Many people have asked us why they should buy our book if they can read our blog for free. Just like Part 1, the book is very different from the blog. Here are a few of the differences between the two:

• Prologue: Picks up where the Prologue of Part 1 left off. It focuses primarily on the research we did as we planned for our journey and addresses the majority of the questions we were most frequently asked.
• Several new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
• Many details have been added that were best left undisclosed while we were still on the journey (sometimes we didn’t want our parents worrying about us; sometimes we didn’t want to incriminate ourselves!)
• In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
• Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
• Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
• Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
• All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

People have also asked us why we broke the series up into four books instead of only three. We had very different experiences in each of the four world regions, so it was best for each region to have its own volume.

• In the South Pacific, Part 1, we spent most of our time in sparsely populated areas communing with nature. And we did a lot of rough sea time, learning about boating the hard way.
•  In Asia, Part 2, we were mostly in densely populated areas building cultural bridges. Our sea experiences were also different from the Pacific, with both our best and worst passages occurring in this region.

• Prologue: How we formed the dream and the early planning stages.
• The entire 21 day passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva has been re-written. At that point, the blog was in real time and we didn’t want people to worry about us. But the truth was that it was tough!
• Many new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
• In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
• Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, and the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
• Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
• Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
• All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

In the afternoon, we went on one last dive with Mike from Arielle. We went to the wreck that the dive center had recommended yesterday, Hilma Hooker. The rumor that we heard is that the boat had to make an emergency stop in Bonaire because it was taking on water. The authorities found lots of marijuana on board, so the Bonairian authorities seized the vessel. It was in bad shape and needed to be constantly pumped to keep it afloat. The authorities decided the best thing to do with the boat was tow it to a sandy site and let it sink, making an artificial reef. The facts that we know are it was deliberately sunk in 1984 on a carefully chosen sandy spot located between two reefs. The boat lies on its side. The highest point of the ship is 60 feet under the water and the lowest point, the tip of the mast is in 99 feet of water.

The site is close to the salt mountains. We tied to the mooring and jumped in. The reef around the mooring area is pretty, but we didn’t bother to stop and look around. Because this is such a deep dive, the plan was to descend quickly to the lowest point of the wreck, then slowly work our way back up. We’d enjoy the reef here at the end of the dive.

We all agreed that as we proceeded west it looked like the water ahead was murky with poor visibility. Each of us was wondering when this wreck would appear. Then it suddenly dawned on us that the dark area ahead WAS the hull, and in looking more carefully, we could see the line of the hull. We were staring at the bottom of the boat. Mike and Eric stuck to the plan, staying close to the floor. Christi was having trouble equalizing and was swimming along above them. She did eventually make it down to the hull, but never got down to the lowest portions of it.

We swam around the aft end of the boat to get a look at the topside. It looks creepy and haunted in the darkish water, as most sunken ships tend to look. The hull is still pretty well intact.

The guys swam down to the mast and crow’s nest to check them out, but Christi couldn’t get down that low. The guys ascended to the hull and we all slowly swam around to the forward end of the ship, checking out both the boat and the growth on the boat. There is quite a bit of coral and sponge growth in spots, particularly the mast, crow’s nest, and portions of the upper deck, but it isn’t very big. The deck had a lot of the pipe cleaner looking coral growing on it. Coral sure grows slow! Other spots have no growth, particularly around the bottom. How is it possible that this bottom has less growth on it than Kosmos’ bottom?

Apparently you can go inside it, but we didn’t see the opening to get in. We had no intentions of going in, anyway. Eric doesn’t like dark, enclosed spaces deep in the water where scary and hungry sea monsters might be lurking. We tried to peek into the portholes to get a look inside, but it was dark and we couldn’t see much.

Most of the fish are small, either babies or small fish in general. “Bigger” fish were species like snapper. We did see a big school of snapper and grunt swimming around. And there is an enormous tarpon that lives on the topside of the boat.

After we had circled the boat, we headed back to the reef where we are moored and spent a good amount of time there. There are a lot of large soft corals and many fish to look at, but here again it was mostly small stuff and babies. There are definitely a lot less fish here than any of the other sites we have been to in Bonaire. Here are some shots of a few other fish we saw in the reef. The first two are different species of parrotfish. We’re not sure what the first one is called. The second one is a female princess parrotfish.

The next picture is of a yellowtail damselfish, which might be the same species we have called “jewelfish” in other posts. While it looks similar to the ones we have seen in the past, this one is a little different. The other ones were dark blue instead of brown in body color and bigger in size. Whether the same or not, we haven’t seen many of the sparkly beauties in Bonaire.

This one is called a bluehead wrasse. It is a pretty small fish and we have seen several of them on our dives in Bonaire.

Here is a barracuda.

There were also surgeon fish, blue tang, butterfly fish, damselfish, other kinds of wrasse and much more. In the corals we saw several flamingo tongues, the only time we have seen flamingo tongues in Bonaire. We also saw a chocolate chip sea cucumber, a species we have never seen anywhere before. Here it is, along with a soft coral plant.

After the dive was done, we all agreed we were a little disappointed with it. We had heard rave reviews about the wreck so we had very high expectations set. We have all done better wreck dives in other parts of the world, and we were all expecting more coral, more fish and a more interesting boat.

We headed back to Kosmos. Christi decided to work on the underwater metal parts for a while. She was surprised to see that many little sea creatures had taken up residence in our keel coolers! There were lots of little baby fish, including tang, squirrel fish, file fish, and blennys. They were so cute! There were also a couple of banded cleaner shrimp and some crabs living in there. The shrimp are red and white striped and are really neat looking. There was a cleaner wrasse on hull, which is a small species of fish. She felt really bad about destroying their ecosystem. They looked so happy. They moved out of her way as she worked, but they never ran off, loitering nearby as she scraped away all their food. Unfortunately, in this photo you can’t see the fish very well, but we are putting it in for two reasons. First, so you can see what the keel coolers look like and get a better sense of how small the fish, shrimp and crabs have to be to live between the metal grates. Second, someone requested that we put in a picture of the keel coolers so people can get a better idea of what kind of labor is involved in scraping them. So, even though you can’t see the fish, we think the picture is worthwhile.

