Dispatches from the Caribbean – Second Leg

(1^st update out of 2)

2/18

My previous communication talked about a long and pleasant night sail from Grenada, the last of the Windward Islands, into Porlamar Harbor on Margarita Island, a jewel flashing deceitfully – as it turned out – on the far northeast finger of Venezuela. That sail involved squeaking dolphins under the keel as I was trying to sleep and stars so packed in the dark sky it was like sailing under a chandelier. It was a time of appreciation: things had gone exceedingly well, my crewmate Bob was a delight to sail with, there had been no major mechanical problems, and we were jumping headlong into a new and exciting country.

Porlamar Harbor appeared over the horizon like a slumbering dinosaur just as dawn broke. Bob and I were tired but proud to have arrived in South America. We rolled into a shallow anchorage just off the island’s capitol, Porlamar, where we unloaded the dinghy, latched on the motor, and took off for the nearby marina. The water was a muddy gray and depths ranged from 12 feet to only a few in front of the dinghy dock. Gentle waves rocked the fifteen or so yachts anchored off. Called Marina Juan for its owner, Juan Somebody, this was a pretty straightforward affair. Along a gentle cove, Juan sported an eighty-foot wooden T-ended dock and an open-air office at its base. Bob and I were to spend a lot of time there over the next week. Juan was a Venezuelan in his 40’s, thin but healthy-looking with intelligent eyes. He spoke at least four languages with mastery and smoked like he was planning on quitting for good his last day. His office had two computers for internet users (where we regularly caught Juan visiting gay porno sites, interestingly), an unused chest freezer, and an extensive used book trading center in both English and Spanish. I quickly helped myself to the 70’s story of honest cop Serpico, “now a major motion picture,” but our first task was to get checked in with the authorities. Unlike the world’s more-organized countries, Venezuelan clearing-in procedures involve sanctioned bribery and a skill set particular to Spanish modalities. For that reason, all private boats arriving in Venezuela hire agents to manage everything for them. Bob and I hired Juan. He took our passports, had us fill out some paperwork, and relieved us of US$50 for the privilege. Bob and I took a cab into town and exchanged money at a local bank. Next to Juan Marina was a delightful little open air restaurant called Jak’s where we were to spend many of our meals as well. We were completely stunned by the prices: 40 cents for a beer, $1.10 for a huge meal of fresh fruit, $2 or so for a fantastic calamari salad dinner. We gorged ourselves regularly, but, of course, I still couldn’t gain weight. Night gradually fell and we wandered back to the sailboat pretty contented with the world, admiring another gorgeous sunset before tying the dinghy off the stern and going to bed.

2/19

The next day Bob and I journeyed into the bustling, crowded town of Porlamar again. This time we were directionless, the best way to seize a new experience, and we had a blast. My goal was to learn enough Spanish to get a laugh from the locals and embarrass Bob. Carrying my little Spanish-English dictionary everywhere, I taught myself enough to describe Bob as “a grumpy old guy” or “a flaming homosexual” and made a fool of myself joking around with sales girls, especially trying to buy sugar-free gum in bulk. I picked up some hiking boots for about US$35 – which would cost at least $100 in the States. We got on the internet for 30 cents per hour (a new low-cost record for the entire trip) and I searched for a handheld GPS online to supplement my MP3 player ordered in The Grenadines. Bob was calling me “High Tech Ward.” A friend was going to bring all these items when she joined the crew at the end of the month. The only bad news of the day so far was that John – an experienced sailor and good friend from earlier in the trip – would be unable to join me for the 700 mile Jamaica leg the following month. He had to take his captaincy exam that same week and couldn’t get out of it. Oh well, I would figure something out. We dined at a little lunch place where the owner, a woman of utmost patience with my feeble Spanish, taught us about local foods, which I later ravished as Bob looked on with disinterest. The taxi back to Marina Juan was only a few dollars in Bolivars, named for the great South American liberator whose visage graces all the currency. For dinner, back on the boat, Bob cooked up his usual delicacy, roasted garlic and onion mixed with sliced carrots, supplemented with pasta sauce. We listened to CDs that I’d bought that day. Bob’s favorite was a mix titled Sexy Love and he hummed along while flopping around the galley mischievously. Afterwards, halfway through our meal in the cockpit, he jumped to his feet and said “My god, the dinghy is gone.”

