Chaos in Curacao

Every so often, you wake up and hope it’s a quiet, relaxing day - especially after a night of great food and friends aboard Vagabond. We were invited over to Lili and Otto’s boat for dinner and were treated to an international feast to celebrate their varied backgrounds – she’s Swiss, he’s Hungarian and they both grew up in lived in and sailed from South Africa. Each course of the dinner featured a dish from one of the countries. It was wonderful and a real gourmet feast with great conversation and wine to go along with the dinner. So we stayed out late – consumed some wine – and were ready for a calm day!

But the headline gives it away, doesn’t it? For a few weeks, we’ve been anchored at the front of the bay – sort of the ”penthouse” of the anchorage – top floor, great view – nobody in front of us and not many around us. We liked it! Then on Thursday, an Italian boat comes in and anchors very close on our port side. Another boat comes in on Friday and anchors in front of us.

On Saturday morning, the boat in front of us drags at anchor and so he goes to reset it. The wind is quite intense and squalls are coming through with higher gusts and rain. As he’s trying to reset his anchor, another boat comes in and drops his anchor RIGHT in front of us – causing the re-anchoring boat to yell to him that he’s re-anchoring. This guy says, “Too bad, my anchor’s down and I’m not moving.” Nice guy. This is a single hander with an attitude! He’s anchored VERY close to us. We tell him that he’s way too close and he says “wait until I put my snubber on – I’ll be even closer!” He’s probably less than 15 feet in front of our bow – and it’s not an attractive, well-maintained boat. It’s a gusty day and everyone is swinging quite a bit. But he has no intention of moving.

Really Close!

After a bit, the first boat that dragged (and has re-anchored) and this knucklehead leave to go and clear into the country. Knucklehead comes back pretty quickly (less than an hour) and takes down his yellow flag. There is no way he could have cleared with customs, immigration and harbor authority in that amount of time. But he acts like he has. About this time, the other boat is now dragging again and is right between the close Italian boat and our boat. All but one of the crew from the Italian boat also left the boat earlier. The guy left – speaks little English and is obviously not a boater! So he is at a loss of what to do. At this point, several dinghies are in the water, near the boat trying to help. Knucklehead gets on board and “takes over.” The crew of Astarte decides to head back to Astarte. Now the entertainment begins. They manage to drop a lot more chain (scope) and hope the boat’s anchor grabs. However, they fail to take the snubber off first (until Michael yells at them to do so) – so they were simply putting out a bunch of chain that would do absolutely no good. They sort that out and start moving the dragging boat through the anchorage having started the engine. They are moving the boat without the anchor being pulled up – duh! So, they manage to catch the Italian boat’s anchor with the dragging boat’s anchor. This now causes the Italian boat to move and be at risk of also dragging. (and freaking out the non-english speaking person left on the boat who is on deck in very skimpy underwear (not a pretty site). Someone dives in the water to try to untangle the two anchors – scary, dangerous and risky – but it gets done. After several tries they re-anchor the original dragging boat (after almost wrapping the prop with a line.) It was very entertaining to watch – but it does show how important it is to be sure your anchor is set – AND – not anchor on top of someone else. We still have the boat right in front of us with little room should he drag. He probably doesn’t have insurance either.

On a positive note, several friends of ours on other boats arrived in Curacao today – Serene with Mel and Joanie; Rapscallion with Trudy and Dennis and Joule with Nani and Peter. It will be fun to catch up with them this week. They were all boarded by the Coast Guard either while they were coming in – or once they were anchored. There is a lot of Coast Guard activity today – several boats, planes and helicopters.

Great day for Sunfish sailing.

We did watch some fun sunfish races today in Spanish Waters. There is a regatta this weekend – so tomorrow there should be more races. These tiny boats were flying. We saw some collisions, near collisions, good tacking battles, a turtled boat and some excellent sailing by the local boaters. We had a good view and enjoyed the races.

Starboard!!!!!!!!

Yes, he turtled it!

Bad news – the propane didn’t come back this Friday as promised. Bummer. Now we have to wait until Tuesday night. Of course, there’s a decent weather window Monday and Tuesday – but we won’t be leaving on that one.