Category: Caribbean

We Made Our Boat Nicer To Live On

After almost two years sailing and anchoring in the Caribbean, Sava and her crew needed some TLC. Sava moved to Curaçao Marine for bottom paint and more while we moved into an apartment in town. We only took two weeks away from the boat, but it made a world of difference! During that time, we made our boat nicer to live on, which is good for all of us.

Improving S/V Sava

We’ve done a lot of work on Sava over the years, but we didn’t focus on cosmetics. Fixing the engine, batteries, watermaker and everything else was more important, but since we know how that stuff works now, we can make life on Sava better! While in the yard at the marina, we prettied her up inside and out! Since we made our boat nicer to live on, she’s like a new boat to us and we love her all over again.

S/v Sava
Sava didn’t look terrible when we took her out of the water
Getting a new coat of bottom paint on our sailboat
But the new bottom paint on S/V Sava is an improvement!

Cleaning Sava

We rented a one-bedroom apartment while Sava was in the yard, which meant a thorough boat clean. First on our list was emptying the boat: we took out all the food, defrosted the fridge and freezer, and scrubbed all the cupboards and storage lockers. We vacuumed the boat multiple times since we had shore power and did such a good job cleaning Sava I was almost sad to restock her!

Staying in An Airbnb

While Domino took a few days to get used to living on land, she eventually made herself comfortable.

Domino our cat on the pillows in the airbnb
Domino liked the bed in our Airbnb
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Eating and Drinking in Bonaire

For such a small island, Bonaire has more dining options than you would expect. Once we were free from quarantine and could roam the island, we satisfied our cravings for barbecue, sandwiches, seafood, satays, cheese and chocolate! We did have 3 months, after all! With all that experience, here are my recommendations for eating and drinking in Bonaire.

About Eating and Drinking in Bonaire

Though we were there during the pandemic, most restaurants served take-out, and many had dine-in options with social distancing and other restrictions. Many times, we provided names and emails for contact tracing. Prices are in US dollars, and costs are comparable to what you would pay in the U.S. or Canada, but some items are less expensive. Most places are in or near downtown Kralendjik, but a few are further afield. This map lays out all the places mentioned in the post.

map Eating and Drinking in Bonaire
Eating and Drinking in Bonaire map

Gio’s and Luciano Ice Cream

Ice cream is a luxury to most cruisers! Many cruisers don’t even have space for it on board. We are lucky to have a full freezer but we don’t often have ice cream in it because markets are rarely close to transport ice cream from bus to dinghy to boat fast enough to keep it from melting. So when there’s a gelato shop – or two – on land – we sample the flavors.

gelato eating and drinking in Bonaire
Some of the gelato choices in Bonaire

Eating and drinking in Bonaire should include at least one stop for ice cream. When we were in downtown Kralendjik, we bopped back and forth between two main spots but the tiny town has multiple places for ice cream, way more than we ever saw on the entire island of Antigua.

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My Most Recent Failure

When it comes to physical activities, I am a slow learner. I need lots of practice to get adequate at most sports. On the plus side, I am game to try most anything and willing to practice. I am at least adequate at skiing and paddleboarding and more than adequate at a few other sports, but it all took work! This is a post about my most recent failure, but don’t worry. I won’t be depressing, because I agree with the genius quoted below.

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein

Regular readers of this blog know I am used to failure. Whoops. I did it again. Here’s my story about how trying to be a freediver was my most recent failure.

Let’s Freedive!

I love to scuba dive. I love the water. In fact, I used to be a pretty good swimmer but it’s so much easier with fins and a snorkel that I don’t swim without them much anymore. When I was in Utila I first noted the availability of freediving classes for the public. And that sport is growing, at least from what we’ve seen in the Caribbean. In Bonaire, you can take freediving classes from one of the world champions, and he is the real deal. In September, Brian and I signed up for the class.

The Freediving Course

We took the AIDA2 freediving course and it is amazing!

I loved the breathing exercises and worked my way from a static breath-hold of 1:20 to over 2 minutes. Once we got moving in the water, it was even more rewarding. Using the long fins made me feel so powerful and aided my 40 meter dynamic swim in the shallows! The technique wasn’t easy or natural for me, but I picked it up after a few tries and thought I was golden.

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