That night one of the other boats invited us over for a small get together. Our neighbors on Nereia were there and they told us a hilarious story. Ever since Australia, it has been our practice to always leave our red LED courtesy lights on when we anchor/moor. It makes a faint red glow around the boat that makes us much more visible in the dark. We think it is good for safety and it certainly makes it much easier to pick out which boat is Kosmos as we motor around the anchorage on pitch black nights. Anyway, one of the crew of Nereia woke up the other one up in the middle of the night saying that the sun was rising early and it was the most beautiful sunrise he had ever seen. The other crew member peeked out the window and said “That’s not the sun rising! That’s Kosmos’ lights!”

From the way we have raved about the diving, you may think it is the best in the world. We have been to many better spots throughout the South Pacific and Indonesia. But, nonetheless, the diving is still great, and it is definitely the best we have seen in the Caribbean. There are three huge draw to Bonaire: how diver friendly the island is, how safe the sites are, and how many sites there are to choose from. You can pick up maps showing and describing all the dive sites here, whereas most places try to keep sites secret so you have to go with a dive company to find them. Most sites are free from strong currents, rip tides, and other hazards. Being able to just jump off our boat and be in a great dive site is amazing. Such a luxury is few and far between in the world, that is for sure. Having good diving so close to shore is also rare. It seems like in many places in the world, you have to go on a long boat ride to an isolated place to get to the good dive sites. And in most places in the world, it is not a good idea to get in the water without a local familiar with the area because there are hazards that one must be aware of, such as strong currents.

What is kind of ironic is that coral tends to thrive in places with strong currents. Some of the most stunning reefs we have been to in the world are the ones with the most current. So, the fact that Bonaire is so safe to dive from lack of current is the same thing that keeps it from being the best diving ever.

And, you may be wondering why we haven’t talked about food much. The food on Bonaire has been great, but, for the most part it is standard fare and we haven’t run across many new and different foods to talk about.

We motored over to the exact spot that the dive guy said the wreck was located and Jack stuck his face in the water. He agreed it wasn’t worth exploring. Since we were already up north, we decided to go to a nearby site that sounded especially nice. It is called Class Bottom. We tied up to the buoy. There were a lot of fish right under dinghy, especially sergeant fish and the little gray chromium fish. A good sign indeed!

Jack snorkeled around the general area, but once again, said it really wasn’t a very good snorkeling spot. Mike, Christi and Eric dove it and thought it was a great dive site. After we jumped in, we headed south to the next dive site marker, called Andrea I. The visibility here is the worst of all the sites we have been to in Bonaire, but it is still good. The visibility everywhere else has been phenomenal. There is very little trash around, and we expected a site farther away from town to be more pristine.

Once again, Mike brought his camera, so we can show you some of the fish we saw. The first is called a black margate. The second is called a jolthead porgy. The third is called a schoolmaster. The schoolmaster is in a giant sea rod soft coral. The three mounds in the foreground (left, right, middle) are great star hard coral, which Christi thinks looks like cells.

This spot has the best coral we have seen yet. There isn’t a lot of color, with just a few purple tube sponges and the rest all shades of brown. But the coral is vibrant and healthy, big and abundant. We saw some staghorn and elkhorn coral, which we haven’t seen much of anywhere else here in Bonaire. There are lots of sea rod and sea plum soft corals, and really tall, like a good 6 or 7 feet tall. There was also quite a bit of branching vase sponge, which is similar to tube sponges but with a smooth exterior instead of bumpy and uneven exterior. There were a few anemones, too.

There isn’t as much fish, or as many varieties, as behind our boat, but there are still lots and lots of fish to look at. In addition to the ones pictured above, we saw honeycomb cowfish, porcupine fish, enormous French angelfish, a large great barracuda, a white spotted file fish, a spotted drum, a few types of parrotfish, sand divers, rock hinds, Atlantic spadefish, scrawled filefish, queen angelfish, rock beauties, trumpetfish, and banded butterfly fish. We did see one new species for us, called a cornet fish, which is similar to a trumpet fish but longer and skinnier.

We are most proud to report that we managed to find a spotted scorpion fish, which look like rocks and are very difficult to discern. And we spotted a small golden tail moray eel. We saw a couple of sea slugs, which reminds us that we haven’t seen many here in the Caribbean. We usually saw tons of them on all our South Pacific dives. Of course, embedded in the rocks and coral were many Christmas tree worms and split crown feather duster worms. And there were a couple basket stars around, as well.

After the dive, we headed back to Kosmos. Christi worked cleaning the waterline and the bottom until both tanks were completely out of air. Then it was time for yet more errands. Our mail had brought us a new round of reminders about life responsibilities at home that never go away. One of the nice things about staying put, having internet access and reliable mail service is that we can deal with them effectively. In many places in the world, taking care of these things can be incredibly difficult to do.

We assumed that the package from Nordhavn had arrived yesterday, too, but was held up in customs and that we needed to go and pick it up in person. We called Nordhavn to get the tracking number for the package so that we could track it on line to confirm its arrival. We were most unhappy to find that they hadn’t sent the package yet. The parts guy didn’t seem to think we needed it right away and that he could send it at any time. We were frustrated and cancelled the order.

While we were out running errands, we went by the marina to pick up our other propane tank. We met a couple that has the same Bayliner Cierra 28 model that we used to own. It turns out they just got it and were learning how to use it, so Eric showed them how to use a few of the non-intuitive things on the boat. We had a nice visit with them. They invited us over for dinner this weekend, but we’re leaving in a couple days, so we couldn’t accept the offer. It is neat when we make friends with the locals.

