ART DECK-OH .......................

ART DECK-OH ........ Now that's the art of painting a deck ........ We have not updated our blog for quite some time ....... Sorry about that ...... But we've been busy doing stuff on " ARITA ", like painting the deck with water-proofing CETOL that seeps right into the wood and seals those micro-cracks..... (Doesn't it look just terrific) ..... And painting the cabin top and the sides in gloss white, and both masts in chocolate brown....... And re-sealing the window frames ...... Now mast-painting is truly an 'art form' ........ Try dangling in a bosun's chair for hours, while attempting to paint a mast in 15-20 knots of wind, with the paint being torn out of your brush like a tornado ....... Anyone would say "Give it up, man", but every day brings the same wind force and therefore you would never get it done ..... So we have simply persevered .... Sad to say, but I end up with almost as much brown paint on me, as was put on the mast...... Oh, well, such is the life of a travelling cruiser ......And anyway a little thinners goes a long way ....... But for 'real art' we need only look ten yards away to our neighbours' houseboat where Timo and Annemieke jointly produce magnificent works of free form art ...... Inspiring sculptures first created by nature and then enhanced with oils ...........The collection of driftwood that Timo brings home from his sailing adventures are then made even more beautiful by Annemieke, the artist, who paints in glorious blues that depict the deep oceans surrounding CURACAO ....... And if you have never seen an 'outdoor studio' ..... Well, you have now ......



And what a studio to work in .................With the yacht " BLUE MARLIN " on one side, and their runabout on the other ............. Island living at its best .... Do a double-click on the art works below, and you will see what we mean .............



And these works are far from finished ......................



The water around the houseboat and in this part of Spanish Waters is beautifully clear for what is basically an enclosed harbour ............. Despite the wind, the waters stay relatively calm ..... A great place to anchor for the three months of hurricane season, for the permanent houseboat attests to that .......... " ARITA's " mast is just visible above the roofline ....



You have to be close to see the beauty of the creations, and you have to stand at the Ocean's door to get the full impact ...........



Timo took this group of four for an overnight sail to the island of "Little Curacao", and came back with a nice load of driftwood ............ Imagine sailing right up to your houseboat ........ Just awesome ...... And Timo took the two dogs with him for the trip ...... A yellow Labrador and a Cocker Spanial .... Do a double-click and you will see that 'bundle of yellow happiness' 'retrieving' the genoa on the foredeck ....



Needless to say 'Rakker' (rascal) and 'Tycha' (Goddess of Happiness) were so happy to be home ...... Dogs and boats, or at least sailboats, don't really go together ......



We have had a most wonderful time with our water-borne neighbours, including a Friday night trip to town to see the street musicians, art shows, and a little dancing in the plaza to some Latin music and salsa ...........



But then Monday morning comes around, and we dinghy into the fisherman's dock to catch the free bus to the supermarket ....... Not just the supermarket, but the marine stores, the laundromat (they call it the washerette) and the hardware stores ......... And while we wait for the bus to arrive, we watch and observe the fishermen's catch ........ I mean, how could you not .......



Shopping never takes long, but the supermarket has a great air-conditioned cafeteria with free coffee, and we mean 'good' coffee ......... We get an hour to do it all, and then the free bus takes us back again to Spanish Waters and the anchorage ......



Self-exaplanatory really ...... Get on the bus at 10am, come back at 11:30am ..... You've now managed to get off the boat, had a taste of A/C in the bus and in the supermarket, you've loaded up on a few non-essentials, dipped your spoon into some free coffee, walked a bit, and you can now face the rest of the steamy equatorial day once more ....... Not a bad run, really, ....... The free bus runs six days a week ......



Beautiful flowers are everywhere, including the cactus plants, whose flowers produces this fleshy fruit that is incredibly sweet to eat ...........



Overlooking our anchorage with "ARITA" just out of sight, as is the houseboat just behind the little coral outcrops ........ And we are not the only ones interested in the cactus fruit for here is an 'oriole' going to town on one of them ......



Beautiful days and glorious sunsets ............ And to the north of us, hurricane "IRENE" is passing through the Caribbean island chain, leaving more than a million people in Puerto Rico without power, as it smashes its way through Hispaniola and onto the lower Bahama islands ............



Outside one of the hotels we saw these railway 'skips' used in the bygone days in the quarry that still mines limestone today ....... The company has been in existence for probably two hundred years or so, having begun with the excavation of the phosphate deposits of 'guano' known as 'white gold' from the little island of "Klein Curacao" in the 1800s ......



That hotel on the rocky shores of the inlet into SPANISH WATERS is huge, with beautifully manicured gardens with a topsoil of mostly gravel and rock ............ Extensive sprinkler systems keep it going and keep it green only because the hotel has its own desalination plant ..........



