Caya de Agua, Los Roques

Bob woke me at dawn to come and look at two enormous fish swimming just off the transom… I wasn’t very impressed as I had been woken from a deep sleep, after having had very little sleep throughout the night, and would have been far more impressed had he caught the fish so we would have had something other than frozen or tinned food for dinner. However, he was very excited about the fish so I made the effort to show some enthusiasm.
At 10am after breakfast, we set off for the end of the island chain, this will leave us just 35 miles from Aves Barlavento our next planned stop. The weather is very cloudy and gray this morning. We had a lot of rain in the night and strong winds, Bob had to get up a few times throughout the night to check that we were still ok with our holding.

We raised the sails with the hope of sailing without the engine, but it was difficult navigating through the shallows with winds that were constantly changing, so we brought them in and continued under motor.

Sunday 24th August
We arrived at one of the far islands Cayo de Agua, early afternoon and dropped anchor as the book instructed, close to the beach in the sandy bottom. We took the dinghy ashore and swam off the beach, a sandy spit joined the two tiny uninhabited islands where the waves crashed from either side, creating a magical effect, you can walk through the waves from one island to the next. We were the only boat in the bay, and there was nothing around us for miles but water and the two tiny deserted islands, it was absolutely beautiful. This was more my idea of paradise.

Later that evening after dinner, a couple of cocktails and a bottle of wine, we were about to go to bed; when Bob went up on deck to check the anchor and secure the dinghy. To his horror the unthinkable had happened… a rare south westerly wind had picked up and swung the boat 180 degrees, stern towards the beach with only 12 inches of water beneath us, we were almost aground. I ran up front and brought some chain in to take us further out, but it made little difference and as the wind and waves picked up we started to ground out. We immediately decided to get the hell out of there while we still could. I brought up the anchor and we set off in total darkness.

Our next planned destination was to have been the Las Aves Archipelago, in particular Aves de Barlovento. Unfortunately they were only about five hours away, and as it was only eleven at night, that would mean we would arrive around four am and it would still be dark, making it unsafe to search for a safe anchorage, so we made the decision to keep going all the way to Bonair, that would make our arrival time late morning. We couldn’t raise the sail due to the abnormal South Westerly winds so we had to motor again and it was quite rolly, once again I was seasick. I went to bed leaving Bob to the night watch.