Margarita: Escape to Cubagua

Sunday, October 21, 2001

010-50.340 N
064-9.540 W

Believe it or not it's been an ordeal to leave Margarita. A lot of good friends were made there. They were always planning the next event that you just HAD to be there for. Between all of the repairs and events BlueJacket was there for 38 days. This isn't to say that a great time wasn't had, but it was 31 days longer than expected.

For example, a week+ ago the owner of Mosquito Coast, which was a very hot bar there, had a small party at his house. While the bar is closed now, his house is magnificent. It has a huge open floor plan with veranda decks that overlook a massive cedar tree. This tree is so huge that the roots reach 15' up the tree and in the center of it there's a hole that's 10' in diameter and probably 20 feet high that houses swarms of bats. Wild! Everyone brought food and a great time was had by all.

There's restaurant/beach bar called Jak's where most of the cruisers hang out. Jak, who is Tai is married to Don, who runs a rigging business out of Jak's. The food is *fantastic* (as witnessed by my waist line). Last Friday we held a Mexican night and the place was packed well into the night. The next day there was a bad case of Tequila flue going around.

On Sunday most had recovered and a 20+ of us went sailing on a 60' IOR offshore racing boat that had been converted to a cruising boat. They could have handled double that! Once again, talk about great food. For those Bob Dillan bootleg fans out there, this boat was owned by "Great White Wonder" who ended up being a very good friend. p>

Hey, did I mention that I'm now the proud owner of my own set of refrigeration gauges and a tank of R-404A refrigerant & that I successfully replaced the compressor, evacuated the system and refilled it?!?

Dispite all of the temptations to stay, all of the repairs were finally completed and on Monday BlueJacket finally pulled up her anchor and headed to Cubagua, which is a small island about 18 miles from Porlamar. Unfortunately the spinnaker blew out when the wind suddenly went from 12-14 kts to 17-18 kts. But the rest of the sail was great with 20 kt following winds.

There's not much in Cubagua except the ruins of Europe's first settlement where they harvested tons of pearls. The bright orange sand is covered with crushed mother of pearl shells.

From here it's on to Totuga, which is about 65 miles from here.

-- Geoff
Log ID: 106