March 01-18, 2004 Curacao, Curacao, Curacao

March 1-18, 2004 Curacao, Curacao, Curacao We really planned to leave. Really we did. We wanted to go to Aruba. Somehow though, Curacao sunk its hooks into us and we stayed. Well, that and we also ordered some additional items from Marine Technical Trading. On March 1, we met Nat, Jenny and Corinne from Helios. They are an interesting group of people. Nat and his mother Jenny are from New Zealand and Corinne is from Germany. Nat and Jenny had been working in England, and decided to buy a boat and sail back to New Zealand rather than fly. Actually they wanted to do the "overland" route by car, but with the situation in the middle east, they opted for a boat. Corinne helped them bring the boat from Europe to Panama. We got to know them at happy hour at Serafundys, and then invited them back to Nightwinds. We spent the evening getting to know each other. On March 2, Helios invited us over for sundowners. We had a great evening. Of course, the next day we did nothing. On March 3, It rained and rained all day 30 minutes of rain, 30 minutes without rain. Each time it started to rain the wind would hit 35 to 40 knots. It made for a long day! The boat held fine and after the first couple of these we could relax each time it happened. But the first couple of 40 knots puts you on edge in case the anchor drags. We went up to happy hour at Sarafundys, where we met John off of Althea, Cristoph who we had not seen since Grenada and Tao off of Double M. On March 7, we talked with Krina from Topaz. She does a lot of canvas work. Our franken-bimi has a couple of zippers that have to be replaced because they have lost teeth. She looked at our bimi, and said that it would be easy to repair, so we took it down and gave it to her. On March 8, we went to the grocery store and to the hardware store. We picked up the necessary items to strengthen the bimi frame so that there isn't quite so much stress on the canvas. The canvas was supporting the frame, not the other way around. It made the frame feel much stronger. On March 11, Jan on Nerida arrived from Bonaire. After she got anchored, we went to happy hour with her. On March 15, we met Hans from Ninfa Di Awa for the happy hour at Serafundys. As we caught up on what was going on, Hans told us about the Around Klein Curacao race that he would be racing in on Sunday. Klein means small and each of the ABC islands have a small island off of them, so they are named klein (small in Dutch) and the name of the bigger island. Then, he invited Jan and me to join him on the race. We wound up closing the bar that night. Wow what a night it was too! On March 18, we helped Jan and Teo repair Jan's wind pilot. Actually, Teo and Jan repaired the wind pilot, we just provided the extra muscle to break the seized parts apart. Of course, this meant we had to have a party, so on March 19, we joined Jan aboard Nerida to celebrate