And the sand on the beach is really more of a coarse-grained coral strip on which selected plants seem to thrive .................



This being a calm day, we take a dinghy trip on the open ocean and see the island shore from a different perspective ....... Large limestone outcrops with sparse landing places in between, and the remains of colonial fortifications .......... After all, the harbour that lies just inside these hills was worth defending ....... Deep sheltered water in an area just outside of the huricane belt that could be easily defended was prime 'real estate' a century or more ago ......



We watched the fishing boat "Baby Love" come steaming into the entrance channel ...... Now they either have a boat load of fish on board, or someone needs to man the bilge pump real soon ........ And just outside is another one of those oil drilling rigs being repaired or perhaps waiting for another contract ........



Being an island first inhabited by fisherman, the tradition has carried on with little change in boat design all of which are locally built ..... A two-man operation with boats small enough to manage ....... The fishing is mostly in deep water with hand lines and just on dusk they all come steaming back in .......



Our friend Timo has shown us the fruit on this plant and pointed out the millions of lice clinging to the sweet oozing nectar ....... In a day or so, it will produce seeds with wings and parachutes...... And he proceeded to show us this cactus plant, playing 'hide-and-seek' with another, by hiding behind the street lamp post ...... The things you can see when you travel around CURACAO are just endless ....... Stick close by ..... There's more coming ..... But later ..... First there's more painting to do on "ARITA" ........ Toe-rails are next ............



And this is the next morning's entry as the seed sack for the photo above explodes and feather-weights go flying ........... A miracle of nature ........ We are off to Florida now for about a month to witness another miracle of nature with the "Queen of Florida and the Bahamas" becoming a grandmother and the birth of 'Princess Sophie' ........ We will keep you posted ........ Meaning, we will do another posting ......... Sort of 'foreign correspondent from the front' type posting ......... Could be fun ..... "ARITA" has three anchors down, and that should hold her even in a decent blow ........ Hope so! ......

TREASURES OF THE BILGE ........................

Days are rolling into weeks, as we sit in our quiet anchorage in Spanish Waters, CURACAO ....... So named, for it was in this backwater that the Spanish first built their settlement back in the 1600s, while further down the coast, the Dutch took possession of the other narrow harbour entrance and first built the NASSAU fort to protect their settlement of WILLEMSTAD ...... That harbour opens into a huge deep water area, where today there are the oil refineries, the cargo docks and all the trappings of commercial trans-shipment of goods to Venezuela and other Caribbean islands. .............. Needless to say, the Dutch took final possession of the three islands of BONAIRE, CURACAO and ARUBA ............



Whenever a vessel approaches this narrow entrance at WILLEMSTAD, the foot bridge swings away and a vessel enters like this one, assisted by tug boats ...... A very careful maneuver with not too much room to spare ...... The fly-over bridge is so high, that even cruise ships pass easily beneath this four-lane traffic bridge ......



We took another drive around the island with Peter and Jutte from the yacht "FREYA" before they left, and came across one of the few swimming beaches available on CURACAO ...... Good swimming beaches are few and far between and this one was really crowded ..... Most of the shore line is rocky with significant cliffs ........



That's not necessarily bad, for it is always a thrill to jump from a cliff ......



Couldn't help but stop again to take another look at these wild flamingos ....... Just beautiful, in their pink and crimson regalia ....... Totally absorbed in their shovel-nose feeding routine ..... You have to keep your distance though, because they frighten easily ...... I would too, if I had to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with my head underwater ......



Must hurt their eyes to be underwater like that, in water that is so much saltier due to the evaporation, for these areas are former salt ponds and the edges are lined with salt crystals ..............



Back in the 'Spanish Waters' anchorage, there is an impressive mountain to windward of us ...... Now when we say to windward, we mean TO WINDWARD for it blows constantly at least fifteen to twenty knots, and always from the same easterly direction ...... This mountain is made entirely of limestone and is being mined and exported on a grand scale .... We have lined up that excursion for yet another day ..... Part of the open-cut quarry is visible on the right, if you do a double-click on the photo ...... Most of the island is limestone and marine fossils are clearly visible wherever you go ....... The bird-life is also beautiful despite the absence of significantly large trees, for most of the vegetation is acacia thorn-tree scrub, with cactus ........ And dry as a bone ...........



The few coconut palm trees that are found are all planted, and the birds seem to delight in picking at the young fruit, thus guaranteeing that few trees will ever naturally regenerate, unlike this one that is well protected ........



CURACAO turns out to be a huge European holiday destination for sun-baking, fishing, diving and other water sports .......... Our anchorage is daily filled with flying wind-surfers, kayaks and other sailing dinghies ...... Fun to watch, and to realize that people from Europe are in heaven here, with the constant blue sky, the warm clear water and the tropical ambiance of the island life style ......