There’s a story behind that dinghy. I bought it in Connecticut from it’s first owner for $1,000 cash just before I left. It could be taken apart and rolled up into a bundle the size of a land turtle and about as heavy, but I hauled it all the way to the Caribbean anyway, even though it meant bribing an airport worker a hundred bucks to slip it past the weight rule coming in. The engine originally planned for it’s stern mount died a horrible splashing death twice, first on our failed first attempt at St. Martin and secondly while trying to free the Liana-Jane from a mud bottom once there. My dad gave it to a kindly fisherman on one of the Windward Islands after I bought a new 5 horsepower Yamaha straight from the dealers early on in the trip. All told, it’s value was a good $2,000.

Bob and I were stunned to find it no longer attached to our stern.

We were fools, of course, not to have taken precautions. Experienced sailors either bring their dinghies up on deck at night (using the spare halyard), remove and lock the engines separately, or at least haul the dinghy halfway out of the water at night to make it harder to steal. Like idiots, we left it tied happily to the taffrail while we cooked dinner, thinking that no one is brave enough to steal a dinghy with the owners wide awake just a few feet away. I did several things quickly: attempted to reach the local authorities on the VHF (absolutely no one answered despite a huge variety of attempts to reach anyone at all), did a quick visual search, looked up useful resources in the area in our guidebook, and developed a plan for the next day. I fired up my computer to get the dinghy’s ID number from the original bill of sale and see if I had the new motor’s number as well. To my utter amazement, my laptop screen flickered eerily a few times and then died. I remembered my friend Laurie’s comment from a long time ago that bad news comes in threes. It was true: No crew for the Jamaica run, stolen dinghy, and now a broken laptop. Darn. I’ve often found her to be right about things.

2/20

We awoke early to notify the local marine net that a significant theft had occurred. One listener took his own dinghy and searched down the entire beach line, a good mile. He was from the yacht The Full Monty, aptly named. At about 9 AM a husband and wife crew gave us a ride in to Marina Juan, but not after we double-locked the sailboat and secreted our valuables into cubbyholes and whatnot. Juan took the situation over, as is often a marina’s role in such a situation, and arranged for a knowledgeable taxi driver – a former policeman himself named Jesus – to take us to various spots around the city. Juan said there was a very busy dinghy thief named “The Silent One” who sneaks up and gets away quickly. According to Juan, one sailor spent the night in his cockpit with a shotgun and “The Silent One” still made away with his dinghy. Whether that’s true or not I still wonder. There had been another thief earlier that week. Bob and I were the talk of the marina, however, and sailors regaled us with stories about numerous other dinghies being stolen all along the Venezuelan coast. If only we’d known!

The next few days were mostly about dealing with the dinghy problem. Jesus took Bob and I on an extensive trip down the coast. According to both he and Juan, thieves would steal the motor but leave the dinghy adrift where it would settle on one of the sand beaches that stretch for miles to the west, or would be picked up by a local fisherman interested in a reward. We spread the word, offered cash with no questions asked, and felt we were pretty close at one spot known for its dangerous gangs. Even Jesus was nervous asking around there, taking us away after only a few minutes despite my protestations. I still wonder, now, whether the real culprit was another sailor, as one man suggested, since – to this day – there’s never been word about that dinghy or its engine. One high point was a good couple of hours spent in the National Guard armory, a pleasant-enough place that reminded me of my own army reserve duty. The sergeants and officers got a kick out of my military ID and we practiced the various Spanish names for rank while waiting to fill out paperwork about the stolen dinghy. The attendant officer’s list of stolen dinghies, I noticed, was rather extensive. Another trip put us in the raw, teeming Porlamar fish market, with octopus and huge dorado fish for sale, gulls shrieking overhead, little kids running around with no shoes carrying smelly loads of whatnot. Over time, Bob and I learned how to navigate around the city, track down the cheapest internet cafes, and find goodies to eat. I had no luck getting my laptop fixed. It needed to return home to Dell’s offices in Texas. Argh.

I spent a lot of time searching for a new engine and a new dinghy, ultimately settling on purchase from a rough-hewed former navy helicopter pilot named Don. He gave Bob and I all the wrong vibes but had the best prices. Another theory is that Don bought stolen engines and sold them to unsuspecting sailors, but I doubt it. His heated words about America’s inconsistent foreign policies and the numerous vagaries of Venezuela drifted through Jak’s restaurant on a daily basis, as apparently he’d been married to Jak for about ten years. They were not a loving couple. Don’s best feature was his old Avon dinghy, followed by his ability to get brand new Yamaha engines for less than the dealership’s price, and $1,500 ultimately changed hands.