We wanted to comment on the local language. It is called Papiamento and is a mix of Dutch, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with some Indian and African words, too. We’re not sure exactly how Portuguese came to be part of the mix. Papiamento is funny to listen to because you can almost follow what they are saying. There are distinctive English and Spanish words. Some of the Portuguese words sound kind of like French words, such as “bon” for good, so we can pick those out. Some Dutch words sound sort of similar to English words, so sometimes we can pick out the Dutch words, too. Of course, there are plenty of indistinguishable words in the mix, but overall, we can sort of half follow what the locals say to one another. In addition to Papiamento, Dutch is also an official language. Everybody, and we mean everybody, speaks English and most people seem to speak Spanish, too. Quite the multi-lingual society.

Sadly, Jack said that it isn’t a very good snorkeling site. In all honesty, while Bonaire may be a diver’s paradise, it isn’t a great destination for snorkelers. The reefs aren’t really shallow enough for snorkeling. However, the dive was excellent. We are pleased to report that Mike has a dive camera and that he managed to get some phenomenal photos. The following pictures are all compliments of him.

The first shot is of Christi shortly after we descended, higher up on the reef. We like this picture because you can see the little gray chromium fish that are everywhere on Bonaire dives, and you get a good idea of what the landscape of the reef is like. Note the neat soft corals to the right. They really do look like they could be terrestrial plants.

As we were making our way down, we had a huge school of Creole wrasse go flying by below us in a tube formation. It was a long tube made up of lots of fish! They are really neat looking, kind of blueish-purple with some yellow on their sides. We saw many more throughout the dive, too. We have generally seen some on every dive we have done in Bonaire, but never in such huge numbers.

Here is a horse eyed trevally. We also saw a lot of yellow jacks, which are similar looking. We haven’t seen very many jacks/trevally closer in to the mainland, but we saw several here. They tend to prefer outer reefs. They look like a tasty dinner!

There were a lot of surgeonfish around. And we mean a lot, especially a black variety with blue trim. We couldn’t find that specific variety in either of our fish books. Smack in the middle of this school of surgeonfish is a trumpetfish. To the right is a scrawled filefish. The filefish is pretty darn cool looking. The coral in the upper left corner is called plate cactus coral.

FI

This is an orange elephant ear sponge with a little damselfish.

This is a honeycomb cowfish, which we mentioned seeing the first day we went diving in Bonaire. It is similar in shape to trunkfish we mention all the time, except trunkfish are black and white spotted and smaller in size. And we did see lots of trunkfish here. Note the white, light brown and olive lines in the picture. We are not sure of exactly sure what it is, but we think it is a soft coral. It looks just like really long strands of pipe cleaners. We have mentioned seeing it a few places in the world.

In the center of the photo is a tube sponge, which usually comes in yellow or purple. Sadly, in photography, the deeper you go, the more color you lose, which is why the pictures look so gray. To the left is smooth flower coral, which we see a lot of here in Bonaire.

In addition to the species photographed above, we saw lots more cool stuff. The highlight was seeing two frogfish, side by side. They look like rocks and are very hard to spot in the wild, so we’re patting ourselves on the back for finding them. We also saw a large peacock flounder, another hard to spot species. There were a couple of snake eels slithering around, too.

In more obvious species, there are a lot of black durgeons around, which are shaped like a triggerfish. There are grunt fish galore, in several species. We saw a few bi-color damselfish, French angelfish, goatfish in two varieties, blue tang, and doctor fish (which look like brown blue tang). And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we saw down there!

Unfortunately, the coral at this site is fading in color. The purples and magentas are definitely lighter shades in color than the coral behind Kosmos. There are a lot more soft coral here than behind Kosmos. And there are more varieties of coral overall, both hard and soft.

After the dive, we all headed back to Kosmos. It was a wet ride back with a lot of pounding. Eric filled the tanks while Christi worked on the water line. Once the tanks were filled, Mike, Christi and Eric jumped back in to do the site behind Kosmos yet again. On the way out, we stopped by the rocks where the octopus live to try to find them. And we did find one hiding in a little hole!

As soon as we got to the edge of the reef, Lenny and Squiggy were right there to greet us and follow us around. We want to make it abundantly clear that when we said they get right in your face, we are not exaggerating. They want to make sure that you definitely see them! BTW, in case you don’t remember, they are French angelfish.

It amazes us that every time we go to the site behind the boat we always see at least something new. This time we saw some clown wrasse, which are similar in color and markings to a parrotfish, but are smaller in size, have a more streamlined body, and don’t have such big scales. We also saw a greater soapfish hiding under a rock, which is similar to a grouper with a smaller head and mouth.

On our decompression stop, we looked in the octopus hole to say hi to our little friend and noticed another octopus hiding in the hole right next to it. Wow! Two octopus!

Back on board, Christi decided to do some baking. She mixed up batter for muffins and went to pre-heat the oven. It didn’t go on. Hmmm…. Eric checked the propane tank, and sure enough, it was empty. We guess it is a darn good thing we decided to get our other tank filled a few days ago! We hopped in the dinghy with the empty tank in hand, prepared to exchange the full tank for the empty tank.

When we were living in the dorms, we were both assigned rooms at the end of the hall, the farthest from the elevator. On our way to and from the elevator, we’d stop and talk to everyone who happened to have their door open, so getting from the elevator to our room would sometimes take hours. It is the same here in the mooring field. Whether going south to town or north to the marina, we almost always stop to talk to everyone who happens to be hanging out in their cockpit. And a lot of people around here like to hang out in their cockpit. It is definitely a social place.

Anyway, our quick little errand took eons since we stopped by at least a half dozen boats.
We found out that in the Caribbean, tanks are generally filled with a mix of butane and propane, as opposed to pure propane. Apparently, it doesn’t burn as hot, and it sometimes leaves black residue on the stove and pans. Also, in the Caribbean they seem to use a system for filling the tanks that doesn’t get them as truly full as you get in other parts of the world. And, it is expensive at $35 per tank. We can’t remember for sure, but we think the last time we got our propane tanks filled it was between $5 and $10.

