All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

I think we’ve spent just the right amount of time in Curacao. I’m no longer overly apprehensive about the passage and Lee and I are both sick of the bugs and heat, which are always worse in port. Lee has been driving us around in psycho traffic for almost a week and he deserves a medal. We returned the rental car this afternoon, leaving only tasks around the boat for the end of the day.

Checking in/out with customs and immigration is always an experience. Nothing will ever match the insanity in the D.R.but Curacao doesn’t make it easy either. The customs building is in the Punda waterfront area of Willemstad and immigration is on the other side of the harbor, a long walk through the cruise ship and commercial port area. When we checked out of customs this morning the officer spent 10 minutes searching a binder for our paperwork, messing the the crooked d-rings to flip the pages, before Lee persuaded him that he was looking in the wrong year – Pirat arrived here in 2012.
The immigration office was a tiny, air-conditioned oasis full of people waiting for their papers. The officer there was the same one who checked us in last year (that’s the second time that’s happened). We encountered a giant iguana on the road in our travels this morning. It took its time getting out of the way and bobbed its head at our Kia in annoyance.
Here’s the tally from the produce market (a line of docked boats sells fruit and vegetables from Venezuela):
1 Pineapple
1 papaya
2 bunches of bananas
4 mangoes
6 oranges
1 giant avocado
9 or so little bell peppers
1 cabbage
3 giant carrots
3 cucumbers
1 bag of potatoes
2 bags of mysterious little things that kind of look like tiny apples (the vendor threw those in without us asking for them)

I have a good fruit net set up this time I think. There is nothing worse than fruit flying all over the boat while you’re sailing.

It’s late. We are mostly ready. There is strange, marching band music playing over the hill.

We hope to check in on the blog via sat phone internet as we head towards Puerto Rico tomorrow. It should take about 3 days and 2 nights to get where we’re going.

Wish us fair winds! We’re leaving on a Friday, an unlucky day to start a voyage…oops.