Thursday, October 12, 1995 - Venezula, Las Aves

Las Aves (the birds) are aptly named. Yesterday, the cutest little birdie flew on to our boat and hopped around. Today, he returned, and a slightly larger bird came, too. The larger bird walked right across the table while we were eating lunch! Then he made himself at home in a corner of the cockpit. I offered them some water and breadcrumbs, but they weren't interested. Roy put on his warm-water, lycra diving suit and went looking for lobsters but didn't see any. The only fish he saw were too small to eat, so we had canned salmon for supper. Several decades ago, a tanker, a coastal freighter, and a 65-foot schooner went aground on the windward side of the reef. We could see them (we thought) in the distance from the boat. We marveled that the schooner was still upright; we could see her mast perfectly vertical. We were puzzled that we could only see one mast; a schooner should have at least two. Also, the wrecks were in a different order than shown on the chart. We decided to paddle over to them and check them out. As we got closer to the "schooner", the mystery was solved. What we saw wasn't a wrecked schooner at all, but a perfectly intact sloop that some brave soul had brought into the lagoon. The water's plenty deep enough once you get past the coral heads at the entrance. Someone who knows what he's doing and keeps a sharp lookout could easily thread his way into the lagoon, but neither Roy nor I has the slightest desire to try it. We've had enough hair-raising adventures. Now we just want to stay alive and keep Jofian in decent condition until we can sell her. The latter isn't as easy as it sounds; something is always in need of repair or replacement. Now the mizzen mast has cracked open on two sides. It will have to be rebuilt when we get to Trinidad. That will be a long, expensive job. We just hope it doesn't break in two before we get there. When we got out to the sloop, we could see a remnant of a hull on the reef in the distance, so we paddled over to it. It looked the way we would expect a thirty-year-old wreck to look. The masts and rigging were gone. In fact, everything was gone except the battered remains of the hull. A colony of pelicans had set up residence there. We decided the tanker and freighter were too for away, so we returned to the boat. On the way, I went along the coast of the island to the south of Lighthouse Island. It had a bedraggled shack on it, and three recreational fishing boats and two commercial fishing boats were anchored on the other side, but otherwise it was just as desolate as Lighthouse Island.