January 19 - 20, 2005 - Leaving, Arriving

The morning went extremely well. We burned through all of the stuff we needed to do to get the boat ready to travel. Of course, it also helped that we worked yesterday as well! We settled back to relax about 11:00 or so. We were still hoping to get the remaining two pieces of mail before we needed to put the tender on deck. At 1:00, the mail still had not arrived, so we put the tender on deck, and made our final preparations. Before raising anchor, we called DINA to let Jeandar know that we were heading to check out so he could notify Immigration of our situation. We raised anchor and headed to the customs dock. We tied up and I headed to the Customs office. I was almost done there when the Immigration guy came to our boat. He and Mike talked until I got back. He cleared us out and we chatted for a little while longer before he left. We, in turn, left the dock and returned to the anchorage. We spent a quiet evening and went to bed early since we were getting up at "O'dark thirty" in the morning. On January 20, we left for Curacao. Why is it that in two trips from Aruba to Curacao, we have lost an engine each time? We woke up at 0800 GMT (0400 local time) so that we could have breakfast, raise anchor, and head for Curacao. When we left, it was really dark, so Mike asked me to spot light the buoy. This buoy is normally lit, but really, it must have stopped working sometime over night! We cleared the channel, and I went back to work securing the anchors and fore deck. As we were getting near the tip of Aruba, I noticed that the transmission pressure on our port engine was low. I went to the engine room and saw that we had blown a transmission oil cooler hose. We stopped the engine and discussed our options. Ultimately we decided to continue on. Mike continued on watch while I went to the engine room to try to patch the hose. Unfortunately the patch did not hold, so we were making the trip on one engine. Surprisingly it was an enjoyable trip. We had no wind, so we had no waves to deal with, just a huge swell coming from the north, right on the beam. This made for a gentle up and down motion on the boat, most of the time. About 10 miles from Curacao, we heard a noise that we thought must have been a helicopter. It turned out to be our starboard engine running dry exhaust. Something had stopped the water flow! We stopped the engine and I headed into the engine room to close the seacock so we could check the strainer. As soon as I got in, I saw that the water pump belt had come off and the other belt was to loose to turn the water pump. I grabbed the belt and came out of the engine room. First we tried to pop it back on; however, it was to loose to turn the water pump sufficiently. Fortunately, this is a link style belt whose length can be adjusted at will. I went back in the engine room and pulled the belt off. We removed a link from the belt, put it back on. We had good water flow, and were off again! When we got close, we heard Topaz on the radio, so we called Krina and Lutz to say hi. They asked if we would be in for happy hour, which we declined, we were still almost an hour out. When we arrived in the anchorage, we saw quite a few boats that we knew. After anchoring, we sat outside while the boat started cooling. On the way back from happy hour, Krina and Lutz stopped by to say hi. Later, Villam and Nanda stopped by. We caught up on the happenings of the island and everything that had happened while we were gone. After they left, we had dinner and relaxed for the evening. We were here, and made a good passage. In hindsight, though, we were stupid. We shouldn't have left. If we couldn't have gotten the starboard engine working again, we would have had a major problem. We both agreed not to ever do that again. However, that being said, we could not have asked for a better passage