Part 3 of 3

Part 3 of 3

/ / / July 23, 2017 0820 12°04.4 N 66°39.5 W 7 nm north of Los Roques! Led Zeppelin playing The islands are taller than I expected, looks like 300 to 500 foot cliffs. I can see the lighthouse on the north eastern island's hill top and two very tall radio towers. It looks like rough terrain, scraggy vegetation maybe. [Later the cliff I thought was 500 feet, was 380 feet tall.] The last 24 hours have been dream sailing. First we had The Great Big Green Puff Machine up for 8 hours powering us along sometimes up to 9 kts. When a bit of dark clouds came along in the afternoon with gusts to 20 kts, we took down the Puff Machine, and motor sailed a bit windward for about an hour until the wind shifted back again to a close reach. Then full genoa and we have been doing 7 to 9 kts on full canvas ever since – over 28 hours without a sail change! We dropped anchor at 0930 off of Gran Roque, right behind our friends on Irie Rose who left 12 hours earlier than us and 50 nm closer from Nevis over our St. Martin. The Guardia Costa could not be more friendly to us on a Sunday morning. All of the staff greeted us with warm handshakes including a most casually dressed tall guy I knew at once was the boss. The next day I saw him in his formal navy dress whites after he finished giving a speech about Bolivar's birthday. Despite being Americans and all the animosity the USA has shown towards Venezuela, and legally we should not even be here, they made some creative uses of stamps and between the Coast Guard and the head of Immigration made sure we were welcome for the two weeks we wanted to spend in Los Roques, The town itself is paved in powder white soft sand and it seems that shoes or flip flops are in the minority. The buildings are for the most part simply built homes and shops out of cinder block and a kind of corrugated block made from bricks. Dispersed through the town there are dozens of truly fabulous bed and breakfasts called posada that have architecture and interior design that would challenge the very best that the hipsters of Los Angeles or Austin could produce. Polished concrete floors with embedded rough hewn expansion joints, ceiling timbers recovered from timbers that drifted across the Atlantic and Caribbean. Old maps, whale bones, Edison lamps, airy courtyards, espresso machines, pocket gardens and hidden retreats tucked here and there. Changing money at la farmacia was an absolute blast with 7000 Bolivars to the dollar, the locals use visiting yachts that need to pay official fees to dump the smallest notes. The park fee for two weeks was 645,000 Bolivars and so we had a shopping bag full of 100 Bolivar notes counted out on a machine and wrapped in 20,000 BS bundles. We totally felt like we were pirates of some ill repute. There are no cars on Gran Roque, and why would you need it? The town is about a kilometer by a half a kilometer. There are these giant 1.5 meter tall super sized red wagons that hotel staff use to load up supplies and luggage and simply pull around town. There is a decent sized Super Mercado with plenty of the basic staples – all the dry good you would want, plenty of eggs, onions, potatoes, limes and cabbages and an assortment of other greens. Every Thursday a supply ship comes in and apparently sells out of the good stuff in a day. The prices are super low, a bottle of Heinz Ketchup sells for $0.30. In a beach front bar, two cold local beers sold for $0.80. Somehow this town also supports about a half a dozen corner markets despite the short walking distances. Later we would eat at two different local restaurants and both had amazing food. Octopus and fish ceviche, shrimp curry on rice, seared tuna, massive fired white fish sandwich – take your pick these entrees varied from $3 to 5! And all of them were delicious unlike so many Caribbean restaurants that mail it in. On both boats there were claims of I could retire here forever pronounced every hour. Truly shocking how nice everyone is – the officials, the locals, the well-off posada owners, the rich Venezuelan tourists flying in on private plane from the mainland. Also it was so much fun dusting off my high-school Spanish. The locals always were happy to work with my broken Spanish and they had plenty of patience with me (cough, cough – French). When it was important to get something legal understood with precision they took me to back rooms and popped open a browser with Google translate and sat me comfortably next to them. Now think of what would the CBP or TSA do?

Originally posted on Facebook on July 25, 2017.