Got up at quarter to five and left at twenty to six. The people next to us took their boat out, so we had plenty of room. There was no wind at all, so it was a cinch to leave. Within half an hour, the sun came up.
We couldn't have asked for a nicer day. We made close to six knots all the way to Las Aves. Usually, we'd have been fighting a 15 knot headwind, but there was scarcely any breeze at all today. There were some swells coming in from the northeast, but nothing Jofian couldn't take in stride. We reached the westernmost of the Aves at 2:40 and dropped anchor in sixteen feet of water. The water is so clear that we can look down and see the anchor lying on the bottom.
The Aves (birds) consist of two groups: Sotavento and Barlovento. Each group has a number of sandpiles poking up out of the water, connected by miles of reefs, and numerous coral heads. Guess you'd call them atolls. The only vegetation is the kind you usually find at any beach plus an occasional rare palm tree.
The place looks totally uninhabited, yet we hadn't been here ten minutes until a panga arrived with two local fishermen. They held up two large fish and offered to sell them for six dollars. That was more fish than we could eat, so we offered three dollars for one. They seemed to agree to that. When we dug out our dollars, we found we had a five and two ones. The fishermen didn't have change for a five, so we offered the two ones for the smaller of the two fish. Then, to our surprise, one of the fishermen asked for twenty dollars! We couldn't figure that one out. Even though my Spanish is terribly rusty, I can certainly hear the difference between "seis" or "tres" and "veinte". They don't sound the least bit alike. Anyway, that ended the fish deal. I said, "Demasiado" (too much), and they left.
The Aves belong to Venezuela. No more Papiamento or Dutch. I have to learn Spanish all over again. We're in Venezuela!
There are four other sailboats anchored here. We're directly in front of Lighthouse Island. The lighthouse is actually a metal structure with a solar-powered light on top of it. It works.
The day was still sunny, calm, and beautiful. Roy dove on the perry-nut zinc and saw that it was completely gone (electrolysis eats up the zincs), so he replaced it. He had had the foresight to buy half a dozen zincs when we were in Florida.
I paddled to the backside of Lighthouse Island, and Roy paddled to the front, where there were some people who spoke Norwegian, so the conversation was rather limited. I swam and snorkeled for a while. Saw some beautiful purple fish by a coral head. Roy paddled to another nearby island and then swam all the way to the boat, pulling his Royak! It must have been at least a mile.
Glory be, there are no mosquitoes or no-seeums here! What a relief! We were able to sit out on the deck in the evening and enjoy. The air was surprisingly cool. The eastern sky was filled with huge black clouds. Lightning kept flashing in back of them, outlining them starkly. About eleven o'clock, the storm reached us. The rain poured down and the wind howled. Roy closed the hatches and put up the side curtains. I closed the portholes. We were sure lucky to have gotten here and snugly anchored before the storm hit. If it had hit while we were en route, we might have blown all the way back to Bonaire.
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