When we got back, we were pleased to see that one of the two packages we were expecting was sitting in the cockpit. Another cruiser had seen it was in and delivered it for us, which was nice. We spent the evening reading mail. And Christi’s muffins came out pretty darn good.

Apparently, after Hurricane Omar, a bunch of tires appeared in the mooring area and on the reef behind it. No one is sure where they came from, but the theory is that the tires were used as fenders on the various docks up and down the coast that had been destroyed in the storm. One of the cruisers who spends a lot of time in Bonaire every year contacted the park service and offered to coordinate a clean up effort. Last week was the big day. Many cruisers had volunteered to pick tires up off the ocean floor and put them in the park service boat so the park service could dispose of them. The effort was incredibly successful and they filled up an entire trash dumpster with tires. The only problem was that there were still lots and lots of tires left. So, today’s effort was to try to get the last of the tires.

A few minutes later, someone came over and explained what was happening. Eric and Christi were responsible for finding tires along a certain stretch of ocean floor. There was a snorkeler assigned to follow each of us. When the snorkeler saw that we had found tires, they would signal the park boat to move over to us. The park boat would drop lines into the water. We were to attach the tires to the lines and the park service workers would pull the tires up. When we were done, the boat would move to the next zone. We had to be careful to only pick up new looking tires. Anything with coral growth was to stay in the water.

We had lucked out because last week the cruisers had moved the tires into piles for us. The job was really easy because we simply swam from tire pile to tire pile. We swam around scouring the area anyway to make sure we got them all, and we only found one or two more that had not been piled up. The job went fast and smooth.

Something that we found interesting was that single tires lying flat on the ground didn’t attract any fish. But when there were four or five tires all thrown against one another at weird angles, there would be several fish there. They seem to like swimming through all numerous tunnels and openings made by the angles of the tires. It was kind of sad that we ruined their new play toy. In the sand, we saw a good size crab walking around and a flounder fish, which are hard to spot. Most excitingly, we saw a spotted eagle ray swim by. Christi started to follow him, but then realized abandoning her job duties wasn’t a good plan and returned to work.

After the tire duties were completed, we were probably ¼ mile south of the dinghy and had almost half a tank of air left, so we swam over to the reef to use up the rest of our air. Since we were so close to Kosmos, the site is very similar to the site right behind her, but not quite as nice. It does have a little bit more soft coral, but we didn’t see as much variety to the fish. We did see the biggest trumpetfish we have ever seen in our lives. It was a beast. We can’t believe they get so big.

After our dive, we headed back to Kosmos to fill tanks, then dove again behind our boat. This time, only Lenny followed us around, and not until the end. They must have realized we aren’t going to feed them. We are really enjoying diving the same spot again and again. You would think that seeing the same stuff over and over would be boring, but it is actually the opposite. We are getting a good sense of what creature lives where, and what their behavior patterns are. Here are some examples: The parrotfish happily munch on coral. They go to a coral formation, take a bite or two, then move on to the next one, also taking a bite or two. The trumpet fish like to swim next to another breed of fish and rub up against the other fish. The other fish don’t seem to mind. The grouper wait patiently underneath ledges or in gaps in the coral, trying desperately to blend in with the scenery so their prey doesn’t see them and wanders into their attack range. The grouper stay in place by holding on to rocks with their fins, as if they were hands. Snapper fish tend to make tight formations and swim in almost perfect unity, like a security team protecting a nation’s president. The little chromium fish also swim in big schools, and while they all move the same direction, they tend to stay at least a few inches from one another. They also tend to stay closer to the surface, so from about 40 feet down you will often look up and see tons of little dots above you, almost like unlit stars in the sky.

Another benefit of doing the same sites is that by seeing the same fishes again and again, it is becoming easier to differentiate fish with similar markings. When we are flipping through the fish book to try to identify a species, it is often hard to tell one fish from another when we only got a fleeting glance. Now that we are getting better looks at them all, it is definitely easier to identify which species is the right one in the fish book.

At end of dive, we were doing our safety stop in the sand when we saw the spotted eagle ray nearby. We were so excited and swam over to it. It is charcoal with white spots and triangular wings. It was so graceful as it zoomed along the bottom searching for food. We followed it. Occasionally, it would stop for a moment as it found a munchie hiding in the sand, then would move on. The body is fairly large, and the tail is three times as long as the body. We really wish we had a dive camera. We are told the sting rays are rarely seen here in the mooring area.

In the evening we went to a cruiser get together. Christi really does not like cruiser get togethers, so it took some cajoling on Eric’s part to get her to attend. Christi loves meeting new people, as does Eric. But, we have found that as soon as people find out about our trip, the conversation will turn to questions about the boat. Almost everyone asks the same questions in the same order (fuel burn, tankage, speed, etc.). After the initial round of questions, our new acquaintances are usually happy to move on to more typical topics of conversation. Now remember that most of the time, Eric and Christi only have each other to talk to, so when we get the opportunity to talk to other people, we crave stimulating conversation, and answering the same questions over and over is not stimulating. Christi doesn’t mind answering the initial questions when talking to people one on one because she knows eventually the stimulating conversation will follow. But at parties, we will start talking to someone and answering the questions. Then someone else will approach, hear what we are talking about, then jump into the conversation by asking question 1. And so we start the Q & A session from the beginning. Then someone else approaches…. And by the end of the night, we have answered the same 10 questions 100 times and not had a chance to partake in any conversation we find interesting.

