Curacao is the largest and busiest of the ABC islands with an enormous oil complex (up until a few decades ago, this was the second to Rotterdam in importance). We felt there was more of a commercial edge to this island as compared to Bonaire.
We had a typical Caribbean downwind sail to Curacao and having set off a couple of hours earlier than Babe, Bubbles and the Crazies, we were the first to arrive in Spanish Waters. We are now officially the ABBCS ( Amelie, Babe, Bubbles, Crazy Daisy & Skylark) sailing the ABCs (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao).
We’ve been so pleased in the Caribbean that checking in and out of the different countries, is so easy. In Curacao, our experience was not so good. From Spanish Water to customs, immigration and port authorities, is a one hour bus ride and having missed the bus late afternoon we met a Dutch cruiser who told us not to bother until the following day. This was a mistake! Whilst in Bonaire we had used the online checkin and arriving the next morning, first at Customs our friendly officer didn’t have a clue about his own checkin system. In the end he took our printed form and applied his various stamps and signatures. Babe did likewise but the other boats had to wait for a new officer to arrive who knew the system.
We then set off to Immigration, using the free ferry service that has replaced the “Floating Bridge” (Queen Emma Bridge) which currently is being renovated. Immigration duly chastised Stephen on not checking in on arrival “we’re open until 21.30, so there is no excuse”. With his charm, Stephen got away with a smile saying don’t do it again. We met the Port Captain as he was setting off for lunch and we had to return an hour and a half later, to pay our $10 anchoring fee. In the meantime we found a very pleasant bar.
Our next mission was to get several hire cars only to discover that with the Jazz festival all the normal outlets were out of cars. Paul used his male essence with one of the girls in Sixt to get an introduction to a local guy. He duly supplied us with cars. The lads collected the girls who had been let loose in Willemstad amongst the shops. Lots of purchases were made……… and this was only the start of a month’s stay!
The highlight of the stay was the North Sea Jazz Festival. This is an annual three day event when the island hosts international stars to perform. The ticket prices were expensive but worth every dollar. We attended the Friday night to be entertained by Enrique Iglesias, Emilie Sande, Lionel Ritchie and one of the Isley Brothers. The organisation was very impressive with plentiful food and drink outlets, with a great wine list rather than your cheap rubbish that is often on offer. Plenty of transport to take you to your carparks and security everywhere. With the Babes we got back to our car to find a note under the windscreen wipers, that we could call Bob if we needed directions back to the boat. With Stephen driving and Paul navigating we returned to Spanish Water to find that Bob and Leo had done an involuntary tour of the island! To see Bob Morgan's video of our festival visit press here.
For such a small island they put on a magnificient event and for anyone around Curacao at the beginning of September, we strongly recommend attending.
During our stay in Spanish Water we enjoyed many parties on one anothers boats, especially for our thirteenth wedding anniversary, which we hosted on Amelie.
Babes left us for Colombia, Elizabeth for America and Amelie and Crazy Daisy to Curacao Maine for boat jobs. This was the stressful part of our stay but necessary.
We first engaged the local engineering shop to test the compression on our generator engine. The results were pretty horrific; one cylinder, no compression, the other two, half what they should have been. We were advised by the engineer to throw away our generator and buy a new one - only $20,000 hole in our pocket! Leo arrived on the scene and together with a very helpful Mitsubishi agent in Amsterdam, lots of help from Leo and advice from Bob the generator was working again at a cost of 1,500 euros and three days work.
We used our stop as a working period servicing winches, main engine and generally ticking off items off our to do list.
Whilst working hard, we had some funny moments. Firstly, on our pontoon we had a strange looking Russian motorboat whose crew slept in a slowly disintergrating tent on the pontoon. Boat hooks and brooms are great tent poles! They fished for their supper using a hook and line, through the planks on the pontoon, crouched motionless waiting for a bite. In fact the crew seemed motionless all the time but friendly enough.
The best was the rat incident on Crazy Daisy. Stephen was alerted by Heather that she had discovered a rat on the bathing platform, which she obviously didn’t want on board but didn’t want to hurt it. Stephen the Hero took up their broom and tried to encourage it to go for a swim. No way…..the rat ran up the broom, which was flung away, ran towards Heather who squealed like a dying rat as she became airborne, as did the rat, who shot off the boat and landed at Debbie’s feet on the pontoon with a look on it’s face saying ‘What the f*@> was that about?” and scampered off into the water.
The Babes had told us that wine in Colombia was poor for choice and expensive. We spent an afternoon with Bubbles and Crazy Daisy, sampling Mitch’s wine selection from the Wine Factory. The original plan was to choose a white, rose and red to replenish our stock. What actually ensued was a very happy Mitch as between us we bought around 15 cases of wine and very happy punters, as we’d probably guzzled half a case before we left feeling very merry.
It wasn’t all work and no play! Karin, being the youngest of us all, celebrated her birthday KaKa style. Firstly there was Bubbles on Bubbles meeting Remco & Wilhem before changing outfits and heading for supper at a beach restaurant with our feet in the sand. On site at Curacao Marine was a thatched bar and meeting area, where we organised movie nights and barbecues. During this time, Bob and Heather were staying on board Amelie since Crazy Daisy was in the paintshop. Bob introduced us to his friend, Louis and we enjoyed time exploring the island with his local knowledge. Lunch at Captain Goodlife was a particularly memorable experience. Our host ran around in his swimming shorts with a fag between his fingers, talking ten to the dozen without breathing, generally acting as if he was running on jet fuel. Louis and Debbie had to go to the local barred Chinese supermarket for warm wine and beer, passing money through a grill. Captain Goodlife and his wife provided us with an exceptional meal and his four year old daughter ran around with a tortoise and a huge attitude. By complete contrast we later that day enjoyed sundowners at an upmarket bar on the coast. Later in our stay the four of us had a day out at Mambo beach and although we are not resort lovers, it was a fabulous day, the girls shopping and the boys chilling by the pool.
In Heather’s quest to introduce Amelie to interesting vegetarian food, she produced a healthy stuffed pepper meal. She asked for honest feedback to which Stephen’s response was “it would go well with a pork chop”. Thank god, Heather has a fantastic sense of humour and that we’ve got a freezer full of meat!
The delights of Wilemstad included the floating market ( Venezuelan produce is regularly brought over by boat and sold on the quayside), a Cuban cigar shop, a Cuban bar, Mundo Bizarro, where we enjoyed a number of get togethers and the Governor’s restaurant where Bob and Heather treated us to a very special meal to say thankyou for their stay on Amelie.
Curacao is certainly not on our top ten list of Caribbean islands despite the charm of Wilhemstad and it’s colonial buidings. The people were generally less friendly than the folk from Bonaire and for us apart from boat work there wasn’t much to attract us to go back again.