Update from Curacao

Sorry for the lag in my updates. I’m currently in Curacao and although Bonaire and here have been some of my favorite islands so far, one of the few downsides has been how tough or expensive it is to get internet access. In Bonaire it was 50 Gilders for a 15 hour prepaid card and you spend the majority of the time fighting the damn thing to stay connected. Oh and one U.S. dollar equals 1.78 in Gilders, another conversion I have to constantly work out in my head. Well as usual a lot has happened so I will launch into it. In my last post I talked about getting my scuba cert. Well that ended up being a terrific experience and although I wish I would have done it years ago, I’m glad I waited until now. I took the class through a shop on Bonaire called Wanna Dive and I couldn’t have been happier. From the first day our entire class and our instructors hit it off and we had a blast. It was such a chill environment, class room was a picnic table on the beach with a palapa and then a short walk to the pool for skills. We did a total of 4 open water dives and they were all great. I was very happy to have the freediving background I do because I was completely comfortable the whole time and was able to enjoy every aspect of the dives. The funny thing is that the only real problem I was having was NOT holding my breath. I’m so used to breath hold free dives that I found myself looking around and then starting to the surface for air before I remembered that I had a regulator and could breathe. I met some wonderful people from all over the world in our class and we even were able to go out during the evenings and enjoy some good old Polar beers together. So by the end of the week I was enjoying myself so much that I knew that I had to figure out some way to keep diving. After talking with some of the instructors I found out about their divemaster internship program. Our head instructor Marleen (a smoking hot Dutch chick) introduced me to the owner of the operation and after a short conversation with him I was in. This was last Thursday. Basically for the next 3 months I will be working in the dive shop for free but earning all my certifications and diving everyday. After I complete that, I should be at the level of divemaster and then I will have to take the instructor course. So I’m hoping to have that done by summer and then explore more options from there. The only dilemma that left me with at that point was that we were planning on leaving that night (Thurs) for Curacao and I needed to talk to Brian about things. He had originally planned to keep the boat in Curacao but had not been able to reserve a slip in the marina he wanted. I had decided that if he still wanted it in Curacao that I was going to find a cheap room on Bonaire and stay there but after talking with him, he was cool with keeping the boat in Bonaire at the marina right next to the beach I will be working at. I was so stoked I couldn’t believe it. So as of now, Brian flies out on March 9th and I will leave that same day to sail back to Bonaire to put the boat in the marina. Should be sweet being in the marina because I will actually be plugged into power and also not have to worry about conserving water as much. I also will be able to kayak to the beach every morning to work and dive because it is so close.

