Martinique to St. Lucia to Bonaire

About a week ago (to be honest its more like two weeks now) we finally made it to Bonaire.

Before that, because of Hurricane Beryl threatening Martinique we decided to get south to St. Lucia instead of heading to Bonaire directly as we had planned before. We made friends with Marc and Lars of SV Largio, two German barkeepers who knew some funny drink recipes.

We had a nice daysail from Le Marin, Martinique to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia and went to the Marina to be in a safe spot in case the storm would choose a path more southerly than predicted. In the end, everything worked out fine and the storm system collapsed before hitting the caribbean islands, so we had a barbecue on the pontoon on the day the storm should have arrived. Some days later we sailed further south to Marigot, where we stayed for a week because I had some work to finish for a client in Berlin.

We also took a bus to Castries to visit the St. Lucia carnival acitivities. We had a nice day but the festivities ended sooner than we expected. From Marigot, we went further south to get a short glimpse at the famous Pitons and then went offshore for the first time since our atlantic crossing to head over to Bonaire.

Sailing to Bonaire took us about 70 hours which is quite fast for a 455nm leg. On the first day, conditions were very rolly, but later they got more settled so we got back into this nice easy downwind sailing mode that I missed so much since crossing the Atlantic ocean. To me, it always feels like beeing in a night train. The boat is moving fast towards the destination, but because of the light apparent wind and the easygoing waves it feels like not much is happening. Very effortless sailing.

I nearly catched a perfectly-sized Mahi Mahi for a single fish eater (probably about 5lbs) but unfortunately lost it before I was able to board it. Hopefully there is more luck on the next passage.

Upon arrival in Bonaire we went to the Marina for three days and then went out to the mooring field in front of Kralendijk. Anchoring is forbidden on the whole island due to being a marine protected area. I didn’t like this fact before arriving but after seeing the water quality and the sea life it makes a lot of sense to me.

We have explored the island a lot in the last days, we rented a scooter and drove around the whole island, and the following day we rented bikes to explore some areas that weren’t accessible by scooter.

Snorkeling is just great on Bonaire, unforunately our underwater cameras are not exactly the best, the Gopro just died due to salt water ingress and the other waterproof camera we have is only producing mediocre image quality. We do enjoy the snorkeling anyways, in addition to the normal reef fish we saw a stingray and a turtle in the last days.

So that’s where we are right now, plans for the near future are to do a short daysail to Curacao in the next days and then head on to Colombia. We’re thinking about maybe leaving the boat in Cartagena for an inland trip to Medellin or Bogota, but we haven’t made up detailed plans for that right now.