Of course, this party was exactly the same. Christi was bored practically to tears, and being tired from all the swimming, she was having a hard time pretending to be interested in answering questions. She made Eric leave early. We ducked out and went to a sushi restaurant for dinner. The food was great, but oddly, they don’t serve green tea. They seemed to think it was odd that we would ask for green tea, as if it isn’t typically served in Japanese restaurants.

Tonight the moon was only half full, yet it cast such a bright light that as we dinghied back we could clearly see the sandy bottom beneath us. When we got to Kosmos, we were totally surprised to see that she cast a shadow. Wow. How bright is it going to be when the moon is full?

Once errands were done, we went back to the boat. Eric changed his hose, which turned out to be a harder task than he had anticipated. Then we loaded all our dive gear in the dinghy and headed up the coast to a dive spot called Cliff, near where the fancy neighborhood starts. We tied to the mooring and worked on getting in. Hard dingies are not really good for diving as they tip easily. Getting into your gear on board and jumping off with your tank strapped on you isn’t a good plan. So, Christi got in the water, then Eric handed her the tank and BCD. She put everything on, then Eric handed her his rig. Then Eric got in and put everything on. We were ready to roll and hadn’t even flipped the dinghy. High 5!

Being as we hadn’t gone up the coast very far, the dive site was similar to the one behind our boat. There are a lot more soft corals here, both more species and more of each species. The only ones we can identify are the giant sea rods, which are a good 5 – 6 feet tall, and the sea plums, but there are many more varieties. We also saw a few basket starfish, which look like a plant, not like a fish. A basket star is the creature that latched onto Christi’s hand and wouldn’t let go in Guadeloupe, reminiscent of a space alien latching on to a host human in a science fiction movie.

However, this site has less fish and less variety of fish. The most exciting fish that we spotted is a midnight parrotfish. It is gigantic, as in comparable in size to a Napoleon. It looked all black with iridescent blue markings on its face, but when we looked in the fish book, we realized it was dark blue, not black. We have never seen anything like it before. It was really exciting. This must be the spot for abnormally large fish, because we also saw an unusually large trumpet fish. We saw a couple different species of file fish that had very odd designs on them. One of them was also quite large. And, finally, we saw a fish in the distance that Eric thinks was a very large fish and Christi thinks is a small shark.

Getting out was the exact opposite of getting in. Eric took his rig off. At the same moment he pulled himself up on the port side of the boat, Christi yanked with all her might on the starboard side to keep the dinghy from flipping. He got in with no problem. We put in both sets of rigs, then Christi hopped on, with Eric carefully counterbalancing her weight. Another high 5!

After diving, we unloaded our rigs aboard Kosmos, then went snorkeling in front of the Venezuelan embassy, which is just a couple boats over from us. We were told there is a lot to see there. When we pulled up in the dinghy, six pelicans immediately landed in the water right next to us. They watched us intently. We watched them back intently, amused that they were so interested in us. Apparently, the fishermen will clean fish here and throw them the scraps, so they were waiting expectantly. We eventually got tired of the staring contest and got in the water.

The area is rocky, there is little coral growth, and there weren’t many fish. But, there was a good variety of fish to look at, and we got some decent photos. We heard a turtle is frequently sighted here, but we never saw it. The first is a juvenile longfin damselfish. It will turn brown when it matures.

This picture is neat because you can see how easy it is to confuse fish species. The fish in the background is a blue tang. We’re not sure what the fish in the foreground is, but with similar color and shape, it is easy to mistake it for a blue tang.

Here is a sergeant fish. The silver variety is the most common, though there is a blue and brown variety, too. We just found out that the males in the silver variety turn blue while they are guarding their eggs. The males invite a female to his nest, where she deposits eggs. He fertilizes and guards those eggs. A week later the eggs hatch and dad starts looking for another lady to invite back to his place. So, it is possible that some of the times we have said we saw a couple varieties of sergeant fish, we really just saw silver expectant dads. The spot of coral behind him is called brain coral.

This is called a surf parrotfish. We have never seen it anywhere in the world before. Usually parrotfish are incredibly colorful, so a gray one is unusual.

The fish in front is a goatfish. Goatfish have outgrowths that look like little horns that protrude from its chin. When they hunt for food, the little horns drag in the sand feeling around for things like small crabs and shrimp. The goatfish also duel with other goatfish using the horns. The horns retract, so when the are not in use, they are not visible. Behind the goatfish is either a jack or trevally. We weren’t able to identify the guy hiding underneath them.

We think these little guys are wrasse, but we’re not sure. There are always a lot of them in the water.

In the foreground is a gruntfish and in the background is a surgeonfish.

We swam back to Kosmos, dragging the dinghy. Just as we were getting ready to get out, Christi saw an octopus walking across the sand. She watched it walk to the edge of the rocks where the reef starts. He almost instantly darkened from a sand color to the same color as the rocks and was hard to see. Then we see tentacles flying, and we realized he had walked up to another octopus and picked a fight. The fight was brief, then one of them swam off. A minute later, we saw another octopus swim by, too. Very exciting! We haven’t been able to identify the blue and yellow fish in the photo with the octopus. The fish seemed to be following the octopus around in the sand.

After snorkeling, Christi worked on the waterline some more. She just can’t get the grass off very well anymore, but by working on it often, at least she is keeping the lawn under control. While she was scrubbing away, another cruiser came by and recruited us to help in a clean up operation tomorrow.

On the first dive we pretty much saw all the same things we mentioned yesterday. In addition, we saw a giant sand dollar, a small little fluorescent purple shrimp, a snake eel, and a couple of those cute tiny little spinyhead blenny that live in tiny little holes. We also saw a couple sea cucumber, which made us realize we haven’t really seen any sea cucumbers in the other dive spots we went to in the Caribbean. Our new little French angelfish friends again followed us closely. They were obviously worried that we didn’t see them, because they got right up in our faces several times. We were disappointed to see a large kitchen sink leaning up against the wall close to town. It is kind of a random place to decide to do dishes.