We had a better weather window to head to Curacao on Friday night so I spent the rest of Thursday afternoon sorting out getting a reservation for the marina and making sure I was all set to return in March. The following day we finished up all the last minute stuff and I got us underway just before midnight. We had a great night of cruising and arrived in Curacao the following morning as we planned. In fact we made a little bit too good of time and when Brian’s watch started at 6 AM he had to zig zag back and forth a bit to wait for the light so we could come into the narrow entrance to Spanish Water where we are anchored now. After arriving here we had to set about our next project of getting the retard of a crew member that Brian found in Grenada off the boat. I was in the States during the holidays and all of January and while I was gone Brian found some dude on one of the internet crew lists looking for a boat to help on. He happened to be in Grenada at the time and said he knew how to sail, had mechanical background and also spoke Spanish. Well in a nutshell, he didn’t have any of that, he was a fucking mutant and like my ex-girlfriend, would lie when the truth would help him. I honestly don’t know how some people make it in this world sometimes. He is the one who gave his backpack away the second we got jumped in Venezuela. Well his dumb ass was carrying his drivers license and debit card (and camera) in his pack. I carry a pack usually but I never have anything important in it. All my money, cards, etc are kept in a pocket with Velcro and a zipper in the shorts I am wearing. Camera is in my pocket as well. I usually have water, sunscreen, chapstick, etc in my pack. Anyway, this moron lost this stuff and it all went downhill from there. While we were in Bonaire, Brian lent the guy 100 bucks to get by until he could get his new debit card sent down. Well the dumbshit blew through that in about 2 days using it to dick around on the internet and buy drinks for any girl who would talk to him. A few days later his Mommy sent him another 100 to get him by, again, he bought credit for a local cell phone, a phone charger, internet access, you know, all that important stuff. The whole time he is telling us about ten different stories about how the money is on it’s way, oh but somehow he is the only person on the fucking planet that moneygram/western union won’t work for and my favorite was when I told him just to wire transfer money to my account and I would pull it out of the ATM for him, a few days went by and I asked him if he had done it yet and he gave me a song and dance about how his bank (US Bank, a huge fucking chain) won’t let him wire transfer money because he doesn’t have a business account. Yeah. See what we were dealing with. So I had taken enough of being lied to and basically just ignored the prick. He pulled a lot of other shit but it isn’t worth writing about. Ultimately, we got to Curacao and I thought he was gonna cry when Brian told him last Sunday that he needed to pack his shit because he was off the boat Monday morning. We went into town and of course the money he said would be there, wasn’t. So we waited in some plaza while he called his Mommy again to bail him out. He told her all about the mean men that were kicking him off the boat for no reason and how it was our fault he got robbed. Priceless. I really wish I would have gotten a picture of the face he made when I finally snapped and told him that we were leaving and to meet us the following day in the same plaza and that we were keeping his passport until he had Brian’s money and a copy of an airline ticket off the island. Because he came in on this boat and I am listed as the Captain it falls on me to prove that he is leaving the island. When I check out of customs/immigration they ask for your clearance in. On that form it shows that you came into the country with a total of 3, me and two crew. Well to prove you didn’t just leave people on the island, when people leave the boat you have to take a copy of their flight itinerary down to the office and the agent has to sign them off your crew list. After hearing his whiny talk with his poor Mom, it was clear that he had no money at all (which I figured) and that she would have to send him the sum to pay back Brian as well as buy his plane ticket. So anyway, we left that dumb ass sitting in the plaza with all his shit, no money and no passport. The following day we met him as planned and he was sitting at the same bench talking to some teenage girl from South America with his Spanish translator book in front of him. We got everything sorted out and he met us at immigration after paying Brian back and I got him signed off my crew list. One small sidenote I thought was funny, he was big talk about how he didn’t care about leaving the boat and he would be flying to Bogota to backpack through Colombia and live on 8 dollars a day. Well when I took his passport and copy of his flight to immigration, I found it interesting that his flight was for the following morning back to Los Angeles. Guess Mommy finally got wise and told him she wasn’t financing his trip anymore and that his bitch ass was going home. Good riddance. Word of warning to any young girls in the Petaluma area, if some dipshit is telling you stories about what a great sailor he is and all about his travels down here, you might want to ask if he even has money to buy you a beer.

After getting rid of that dead weight, we caught one of the brutally unreliable and beat to hell buses from Willemstad back to Caracas Bay. We had met the owner of a local marina and he offered to give us a ride into town for the last night of Carnival and the big parade. Brian and I accepted and rode into town in the back of a stepside Chevy truck. There were 6 of us total and we had a great time watching the parade. I have some pics and video I will try and post soon, when I get a decent enough connection. We finished up a few errands yesterday and today I am headed out to go scuba diving on some wreck nearby. One of the other cruisers is gonna pick me up soon and we are supposed to ride scooters over to the dive shop. This weekend we are planning on having a few people to the boat for dinner. I’m also headed over (this afternoon or tomorrow) to see the local aquarium they have. I read an ad saying they have huge sharks but I’m skeptical. They do have a dolphin encounter thing that I am going to do where you swim with and learn about how they train the dolphins. This is a good island. A bit big for my taste. It’s tough to get around without a car and the buses just suck. I don’t mind riding them but they run weird schedules and are usually late. We are here for about 11 more days. So that catches me up. I’ll do my best to do shorter updates more often but as I said, getting internet is a bit sketchy here. Once I’m back in Bonaire I will be able to update regularly as I will be in the marina with wireless connection (and hot water!!! Hooray!!)