Friday, August 11, 1995 - On way Curaco

We were just getting ready to leave the boat when a man yelled to us from the end of the dock. He said he was from Customs and wanted to talk to the captain, so Roy paddled ashore. It turned out they couldn't find any record of Jofian in the computer. I showed him our papers. He drove us to his office in the refinery and made copies of our papers. Then he drove us downtown! We bought some groceries, ate lunch at Burger King, bought a bottle of cough syrup, and bought some more cleaner for the cooling system. We started walking back, thinking we'd have to walk the entire way, but when we were about a third of the way there, two U.S. women in a jeep offered us a ride, which we accepted with alacrity. Back at Rodgers Beach, I wandered around while Roy put the stuff in the engine. For the first time in all the weeks we've been here, I was able to see Venezuela! It wasn't a cloud or my imagination; it was a real mountain in Venezuela. I could see some low land just to the west of it, too. Swam out to the boat and told Roy. He saw it, too. Left for Cura‡ao around 3:30 in the afternoon. We didn't get the northeast wind we'd been promised, but the breeze was light, the sea fairly flat, and a bright full moon illuminated the world, so we enjoyed an easy, pleasant motorsail to Cura‡ao.