On the second dive, we again saw most of the same things we mentioned yesterday. We also saw something called a black and white crinoid, which looks like a plant but isn’t. We don’t know what it is, but our chart groups it with sea urchins, sea cucumbers and starfish. Oh, and speaking of sea urchins, the typical black long spine urchins are just about everywhere in the world, here included. But there is also another type of urchin here that is different than anything we have seen before. We also saw hermit crabs, more anemones, and a baby spotted drum. The angelfish again followed us, vying for our attention. We decided to name them Lenny and Squiggy. At one point, we saw some French angelfish chasing each other in circles, clearly playing. Sqiuggy abandoned us and went to play with them for a while. It was fun to watch. But once we stopped watching and moved on, Squiggy was back by our side.

Usually on a dive, we focus on the big picture and often miss minute details. But being as this was the third dive in the same general spot, we really homed in on the details. We realized there is a lot of old trash incorporated in the reef. The vast majority of it looks like lingering remnants from the days before the waters around the island were declared a marine park. Most of the trash has a lot of growth on it, such as coral, sponges, and general algae. The fish happily dart in and out of the assorted pieces of trash, or hide in/under them. It is neat to see that Mother Nature has been able to make use of man’s waste, though granted, had they not put a stop to the dumping when they did, the coral would have died completely when buried under more trash. And also granted, it probably took close to 30 years to fully incorporate the trash into the reef. We are guessing that since we are swimming basically in the heart of town, we’ll see more trash here than anywhere else around the island.

In between dives, we worked on a project that was well over a year overdue: defrosting the freezer. We had never done it before because we envisioned it would take hours and we didn’t know what to do with 5 cubic feet of frozen food. Obviously, during the Atlantic passage, we ate up a big percentage of the contents in the freezer. Since then, we’ve continued to actively eat out of the freezer, and haven’t purchased much freezer foods, so there was finally a small enough quantity of food in the freezer to make the task less daunting.

We turned on the hallway fridge (the one we don’t normally keep on) to the highest setting, then moved all the food from the freezer to the fridge. We knew there was a lot of ice on the bottom, but we hadn’t realized how much food was hidden underneath the ice. We found all kinds of wonderful treasures down there, including a couple packages of our beloved Tim Tams. That is almost as good as finding gold! We had originally thought it would need to defrost for hours and hours, but it turned out that the ice came away easily with a little scraping. Within an hour, we had filled a bucket with about 2 gallons of ice and there was none left in the freezer. We transferred all the food back. Of course, we felt it was necessary to eat some of the ice cream as we worked, just to be sure it didn’t melt.

After the second dive, Christi scraped the metal under the boat some before coming in. The metal was heinous, already completely re-grown from the last time she worked on it less than a month ago. She has realized that the only way to keep the bottom under control these days is to work on it daily. With the warm water, everything grows so darn fast it is unreal!

After Christi finished the metal, we cleaned up and went to shore for dinner. We started talking to the couple at the table next to us, who happen to be from Southern California, too. They told us that the hotel they are staying in specializes in diving for the handicapped. Many disabled people are capable of swimming, and thus in theory should be able to SCUBA dive. However, most dive sites are inaccessible for them because they are difficult to enter. Shore dives are out of the question and most boats can’t accommodate the disabled. This hotel has a nice dock set up that people can jump right off, and they give paraplegic people specially adapted hand fins. There isn’t much current, so someone doesn’t have to be super athletic to do it. Apparently a lot of disabled people go to this hotel to go diving, many year after year. It sounds like an awesome program and we were absolutely fascinated by it.

This morning started out as the gloomiest day yet, with heavy rain most of the morning. It was so bleak that Eric didn’t want to dive. Instead, we spent the morning puttering around the boat taking care of little loose ends. You know, those things that you mean to do but just never get around to doing?

One of the projects was putting straps in the dangerous refrigerator. While we don’t normally keep that fridge on, we do use it for room temperature beverage storage. Eric installed four hooks, then put bungee cords in an X formation across the fridge so that the containers can’t fall out. We forgot to mention that a long time ago we started to keep everything in containers, since it is much easier to stop a few containers from falling than dozens of individual items.

Eric also changed the watermaker oil, a project he has been avoiding since Gibraltar. He thought he was going to have to suck the oil out of the top of the unit, which he dreaded. The good news is that there is a built in hose connected to the bottom of the pump housing, so the oil could be gravity drained. Unfortunately, the way the unit was mounted made getting all the oil out a little tricky because he had to hold the hose at awkward angles, but he eventually got it all out. Getting the oil back in turned out to be the problem. It needed to be fed through the same hose. We don’t have a funnel on board that would fit the hose, so Eric had to improvise. He found a piece of hose that fit both our funnel and the inside of the cap on top of the watermaker unit (where he initially thought he would have to suck the oil out of). He cut the hose to be the right length and was able to fill the oil that way. Once again, due to the awkward location of the installation, getting the oil into the unit was a tight fit. There wasn’t a lot of room for error. The watermaker lives in a small space in a corner of the lazarette, and Eric was hot and cramped as he worked. The oil project left him feeling grumpy and irritable. He was done with chores for the rest of the day.

