Diver's Paradise

Hi everyone! We’re touching base from Bonaire: happy, healthy, and LOVING this diver's paradise!

Alright, first things first. When we arrived in Bonaire, we had a slip at Harbour Village Marina. As you may remember from our previous blog posts, the only reason we even got a spot in that marina was because a friend whom we met in Curaçao helped us out BIG TIME. Harbour Village Marina is a beautiful place to have the boat – WiFi, unlimited water, and showers being the real treat – but the cost of such a treat was a bit more than our budget can sustain. We had booked and paid for two weeks in the marina, with the hope that we could move to a mooring ball. Bonaire is a completely protected marine park, and there is absolutely no anchoring allowed anywhere around the island. As a result, STINAPA (the local foundation in charge of marine regulations) created ~44 moorings for

private vessels to use while enjoying Bonaire. These moorings come with a cost of $10.00 per night. In the marina, we were paying $33.00 per night – NOT in the budget! So, we knew if we didn’t get a mooring ball then we’d have a wonderful two weeks in Bonaire, but two weeks is all it could be and we’d have to move on to a more affordable destination.

Sunsets & sunrises at Harbour Village Marina

Each morning after arriving in Bonaire we’d be up at 6:00 AM and take our dinghy on a mooring ball hunt, but to no avail. Every mooring was taken, and many sailors had already coordinated with buddy boats as far as handing their mooring over when they left. These spots are first come, first serve, and highly sought after. We were beginning to think our time in Bonaire would be short but sweet.

One of Paul’s favorite sayings is to “make friends in the parking lot”. Well in our case, a marina would be the boat version of a parking lot! On August 4th, a 36’ Bavaria named “Pure” pulled alongside us in the marina. We offered help with their bow lines as they were docking the boat, and ended up chatting afterwards. They are a local Dutch couple who live on Bonaire, and run sailing day tours on their boat. They had mentioned that previously their boat was in another marina – Nautico Marina – but since they do not live on the boat and have a house on the island, it was too far out of the way to get to, especially if hazardous weather cropped up and they had to move the boat off the dock. Moving to Harbour Village was easier for them to access their boat for the tours, and worry free for any weather issues (called ‘reversals’). Since they moved out, there was now an empty space at Nautico (which was full until November when we contacted them in Curaçao originally). Jos (the captain of the 36’ Bavaria) asked us if we’d like to take his spot; he was more than willing to call the owner of the marina and coordinate the “exchange”. We had our fingers, toes, and eyes crossed that this would work out; the cost of being in Nautico Marina per month was about on par with being on a mooring ball. Well, the ‘swap’ ended up working out, and we happily moved our boat out of Harbour Village and into Nautico Marina the next day – with permission to stay until our tourist visa runs out on Halloween! YAHOO! We can stay in Bonaire!!

Now that we’re settled into our slip and know that we have a spot of paradise on this incredibly busy little island, we have been picking away at our to-do list to make the boat more homey. Paul’s been working on installing cabin fans that run on DC power so that we can avoid using our alternator. So far we have 4/5 installed – two in the main cabin living area – and two in the aft sleeping cabin. There’s one more to go in the forward cabin and that’s on the to-do list. It makes the WORLD of difference, especially in 32 degree heat with 65-80% humidity! We’re also continuing to plug away at the never-ending teak deck job, which is very rewarding in itself (now that we’ve got the hang of it). It’s also motivating when we get compliments from fellow sailors on how our decks look for the age of the boat – the blood, sweat, and tears are paying off!

Bonaire is known as “Diver’s Paradise” – it’s 86 dive sites on Bonaire and Klein Bonaire offer an incredible variety of coral and fish species, as well as large predatory fish like jack trevally. We’re plugging away at seeing as many of these different sites as possible, and try to get in a dive, snorkel, or freedive every day. One of our favorite places to dive is on the ‘House Reef’ (so we’ve named it) just off the back of our transom! Where our boat is docked are concrete pillars that the stern and spring lines attach to. Well, there is just the happiest little ecosystem right on our starboard stern pillar that we love checking out. We’ve seen many of my favorite Bonaire fish – the French Angelfish – as well as Cornet Fish ‘sleeping’ against the keel of our boat, a friendly Speckled Moray Eel, and even a Spotted Eagle Ray soaring past. Pretty awesome!

We plan on staying in Bonaire for as long as we possibly can, which is a grand total of 3 months for a Canadian tourist visa. That means we’ll be here until

Halloween, and then we’ll have to begrudgingly say good-bye to this diver’s paradise. Our next stop? If we have the right weather window, it’ll be back “home” – to St. Maarten! It’s the perfect stop for boat maintenance & repairs and seeing old friends before heading east… stay tuned!

That’s all for now, but we’ll continue to keep you posted! We’re working on going through GoPro footage of our diving and snorkeling and will be publishing a ‘water’ themed blog post soon. We’ll leave you with a short video for now – freediving a wreck at the dive site ‘Something Special’.

Sending our love!

Toni & Paul

EDIT: August 10th

The early bird got the worm this morning!

Each morning we listen to something called the “Cruiser’s Net” on the VHF. At 8:00, Monday through Saturday, a cruiser ‘hosts’ the net for any and all other cruisers to tune into. We go through any emergency/safety issues, the weather forecast, introductions for new boats and goodbyes for any departing boats, ‘treasures of the bilge’ (buy/sell/trade), social events, and usually a sailing joke to finish. When we first arrived to Bonaire, someone recommended we tune into the net each morning to see if we might listen in on any departures and be able to snag a mooring ball. Well today was the day! A cruiser on the net mentioned they saw an empty mooring in the deep blue water, just out front of Nautico Marina. We hopped in our dinghy so fast I don’t even think we put pants on!! We grabbed our ball fender, quickly used a sharpie to write “SV PANTA RHEI,” and we scooped up that mooring with giddiness and delight. Funnily enough, while we were picking up the mooring, a friend of ours named Harry zipped over on his dinghy. He was going to put a fender on for us, on our behalf! It’s good to know we have some solid friends here who have our back. So today we’ve moved off the dock onto a ball, and we will be staying put till Halloween! We’re moored in about 42 metres of water, which is hella deep (in the marina we were in 1.9 metres of water as a comparison). It’ll be perfect to jump right off the back for scuba diving, and Paul will have a great place to practice freediving to his new goal of 40 meters. We’re so thrilled to be able to enjoy Bonaire, worry free. Yay!! Will keep you posted of any changes or updates!

P.S.S. (?)

Here's a video from our sail from Curaçao to Bonaire! WiFi issues couldn't upload this video previously, but we finally got it uploaded. It's a pretty cool video that shows how much our boat 'heels' when sailing close hauled into the wind. Enjoy!