Meanwhile, Bob found himself inspired by the many half-floating hulks that peppered the shores around Porlamar. One of them, an eighty-foot megayacht sailboat probably worth $10 million at its outfitting, lay on its side in four feet of water. Bob estimated that the rigging alone would net twenty thousand but its value now couldn’t exceed $100,000. Those few days seemed rife with talk of money and loss, ironically. Bob decided to write an article for the sailing magazines on the “harbor of broken dreams.” Little did we know how broken the dreams were: As Bob and I accessed our ATM accounts around the city, somehow someone got hold of our passcodes and was beginning a steady drain out through various Venezuelan banks. All this we would discover in the weeks ahead, however. Venezuela is not on my list of favorite world countries.

Once outfitted with Don’s equipment, Bob and I prepared to leave Isla Margarita behind us and continue westward along the Venezuelan Antilles. These islands, anywhere from 30 to 90 miles apart, would take us across to Bonaire. They were mostly dry, desert isles known for fishing and some staggered tourism. We took a bit of time to send out postcards and prepare to meet our newest crewmember, the mysterious Idris, an American backpacker I’d communicated with only briefly on the internet. I didn’t even know his last name or much else, except that he’d been traveling in Central and South America for much of the last year. Well, journeys are sometimes about risk taking, right? The complicated part was the Idris was supposed to have met us on Margarita Island, but Bob and I were moving ahead of schedule in order to make Bonaire by the 26^th, when Bob’s girlfriend Jamie was flying down. We made tentative plans to meet Idris at the Los Roques island group, a good 150 miles away. With that in place, however tentatively, and the new dinghy loaded up on the Liana-Jane’s deck, we set off for a harbor on the southwest coast.

It was a beautiful run downwind away from Porlamar. The deserts swept by to our starboard. With only the jib up, were teased out a new speed record of 9.3 knots in 25 to 30 knots of wind that barely seemed to be happening. That’s the beauty of downwind runs, I suppose; you’re hardly aware of the awesome force circling around the boat throwing you along with it. Unfortunately, such strength has its costs. As we hurtled around the southwest corner we realized that our planned anchorage was a good mile up to the northwest, almost dead into the wind. We tacked twice trying to get to it, but the wind set us further back. Bob and I discussed our options: we could eventually get there, beating into the shore with the motor going full bore, but why? It wouldn’t be impossible to change our plans entirely and set off on another night sail to the west. I did some calculations on the chart, plugged La Tortuga’s coordinates into the GPS, and figured that we could make it in about 10 hours, especially if we stayed south of a few shallow points and didn’t get too knocked around by the rollers. With that decided, we tucked ourselves in and set watches as the sun squeezed itself dark once more and settled into the sea just off the bow’s port quarter.

2/22

It was a rough night. The surging water welled up and rolled under us without break, lifting the boat forward. This left us surfing down the front, then we’d slam into the next wave in front of that, twisting to our starboard side to catch the wind and repeat the process again. It was too wavy for the autopilot. Bob seemed to love handling the wheel in weather like this and I gradually got used to it, testing different ways to sit comfortably and thinking about my life. The stars bristled far above us. Phosphorescence streamed out behind us, swirled up by the keel and rudder, the poor little plankton glowing with confusion. Our track into the darkness left a “snake wake,” as Bob put it, twisting back behind us and fading into the night. If I sat down, my butt cheeks would get stretched and squished, so standing up became a more comfortable ride. Then, however, it was a question of balance, teetering back and forth with the rolling of the boat, gripping with one hand on the taffrail (the stern railing) and the other on the wheel. I felt like a crazed New York City cab driver, or my dad when he drives. Sometimes a wave crest would flip harmlessly over the bow or into the cockpit as we traversed about 30 degrees to the wave. It was windy and, for that reason, increasingly cold. I wore five layers while on deck: a t-shirt, a silk turtleneck, a sweater, my rain jacket, and my harness with PFD (personal flotation device) and tether attached to the taffrail. I felt warm and safe. The moon emerged like a lump of white gym socks, lifted up overhead, and set on the northern horizon just before dawn. Dolphins snuffed and blew little air gusts all around us through much of the night. They kept setting off our depth alarm until I took a second to disable it. Their sleek bodies made rocket streaks of glowing phosphorescence under the water. I imagined the little mischief-makers hearing the beep-beep whenever they passed under the boat, right within their hearing range. It was B. F. Skinner in the flesh, their reward a satisfying and probably interesting noise. During one of my attempts to sleep, when I lay my head down on the pillow, I could hear their determined little squeaks and whistles just below us, like miniature trumpets calling out positions and sharing thoughts. One was right below my bunk for some time, probably playing in the keel’s wake, and for a time he kept me awake – but with a smile on my face. Bob and I managed our two hour shifts with solid regularity, sleeping fitfully when off-watch. By the time the sun came up – I think I was on watch for that – we were ready to get some shut eye. That was a night sail, and it turned out we were starting to make them a habit.

