Sailing into the Venezuelan Sun-day

After the usual manic boat prep to clear out in Prickly Bay and a hilarious conversation with the Customs officer over becoming a patron for Grenada in the Chelsea Flower Show, we had our tanks full and were setting off into the afternoon sun saying farewell to our most favourite place to date with a lot of mixed feelings in our hearts. We had experienced so much fun, beauty and happiness there and it was honestly an effort to pack up, move on and get back out of our comfort zone.

The plan was to sail across to La Blanquilla, on to Los Roques and then hit Bonaire about 2 weeks later. We had heard a whole bunch of mixed stories about the safety of the waters between the islands and so made sure we had taken full precautions.

• Machete & Axe
• Air Horn
• Molotov Cocktail
• Flares
• Blinding spot light
• Radio silence & no nav lights
• .. oh and a Jarvis on constant red alert (this means very jumpy) - which I personally feel was the best precaution out of everything

We had fantastic winds and current pushing us along much faster than we had expected and reached La Blanquilla island incident free about 12 hours ahead of schedule. This unfortunately meant at night. We tried to find a place to anchor but the charts for the area were not even close (20m on the charts and 2m in reality) and on an island that has no lights or buoys this was nearing impossible. We thought about waiting around until first light but at 6 hours away we decided just to push on until we hit Los Roques.

It only took 3 days all up from Grenada and we sailed into the beautiful cays early on Sunday morning to be welcomed with a glorious sunrise glinting of the clear ocean – when you are very tired from a long night watch believe me this is even more a beautiful sight than normal.

Now for the challenge – clearing in.

Facts: My spanish is not the best. If you get the wrong kind of permit here it is VERY expensive. It's a sunday. There are 4 offices to go to, in a certain order.

Reality: Actually better than I had imagined. It took two attempts – round one we went to the wrong office twice and then found the person wasn't there that cleared in yachts and were told to come back that evening. The guy we ended up speaking with was friendly, funny and very understanding – we bagged a two day visa permit at NO COST and then just needed to toodle off to the other offices. We were met with a lot more hostility as we progressed but 2 hours later – cha ching – we are done.

Beautiful random Venezuelan islands for a few days?? Yes please!

Tia and Jarvis, over and out!