We had a nice easy sail over from Bonaire with an hour or so dead downwind sailing. Since our next leg after this is going to be quite long and almost entirely downwind we decided to try our hand at proper downwind sailing.
We made good time to Curaçao and settled in for the evening after a swim ashore with our friends from Don’t Panic whom we have criss-crossed paths with since the Dominican Republic last spring. The beach is pretty. One side of the beach is part of Sandals resort and the other side is open to the public. There was pretty white sand, a dinghy dock and even freshwater showers. Logistically, this is my favorite beach we’ve been to while cruising. The water was cool and refreshing and we returned to this beach several more times with them and with other friend boats.
The clearing in process here is about 18,000 years old and takes the entire crew literally all day. Normally only the skipper goes to shore to clear in and normally it takes about one hour. Curaçao requires that you go to three separate buildings (a first for us) that are quite far apart and that the entire crew is present (kind of a first since Bonaire told me that after clearing me in so I guess it isn’t necessary unless you are somehow even sketchier than I am).
The walking bridge in downtown is pretty cool. It is basically a bunch of boats that are attached to each other via the bridge sections and also attached to one side of the bay entrance. Every hour or so they fire up the diesel engines and drive the bridge out of the way for boat traffic to come into the bay. We got to watch it a couple of times and even got to see this random dude who felt it necessary to flip off the entire world.
There were two upsides to the process. Where we anchored, which is a very well-protected lagoon about a 45 minute bus ride from downtown Willemstad, there isn’t much to see. So, we took the day and enjoyed walking around the beautiful UNESCO heritage town of Willemstad. Since we ended up only staying in Curaçao for a week, the clearing in and out were actually the only times we went to town.
The other upside was that when we got to the bus stop first thing in the morning, we met up with our friends from Mamita whom we met last year in Grenada. They had just arrived and were clearing in as well so our full day in town was basically just sightseeing with friends with some bureaucracy peppered in here and there.
In the anchorage, we got to meet back up with our Canadian friends from Passat. We were in Anse Mitan with them last year and have crossed paths a bit here and there. We anchored right near them and between proximity to Passat, Don’t Panic, and Mamita, we were spending parts of every day with friends. We even finally met the owner of Orion (a huge 90 foot catamaran that was anchored next to us all hurricane season last year in Grenada) and his sons. We went aboard the boat and took a tour, etc. It is really, really nice.
Nearby there was a cool tugboat wreck at a beach that has a huge oil rig right at the beach. It was very unique and somehow beautiful in its own right. The snorkeling was nice and shallow and there were tons of fish and an old canon in the boat.
At night the oil rig was lit up very brightly which wrecks the stargazing but kind of felt like Christmas. It was strange.
I went back to spread some of my dad’s ashes when Passat’s crew was taking their dog walking the next morning. We walked up to a small fort nearby as well that had a decent view of Tugboat Beach and the anchorage of Spanish Waters.
Curaçao is really well set up to keep cruisers busy with activities. Since it is smack in the middle of the strongest trade winds and is pretty flat it is perfect for windsurfing, and foil boarding. People that stay all season all end up taking up one of those activities and the nearby surf school has summer camps for kids etc. There is burger nights on Tuesday, cruiser’s mixer on Wednesday, a big party at the surf school on Thursday… It can be exhausting, but also familiar to many to get into a groove and have a fixed routine. We certainly enjoyed Grenada for that very reason last year.
But, our main reason for coming south was to catch weather to Panama and after just a few days a hurricane far north of us was set to suck the energy out of the area to set us up for a decent passage west. So we decided to take the window, along with our friends from Mamita.
We didn’t spend as long in Curaçao as we would have liked and didn’t really get to see the island the way we wanted, but Panama calls. It was great after two months alone to catch up with several boats full of friends and now we’re looking forward to meeting up with the Low Expectations crew and staying with Mamita for a while as we all head west.