The island of La Tortuga, or The Turtle, came into view right as the GPS and our careful hourly plotting had predicted. It was an empty desert island used mostly by fishermen as a seasonal base, although perhaps there were a few houses here and there. The land was flat and featureless, hardly a harbor or place to nestle. Bob and I leafed through our guide book as we rubbed our eyes and, with some discussion, headed for a tiny curved island just off the northwest coast called La Tortugillas, or The Little Turtle. Flying downwind then tacking onto our starboard beam on a direct course landed us in the most amazing anchorage of the entire trip so far.

The Little Turtle was a sandy crescent perfectly blocking the easterly winds and the northerly swells. There were only two other sailboats in the large, deep blue, warm water bay, the sun beating down relentlessly. The sky was cloudless. Like a shelf stretching southward, the bay’s bottom sloped up gently enough for Bob and I to drop anchor in just 5 feet of water, then drift back with the gentle current, perfect holding ground. The anchor bit off a big chunk of sand and lay still. I explored the land later after swimming in – we never bothered to take down the dinghy and new motor – and found the exact spot on a wave-tossed spit of land where the windward and the leeward forces met. A clucking gang of pelicans waited to stop picking through the sand until I was practically upon them. Someone had set up the frame for a tent just up from there but the wind had torn most everything apart. I sat on a little dune overlooking the windward side grasping one of the fallen tent poles in case of trouble from a fisherman. They just ignored me, though, and filled barrels with skinned fish in their cobbled-together working area, canvas and plastic flapping in the wind. For an hour I watched the waves roll in pounding the shore before me. A tiny crab inched out of a hole in the sand, eyed me for what seemed like forever, grabbed a hunk of seaweed and disappeared back underneath. Frigate birds rolled in the swells just offshore. Our only interaction with another person was just as we settled in to get some sleep. Four obviously drunk fishermen motored up in their launch, probably from one of the little fishing camps further down the beach, and demanded cigarettes. Ignoring them in the cabin below didn’t work. Bob and I made ready with our mace and I had tentative plans for the flare gun – we were still burned from our Margarita Island experience – but they grunted unhappily and motored off.

Rested up and getting used to a nocturnal schedule, Bob and I set off on our next night sail that evening to Islas Los Roques to, hopefully, pick up Idris. This would be my fourth night sail of the trip and the third in less than two weeks.

2/24

The night sail, as it turned out, was uneventful. Most interesting was the gorgeous sunset as we settled into a groove heading west. I enjoyed it so much that, with the boat on autopilot in the low winds and steady smaller waves, I let Bob continue sleeping and overstayed my four-hour watch. As usual, I took half a dozen photos, the eternal sunset addict. Bob didn’t seem to mind sleeping in a bit. For several hours, a white bird soared over the stern of the boat, sweeping down occasionally and peeking under the bimini top at me. When Bob and I switched places, the bird had landed right next to the companionway on the mainsail line breaks. It was a total surprise as I stepped down into the main cabin, the little guy panting while he rested, clinging determinedly to the gently-rocking boat. I showed Bob, who kept a close eye on him during his watch afterwards. Unfortunately, Bob took hold of the wheel to move more efficiently through the water (something he was always very good at) and dunked the bow a couple of times sending water right over the poor little bird. According to Bob, it survived the first splash, shaking its head and glaring at him, but not the second. That was it for our third crew member – such a short stay on the Liana-Jane.

Around 5 AM a school of flying fish fluttered about, smacking into the hull from the starboard side and sending one of them into the cockpit. I happened to be poking my head up to check on Bob from below at that exact moment. We were all taken by surprise: Bob, me, and the shocked fish. I watched as it flopped around on the fiberglass as Bob reached down to catch it and send it back over the side. This took some time, apparently, and I got bored and went back to sleep. It wasn’t a good night for marine life.

I was back on the helm as we approached Los Roques from the east. The sun rose majestically, disappeared immediately into some clouds, then re-emerged freshly rinsed for the day. Grand Roques was the only sight visible at first. The islands are really a huge circle surrounding a shallow collection of uncharted reefs and coral heads that cover many square miles of prime swimming, snorkeling, and diving. Grand Roques, the one different one, was a tall lip of rock, and the central landing and take off zone for the tourists, of which there were quite a few. We fought the wind, tacking to port and starboard several times, finally motoring the last half mile into the little fishing bay on the northern side. I’ve never seen so many gulls and pelicans at once. They were plunging raindrops and we were winter in Seattle. Fishermen tossed fish guts overboard and into the air creating chaotic frenzy among the pelican swarms. One barely-floating catamaran played host to several hundred at once, its hulls stained white with their droppings. Bob and I tossed the anchor and had the dinghy rigged for travel into shore by 10 AM. Our quest was simple: find the mysterious Idris, scoop him up without contacting any of the authorities (we had officially checked out of Venezuela and weren’t supposed to go there), and get him to Bonaire on another lengthy night sail. That would put us into Bonaire just in time for Bob to meet his girlfriend at the airport. Bob was worried that Idris would be incapacitated with seasickness on the night sail, however. I was worried we’d never find him, the poor guy would be trapped in Venezuela for the rest of his life, and I’d be stuck without crew again in the ABC Islands.

