We left Grenada at 2pm, with 5 of us on board. Los Roques was 280 miles away, which would be just under 48 hours if we averaged 6 knots. We estimated we should average more than that due to current and downwind, so didn’t want to leave too early as we needed to arrive in daylight.
The trade winds are predominantly from the east. We were finally going to be heading downwind (west) after the last few years of up and down the Eastern Caribbean islands. It was exciting as this was a new area and new islands for us.
We had to motor a lot of the first day and night as the winds had died down – at least our batteries were getting a good charge! By 4pm we started the watch system – Steve and Jimmy 4-8pm, Cathy and I 8-12pm, Steve and Jimmy back up for the “graveyard shift” 12-4am and Cathy and I back on for the nice sunrise watch 4-8am. During the day we switched to single person 2 hour watches.
We were sailing about 90 miles north of the Venezuelan coastline. We were a little nervous with all the reports of piracy off the Venezuelan coastline (although much closer to mainland than we were sailing). We had a constant watch on the radar to keep track of any boats within 24 miles, to ensure that they didn’t head for us!
In one instance there was a boat asking for fuel on the VHF radio – the first boat ahead of us passed him and we decided to head off in the other direction – afraid it might have been a set up – especially as we could see him “drifting” at the same 9 knots we were doing! However, 6 hours later we still heard him talking to someone on the VHF radio saying he was drifting to La Blanquilla, continually reporting his position.
At night, to be less visible to pirates, we decided to go “dark” (ie no running lights and no interior lights) although this was probably not necessary. There was very little other traffic, a full moon and we kept a sharp watch on the radar.
The offshore islands of Venezuela are very dry, low-lying islands. After the torrential rain of Grenada, we were now finally drying out the boat and didn’t see another drop of rain.
By 9am on Tuesday we were able to turn off the engines and get the spinnaker up! The first time we had flown it for about 3 years!! Spinnakers are great for downwind sailing.
We had a champagne mimosa toast on the trampoline to celebrate getting the spinnaker flying.
It was a pleasant downwind sail. The seas were very calm – we even got to hang out on the trampoline with the autopilot doing all the work! The spinnaker provided a good pink sunshade!
Getting close to Los Roques we suddenly found that our course was plotted through a restricted area – sack the navigator! We arrived at the southeastern end of Los Roques at 10am perfect timing (reinstate the navigator!). This gave us a great light and time to work our way through the reefs.
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