While Eric worked on the watermaker, Christi made the yams we had purchased in Guadeloupe. She was expecting them to be similar to potatoes, but orange and sweet with a slightly thicker peel. Not at all. They were white and very sticky, with a peel more akin to tree bark than a potato peel. As she peeled, the bark bits would get all over the yams and she had a hard time washing it off. She was using a hand masher, and trying to mash these yams was like mixing concrete. It took more than quadruple the amount of milk and butter that she normally uses in mashed potatoes to get them to soften up enough to be a decent texture. She added a can of sweetened condensed milk, too, which is what she suspected was the magic ingredient in some of the yummiest Guadeloupe root dishes. They came out awesome, but man, were they a lot of work compared to regular mashed potatoes. We have even more respect for the Guadeloupe chefs now.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening visiting with the neighboring boats. [31, 32]

It has rained a lot the whole time we have been in the Caribbean, which is odd since it is supposed to be the dry season. In Guadeloupe and Antigua, it was usually an odd squall or two each day, though we had a few days with more rain. In Dominica, we had several days where the squalls consistently came through every couple of hours. In our short time in Bonaire, we have experienced squalls every couple of hours, just like Dominica. Usually, they are fairly hard rains that last only a few minutes. Anyway, while in the dive shop, another one rolled through. This one was probably the biggest rainfall we have seen since arriving to the Caribbean. The heavy rain and lasted a long time, probably a couple of hours. We waited it out in the dive shop and had a lovely chat with one of the dive guides. He gave us lots of useful information, including a place we should be able to find a camera. Most importantly, though, he told us that even though the yacht mooring area is not listed as an official dive site, the diving behind the boats is fabulous.

By the time we left the dive shop, it was almost lunch time. The store that should have the camera is a little north of Harbor Village Marina. As instructed, we dinghied up to the dock at the Harbor Village Hotel and tied up. He told us it was another 10 minutes walk north on the main highway. Once we were out on the street and completely unprotected, another crazy hard squall hit us. Fortunately for us, a mini-van taxi drove by shortly after the rain started. The van was almost full, with only one seat left. The taxi mercifully stopped to pick us up. A child moved to mom’s lap to accommodate us. The people were very nice about having their taxi hijacked. Probably, the fact that it was only two minutes out of their way helped. In that two minutes, the taxi driver nearly hit two other cars, which is a pretty crazy percentage considering we passed only about 5 cars total.

Anyway, he dropped us off in front of the door and we went running in. They didn’t have what we were looking for, either, and once again, we had a long chat with the sales guy while we waited for the rain to stop, then walked back to the dinghy dock. This area definitely has a different look to it than downtown. The main highway runs north to south. The west side of the highway (waterfront) has some big hotels, and in between hotels are vacant lots filled with scrubby brush. The east side has a single strip mall, a radio station, and lots more vacant land with desert like shrubbery. We passed one cross street heading east, and it looked to be lined on the north side with commercial warehouse buildings. A little ways south of the intersection, we saw a river that parallels the cross street. The river mouth lets out at Harbor Village Marina.

By the time we got back to Kosmos it was 1500. Where had the day gone? We did as the dive guide recommended and dove right off the back of Kosmos. The sandy strip our mooring is on is actually pretty narrow, probably about 250 – 300 feet wide from the quay to where the reef begins. There were lots of small blennys and gobys shooting under rocks in the sandy area. The reef is a 45degree sloping wall. As promised, the wall was stunning.

There was a lot of variety to the types of coral and sponges, but not a lot of color variety. There were some bright purple tube sponges and a few of orange elephant ear sponges. There was some boulder star coral in hot pink. Some of the brain coral and mustard coral were bright lime green, but most were more muted shades of yellowish-brown. There was a lot of smooth flower coral, which are a hard coral that look like little white flowers. There are generally quite a few of them in one spot and they are each about an inch wide. There is some whitestar sheet coral, which are actually common around the world but we have never identified before. They are usually kind of roundish in shape and quite thin, with a grooved texture. There is some kind of growth that we have mentioned seeing in other places that looks like pipe cleaner. There is a lot of the pipe cleaner looking species here. Most of the rest of the coral and sponges are assorted shades of brown. There are less soft corals here than in the other places we have been to in the Caribbean, and the few that are around look more like solid trees than we have seen, with tall, dark, relatively thick branches. We didn’t see any giant barrel sponges, sea vases or sea fans, which we saw in all the other dive spots in the Caribbean.

In terms of worms, there are tons of Christmas tree worms in a big assortment of colors. There are also a lot of split crown feather dusters, which are a different version of the “feather worms” we mentioned seeing at the other sites in the Caribbean. These don’t look as much like bird feathers as the other variety does. We saw both kinds of worms in the sand as well as along the wall. We also saw some anemones, but still no clownfish. Are there no clownfish in the Caribbean? We also didn’t see any starfish, another type of fish that seems to be missing in the Caribbean.

What makes the site so great is all the fish. There are tons and tons of fish, and all kinds of varieties. Normally, fish are afraid of people, and when they see you, they get scared and run off. In the rare case where the fish are regularly fed, they will swarm you looking for food. Here, the fish are used to seeing people but not being fed by them, and they simply continue on with their business, not phased at all by human presence. It was really neat for us to be able to watch the creatures behave more normally.

We saw quite a few trumpetfish, both yellow and silver. What was odd was that they were often swimming alongside other species of fish (it seemed no particular species, either), which is a behavior we don’t think we’ve ever noticed before. We saw several goatfish, and one in particular was feverishly digging a large hole in the ground, just like a dog would. There are quite a few grouper in several varieties lurking around. We saw two grouper that looked like they were about to fight – they were facing each other and looking angry. One lunged at the other, and it ran off.

There were several French angelfish. All of them were quite large, but one in particular was enormous. Two of them followed us for the entire dive. And they got uncomfortably close to us. They would often swim literally two inches from our faces, looking at us expectantly. We suppose they want food, which is forbidden in the park. We were both nervous that the fish would attack us like those grouper attacked Christi’s dad in Fiji.

We saw some new species, too. One is called a honeycomb cowfish that is very similar in size and shape to a trunkfish, but instead of being covered in spots, it looks like it is covered in brown pentagons. It is pretty cool looking, definitely unusual. Another one is called a coney, which looks like a grouper. Actually, it looks enough like a grouper that we could have seen it other places and misidentified it. Another new one for us was harlequin bass, which has a white and yellow body with black stripes and spots. That is another one we could have seen before and not identified. We also saw a rocky beauty angelfish, which has a bright yellow head and tail, yet another we may have seen before. Another that we may have seen before and possibly misidentified is called a schoolmaster, which is a silver fish with a yellow tail and fins. It resembles snapper.

