island and thankful we would soon return…

James came back before me in early September to get the boat ready for Season 2. He returned in the height of the rainy season which can be defined as extremely hot and humid with a rain shower just as you drift off to sleep with all the hatches open. Also within days of returning to Grenada he started watching a low pressure system in the mid-Atlantic which had similar characteristics to the devastating Hurricane Ivan (it was moving low and slow). We both breathed a sigh of relief as the models started to show the disturbance curving up towards Martinique and St Lucia. This meant that Grenada would be on the less dangerous side of the storm and the boat would hopefully be safe. Nevertheless the island shut down and turned of its water and power grid just to be safe. On the day the storm arrived, a westerly wind brought heavy swells into the yacht club and made it difficult to get on and off the boat. Thankfully this was the extent of it - Nomads had weathered its first tropical storm! That day it was upgraded to Tropical Storm Matthew - it soon became a hurricane and went on to kill 1600 people and cause 15 billion dollars in damage. In fact, Matthew followed a very similar course to what we had sailed in Season 1, meaning that many of the places we had visited, including Haiti and Bahamas, would be devastated. When I flew back to Grenada from Miami we had to reroute the plane and flew well off course adding another two hours to our trip as our original flight plan was right where Matthew was! It was a very turbulent and bumpy ride and I was glad when we landed. 

When I returned to Grenada the boat was in better shape than ever. We managed to solve some issues that had been plaguing us for quite some time, except for the autopilot, but that’s another story! We anchored on the south side of the island in Prickly Bay to await the arrival of our new pump and the end of storm season. The south side of Grenada is essentially a retirement community for boaters, with bingo nights, volleyball, movie nights, etc. It’s a scene we don’t usually go for, but with the proximity to marine stores and free showers, Prickly Bay would do just fine for a few weeks. There was even a flag maker and mum treated us to a much needed handmade Canada flag to proudly sly from our boat :)

"Before"

"After"

In between the remaining boat jobs we made several trips back to St Georges, hiked to the Seven Sisters waterfall in Grand Etang park, and walked to some of the beautiful beaches in the area. For an island most people back home had never heard of, Grenada blew almost all of the other usual holiday destinations out of the water!

Cocoa beans

This blowfish visited us everyday at the Grenada Yacht Club

Nothing makes me happier than a snuggle from a pet, a cocktail, and a pool!