Grand Roques itself was a tiny village with four or five major streets made entirely of packed sand. There were no cars on the island, save for a truck brought in, apparently, to pick up garbage. Every other building was a bed and breakfast, or posada in Spanish. The tiny little airport – no receiving area, just two shacks where tourists would check in – would fill with local guys and their hand carts to make a few bucks carrying dive equipment. Most tourists were the middle income and wealthy from Caracas, visiting for just the day or overnight. Most would shuffle straight to a dive boat on the dock adjoining the little airport, if you could even call it that. Bob and I looked around for Idris. All we knew is that he was of Indian descent. Bob made jokes about curry and we both shouted his name as we wandered around little corners and smiled at the locals. Anyone who looked Indian brought forth shouts of “Idris” as we pretended to address someone else nearby. There was no internet access but I called my parents and asked them to check my e-mail; it turns out that Idris had written and was staying in a little Venezuelan posada in town! We shot down there excitedly but he was out. With our best feeble Spanish, we made sure he was still checked in and left a silly note, then found a little outdoor restaurant by the dinghy dock and waited for him. An hour later he walked by, “Are one of you guys named Ward?” Bob and I were delighted – Idris made it! There was some hope.

Tall and bald, Idris could pass for a native in any Latin American nation and most of India, with his dark skin and Hindu features. He’s 24 years old. He comes across as a true man of the world, educated at Northwestern and a native of Chicago, quick of wit, thoughtful in his interactions, and generous. Apparently he left his programming job at a dot.com in San Francisco to spend a year in Central and South America. First he studied the language for six weeks in Ecuador, then he zipped up and down Central America by bus, learned to scuba dive, worked in a rainforest reserve, volunteered as an English instructor, tried to work with kids and prison inmates at various times. He’s been a busy bumble bee. I can only imagine the stories he’ll be telling grandchildren some day. Who knows what he’ll think of sailing, I wondered.

The three of us ate lunch with an Englishman from New York, an architect with a good attitude toward traveling regularly, then pooled our money and bought some groceries with all the Bolivars we had left. Simon Bolivar’s face would pass inexorably into the past soon enough. Idris had been mugged the day before in Caracas. Climbing into a taxi, two guys put a gun to his head and made him provide his ATM access code. They were “revolutionaries,” apparently, with purer socialist motives, despite what Idris may have thought at the time. And Bob and I thought we had a hard time in Venezuela losing our dinghy. Idris almost lost his young life. That same day, bombs rocked Caracas, damaging two embassies. We weren’t sorry to leave Venezuela behind for the relative prosperity and safety of the last three Dutch Antilles.

We settled him onto the Liana-Jane in the big main cabin double bunk, his backpack tucked away in the cockpit locker, then started him on the drugs. Bob helped him stick a seasickness patch behind his ear. Two hours later, when the effect should have kicked in a bit, I also gave him two seasickness pills, just to make sure, and we finally raised anchor and headed for Bonaire, 90 miles to the west.

The night crept up more slowly than usual. The winds were light and the sea moderate, with only gentle swells of four or five feet. A few fishing boats milled around with their lights clearly marked. Our new crew was lucky. Idris was talkative and excited about being on a sailboat for the first time in his life. Eager to learn, I walked him through basic line management and control of the sail while Bob manned the helm, as usual. Right as we pulled up the jib it collapsed off its track – Bob and I both forgot to cinch the jib halyard tight, apparently. We turned her into the wind and I wiggled things around until it was re-tracked. No big deal. It was my fifth night sail, I thought, and by midnight a flying fish had landed in my lap. I spoke gently to it, said that this time I’d get it back overboard a bit faster than Bob’s job last time. I hope it’s out there somewhere now zipping from wave crest to wave crest. The drugs kicked in and Idris zonked out on the cabin bunk. Bonaire bobbed somewhere in the distance, over the horizon where the sun had fallen only hours before; everyone was excited for the next chapter.

And so ended the Liana-Jane’s experience with Venezuela.