There were lots of the usual species, of course. There were several more angelfish species above and beyond the French angelfish. There were several species of butterfly fish, including banded and four eye. There were lots of blackbar soldierfish. There were several sanddivers, and one was particularly large. There were several species of surgeonfish. One variety is a coffee brown all over with no particular markings, and we identified it as ocean surgeon fish. There are literally thousands of little silver chromium fish floating around.

In more fun fish to look at, there were several trunkfish and a porcupinefish. There were several really big schools of both smallmouth grunt and bluestriped grunt. Both resemble yellow snapper in their markings (though the shape is a little different), so it is possible that we have seen these species other places and misidentified them as snapper. There were several varieties of parrotfish, including the stoplight. Here the parrotfish are brighter in color than the other places we have been in the Caribbean, looking closer in vibrancy to the South Pacific varieties. We saw a couple filefish species, a spotted drum, some blue tang, and Creole wrasse.

Not wanting to push the limits since it was just the two of us, we were down for only 40 minutes and went down a total of 62 feet. There was no current at all and visibility was excellent. We thoroughly enjoyed our dive. When we got back to Kosmos, Christi stayed in the water for a while and worked on the waterline. Keeping the bottom clean is feeling like a futile effort these days. Tired from the swim, we had another quiet evening aboard. [30]

We hopped in the water with our snazzy new camera that is waterproof to 30 feet and it immediately went dead. It had filled with water. Sigh. This camera is touted as being totally indestructible and we were sure it would survive us. We must have some kind of bad camera killing karma from a past life haunting us. We swam from south to north, and each took turns pulling the dinghy along with us as we swam.

We are so sad about losing the camera right then, because the site was lovely and we would have liked to get some photos. Barb and Chuck said it was better prior to Hurricane Omar. There isn’t a lot of coral here. Small spots of hard coral dot the entire area, but very few coral formations are much bigger than a ball. There was one quite large one, though. Towards the north end of the site we did see a few soft coral formations, some of them fairly decent in size, but only a few. Near the soft coral, we also saw a couple anemones, but again no clown fish. But, as the name of the site implies, there were hundreds of sea fans all along the site. All were green or a greenish brown, with no purple ones. Some looked a little tattered around the edges, but most looked healthy and vibrant. They ranged in size from small to absolutely gigantic. It was really neat to see.

There were also quite a few fish. There were more fish than in Guadeloupe, but like Guadeloupe, they were mostly small guys since the bigger ones tend to get fished out. We saw a few trumpetfish, in both yellow and white. We saw some parrotfish, including the red stoplight variety. We saw lane snapper, as well as some other varieties of snapper or grunt that we couldn’t identify. The snapper (and possibly grunt) were in smaller than normal schools. There were a few varieties of surgeonfish, as well. There was an assortment of damselfish, including the bi-color damselfish. We also managed to identify a new species of damsel fish to us, called the yellowtail damsel. It has a light brown body with a vibrant yellow tail.

We also saw some jewel fish, a lot of goatfish, a lot of smaller wrasse, a cute little trunkfish, a sand diver, a grouper, a couple rabbit or squirrelfish, and a few blue tang. The blue tang are eye catching.

When we came to the end of the site, we hopped in the dinghy and headed back to our respective boats. Christi spent an hour working on the bottom. Our paint is definitely done. There are barnacles growing on the paint these days, which has never happened before with this round of bottom paint. Normally the barnacles are only on the metal. The grass is totally out of control. We seriously need a lawnmower these days.

In the evening we had Chuck and Barb over for dinner. We had a nice visit with them.

This morning we went to the weekly produce market. An intersection near the waterfront in the heart of town was lined with trucks, and people were selling produce out of the beds of the trucks or on tables set up on the sidewalk near their truck. There were a few people selling assorted non-produce goods, but the vast majority of the vendors were selling perishable foods. Most of the products on offer were tomatoes, carrots, roots of some sort, fresh ginger, cabbage, christophene, oranges, grapefruit and eggs. There was a bread vendor, as well.

We made a right turn and walked the ½ block to the water, looking at all the food choices. The road dead ended at a covered patio filled with more vendors, except in here they were selling exclusively from tables.

After the market, we went looking for a Rastafarian restaurant that had been recommended to us. We know very little about the Rastafarian culture and wanted to learn more, starting with the food. We are under the impression that they are generally vegetarians (don’t eat meat) and maybe even vegans (don’t eat or use any kind of animal products). We have seen a lot of Rastafarians around the island, and noticed in the guidebook that there are an unusually large percentage of vegan and vegetarian restaurants on Dominica compared to most other places (except India). Sadly, we never found it. Instead, we settled on a restaurant so small they could barely cram three tables into it. We forget the name of the restaurant, but the name implied an ocean view. This is the view nowadays:

How unlucky for them that they had a ship sink right in front of their restaurant! We had egg sandwiches, which were pretty basic but absolutely delicious. We’re not sure what the secret was that made them better than normal.

Then we headed back to Kosmos to get her ready to go to sea. Tomorrow we are planning to leave early in the morning, but we hadn’t decided where we were going. We spent a lot of time reading up on the various islands before deciding to skip Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines to go straight to Bonaire. Why? Several reasons. One, we are tired of being on the move all the time. Rather than spend a few days each at several islands, we’d rather spend a couple weeks at one island, and we think we’ll like Bonaire the best of the bunch. Two, the short passages kill us and we’d just as soon do a longer passage. Three, the wind and waves will be coming from directly behind us, so more favorable sea conditions (and less overall miles) than if we were to stop at the other islands. Fourth, we stay far, far away from Venezuela, which has had some reports of pirate attacks recently. Once that was decided, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading the news. There is a lot going on back in the USA. Of course, we didn’t do any chores or cleaning, as intended.