Almost every day a cruise ship visits Bonaire, they are huge ships, and so is the Zr.MS. Karel Doorman which stays here for a few days. It is the biggest naval vessel the Netherlands ever bought and were in St. Maarten and Dominica to support after hurricane Irma and Maria. Two sailors did swim up to our boat and we invited them to come on board and have a beer. After they had seen our ship they didn’t understand that we sailed the whole way from Holland to Bonaire, they found it scary. Well we can wait for a good weather window to go and they just have to go even if the weather is bad. They invited us to visit them as well on the Karel Doorman, wow, yes please. After one and a halve hour we understand that the found our ship a bit small. They have everything a board, well, the normal things like a kitchen and showers but also a fitness room, a hospital, a surgery, always hot and plenty of water, wifi, well we did see it all. They will go back to Holland on the 11^th for a journey of 12 days from Bonaire to the Netherlands.

On Coconut Beach the Edwin Evers Band was playing, a quite famous cover band in Holland, it was a lovely evening whit a lot of fellow sailors, a nice start of the weekend.

We are enjoying ourselves so much that we even missed the perfect weather window to go to Martinique. That’s not nice, we won’t get a better window. If we go now, well we will just be too late and end up in St. Maarten or Puerto Rico. And of course something breaks, our inverter is out of order and we need a new one. We use it for everything we have on 220V, our bread baking machine, the sewing machine, the dremel and of course very important to charge the shaver 🙂 . As we already rented a car we visit the island with Wild Bird and AriB without worrying about our inverter. We visit the National Park in the nord of the island, go diving at the salt mines in the south and visit the golf course. The island various enormous, every part is different and impressive.

Well we didn’t have our heads clear, first day we forgot our fotocamera, second day our wallet and the third day we decided that Ronald is flying to Holland to be our mule. It is quicker, more confident and cheaper to buy it in Holland and as the Christmas winds started to blow a nice window to go east is not expected anymore. So 22th of November to Holland and back with at least 50 kilos on the 28^th of November. But first a lesson at the paddleboard, great fun and good for your body so maybe next year the 50 kilos are already filled in 🙂 .

After 5 weeks we are back in Curacao Marina where we had a very nice time with our family and friends. We want to be as soon as possible in the water again and installing the new manifold is one of the most important things, we can’t go in the water if that is not fixed well.

We only have 5 “holes” in our boat, one for the inlet of all the salt water and 4 outlets, which we cleaned and polished as well. We also polish the propeller and put some lanoline on it, someone told us it will last longer smooth without growing barnacles’ on it, we will see if it helps. And of course our new hatch was installed, finally no wet bed anymore 🙂 .

After five days we are floating again and immediately it is much cooler in the boat. The tanks for gasoline are filled up after we found a new piece of rubber so that we can close the manhole properly. It was a gift of a nice man who first wanted to sell it to us. After we told him the piece we had to buy was too big and therefore too expensive he just gave it to us for nothing with the slogan “if you are doing good, you are getting good back”.  Now, after four years we know how big our tanks are one of 126 liters and one of 218 liters. We only have to add one point to our to do list, the new fitting on the tank where the air is going out has a leakage. Luckily we had to do some motor sailing so there was no pressure anymore. We said goodbye to all our friends in the marina, some we will meet again and others go through the Panama Canal this year so we won’t see them again and went to Klein Curacao for our first stop this season, perfect almost no wind on the head and a calm sea.

We already where there at noon and had a whole day snorkeling and visiting the island. The following morning we woke up suddenly by a shower of rain dripping right in our bed, it appears that the hatch was watertight but the wood surrounding it was not. First job when we arrive in Bonaire but first the catch of the day.

As we were just around the corner of Klein Curacao we did catch a Mahi Mahi of 75 cm and 4 kilo, nice to share with our friends from Wild Bird. Now we are already a week in Bonaire working again, we can sleep in our bed since a few days and went also snorkeling and diving. There is no weather window to go anywhere so we will stay for at least another week here so we can rest a bit and figure out where we should be going to 💨💨⛵⛵ .