Very close to us on "ARITA" is a delightful couple who sailed from Europe to CURACAO and then extended their stay by settling and building a house-boat alongside their yacht " BLUE MARLIN " ...... Now surely, that is the best of both worlds ..... Annemieke, is an artist and she does incredible aqua oil paintings, while her husband Timo, is a boat builder and has his own workshop, also on a floating platform ...... He is Antillean born and bred ..... And between them they have a golden 'Labradog' and a rust-coloured 'Cocker Spaniard' ...... O.K., .....Just checking to see if you are really reading this ............



Some time ago, TIMO and ANNEMIEKE decided to build this incredible nature trail to the top of one of the nearby mountains ..... Mostly to do with taking the dogs for a daily walk, and over time this trail-making has been extended, so that numerous beautiful nature walks now exist for all to enjoy ...... Trail-making tools hang on a branch as you arrive in your dinghy .....



We went with them last Sunday to climb the mountain, and one of the first things Timo pointed out was the 'Brazil' tree ...... This is the tree from which a very red dye is produced that the Indians valued as face-paint ..... It is the tree for which 'BRAZIL' is named ..... The other tree with its branches going in all directions was highly prized for making wooden donkey 'saddles' on which the bags of salt could be carried ....... This is one of the few trees that is adapted to 'breathe' through its bark, and not its leaves ......



Just look at the way the stem of this 'Brazil' tree inter-twines with itself .... Do a double-click on it and see this freak of nature or perhaps there is a reason for it ........ This 'skin and bones' tree ...... There used to be a prison in AMSTERDAM, Timo told us, that was known as the 'rasp-huis' in which prisoners were forced to rasp the bark of the imported stumps of the 'Brazil' tree to obtain the 'red dye' material .... The tree stem is already near bone dry and incredibly hard, and probably more so after an ocean voyage in the hold of a ship ..... Rasping, day-in and day out ought to make anyone think twice about their anti-social ways, don't you think? ......



A steep climb to see the fantastic views over 'Spanish Waters' anchorage ....... And as we near the top we come across the remains of some goat bones and the magical sculpture of a wooden 'drummer boy' ...... Timo, our tour guide, trail blazer, trail-maker, historian, and breathing-living ecologist, tells us that he placed it here after retrieving it from one of his home-renovation projects ...... He even lights it up with a secretly-hidden battery over Christmas .... Walking up in the afternoon to switch it on, and back up again in the morning to switch it off ........ We will talk to him about getting solar panels 'borrowed' from the parking meters in WILLEMSTAD ......



Even the bright yellow finches make their nests in the hollowed out cavities of the limestone, while certain parakeets dig out little caves in the termite nests ..... The marine fossils are clearly visible in the limestone that make up the island's terraces ..............



But the view from the top is spectacular ............ Just awesome ..... The drummer boy must enjoy it, no end ........ That's "ARITA" with the green sail covers anchored near T & A's houseboat and yacht the "BLUE MARLIN" that they built themselves out of strip-plank mahogany and resin ......... Two very remarkable people ............



You can definitely now see that it's a 'Drummer boy sculpture' because from down below it is not so obvious what he is doing ........ What, with all that arm waving, etc ........



And as we climb down the mountain we re-enter the cactus world, although the trail is beautifully clean and easy walking, and spiky-free ............



Still trying to find out the name of these magnificent orange and black feathered birds ......... Believe it or not, but this photo on the left is the stem of a cactus plant that has to be at least a hundred years old ....... Perfect place for a cactus ..... Dry and hot with an occasional shower .............



We mean, who is going to go near you with defenses like that .......



We did find a dead cactus plant and we saw the woody 'skeleton' beneath the outer thorny layer ........... All very interesting, if you are into this sort of thing .... You have to understand that we have three months to spend in CURACAO for hurricane season, so we need to get out and about ..... But it really is interesting to see a dead cactus like this ....... I mean, have you ever seen a dead one this big .......



With September just around the corner, TIMO gave me a hand with setting out a second anchor ....... This one we will leave behind when we depart in October/November ..... The 10mm chain is secured to an old car chassis ........ Still wondering how that car got there ....... Never mind .......



Oh, I nearly forgot to mention the thing about 'TREASURES OF THE BILGE' ..... But would you know it, the other day while looking for some cable ties beneath the bunks I came across some socks with bottles in them ...... And those socks contained none other than two bottles of that wonderful Bahamain Mango rum .... Two whole bottles .... Whatever I said in the last blog posting about being out of 'This nectar of the Gods' was obviously a lie ..... We now have some more .... Should last at least the rest of the hurricane season ........ We put drink bottles in socks to stop the noise when we sail .......Now as to the other photo,..... Well, there is this bar in WILLEMSTAD, that serves drinks ........ Do not ask for a 'shot' or a 'shooter' or you may just get more than you bargained for .............