Sunday 29th April

Kralendijk
Bonaire

12 09.387 N
68 16.822 W

Congratulations to the Aussie cricket team - World one day cricket champions. Go Aussies!

How very strange it was waking up to find no Gypsy Palace alongside us. Gerry was up and making noise early, having checked the final score of the one day cricket final he got out the boxing kangaroo flag and ran it up on the flag halyard then it was time to get down to the serious stuff. He wanted to check out the generator as he had noticed that the voltage from it was lower than it should have been. He was banging tools moving bits of the casing around so I did the wise thing and stayed in bed – out of his way whilst he prodded and probed the thing. He eventually put all the bits back together and I got up. We had a cooked breakfast for the first time in a long while and then it was time to get stuck into other boat jobs. Gerry had planned to install a computer fan on the side of the seat covering where the water maker is housed to give it some air circulation, this was going to involve removing of seat cushions, tools spread everywhere and noise whilst he drilled the holes for the fan. Again I did the wise thing and got out of the way, I went out on deck with the snap tool and replaced some snaps that had rusted off then I cleaned the Strata glass curtains which were covered in dust from the marina, applied silicon spray to the catches that were getting a bit stiff and began cleaning the stainless steel in the cockpit that was getting a little rusty. By this time Gerry had finished his installation and as lunch time approached he said that he fancied a beer so we climbed in the dink and headed into Karel’s bar. As we tied up we noticed that we were the only dinghy there, then I remembered hearing a lot of radio chatter yesterday about invitations to a game of dominos being played today on one of the boats in the marina – obviously a lot of the cruisers had gone to the game. We had just one beer at the bar and then went for a walk down the road to the city café where we stopped and had some lunch. The whole town seemed to have died overnight, there was hardly anyone around. I paid a quick visit to the vegetable market after lunch and topped up on tomatoes, avocados and pineapple, then we bought an ice cream each and made our way back along the beach front to Karel’s bar where we collected our dinghy and made our way out to the boat. The walk along the waterfront is quite amazing, the water is clear and just a few feet from the shore we could see parrot fish swimming along. A few feet further out, perhaps about 70 foot, the reef begins and you can snorkel off the back end of your boat in water that changes from pale turquoise to clear indigo blue unfortunately it was too windy to go swimming off the back end of the boat that afternoon – we would save that for another day. Exhausted from our morning activities and the stroll along the waterfront Gerry hit the bed for the afternoon whilst I played spider solitaire on the computer. We cooked up some of the fish that we had caught for dinner and spent the evening watching a movie.