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! ......
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