Escape From the Ordinary by Julie Bradley

Author:Julie Bradley [Bradley, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781732918405
Publisher: Close Reach Publishing
Published: 2018-12-13T05:00:00+00:00

*****

Places as wonderful as Bonaire are dangerous to sailors with world-voyaging ambitions. I could have stayed for a long time, but hurricane season was nearly over, and it was time to depart for Cartagena, Colombia. We picked a date for departure and discussed taking down our grand porch awning a few days in advance, but in the end decided to leave it up for sun protection until right before we sailed. That would turn out to be a bad decision.

*****

Since Trinidad, we had endured torrid, tropical summer heat. Sometimes the sun and temperature made it too hot to sleep in our beds below decks, so we chose to sleep on cushions in the cockpit. To make it livable, in Trinidad we had a vast canvas awning built that we called our porch. The porch ran from the bow to the stern, creating another layer of living space while blocking the equatorial sun. It made such a difference that at midday we could lie on deck beneath the awning and read a book. The extra insulation also made it cooler for sleeping below decks in our stateroom (bedroom) at night. However, the porch was a gigantic stack of multiple canvas awnings, which took a good two hours to put up and connect. We only erected the porch when we would be at a location long enough to make the investment of time worthwhile. What a difference it made in steamy Venezuela, where little breeze came into the marina, as well as in Bonaire, where it was a drier, but nonetheless scorching heat. In Bonaire, we treated our deck like a real porch, leaving cushions and even our bikes beneath its protection from the sun. That complacency was almost our undoing.

Bonaire is somewhat boomerang shaped with the western, lee side providing shelter for boats. Trade winds normally sweep across the island from the long side, but the island protects sailboats on moorings from wave action. Ordinarily that made for a comfortable and safe anchorage, but Bonaire is only 40 miles from Venezuela and its rainy season. Storms usually stay close to Venezuela, and normally we were not affected. It was an evening pastime for Glen and me to sit high and dry under our canvas porch, eating popcorn while watching the lightning storm pass across the distant sky. Every once in a while, a storm over Venezuela moved a little too close and caused a wind reversal that affected Bonaire more than I would have expected.

Wind reversals are rare but terrifying events for sailboats in Bonaire. Many a boat at anchor has been driven onto shore by those powerful winds that push the moored boats toward land. There was little, and often no warning of those dangerous wind shifts.

Just as Glen and I were preparing for bed one night, we felt the winds gust to over 40 MPH, and It’s Enough, with its huge awnings creaking and swaying, tugged at the anchor from the wrong direction. “I think it’s a wind reversal! What else can it be?” I shouted, throwing on a long shirt of Glen’s as I rushed up to help.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.