Isla Blanquilla, Venezuela

Dear Friends,

Calm, following winds, mind blowing stargazing, just one of the best  sailing trips ever, with great atmosfere on board, even had a small group of dolphins visiting us,   great food and even a domino tournament....

Lobster from Grenada...

Always a good sign...

This is the best way to describe our voyage from Grenada to Isla Blanquilla (some 180 Nm).

In order not to raise too much attention to the officials on the Venezuelan Island, I choose to approach from the North rather than from the South (on the South side, we were going to pass in front of the Coast Guard building). 

And just before we prepared for anchoring.... Dora caught a fish.... we quickly established it was a baracuda... and two minutes later... another fish! Another baracuda.. this time a big one... Excitement all over. 

Just with a simple handline...

..Baracudas.... ok to eat...

Then i remembered something about baracudas being not fit for consumption due to a toxic substance they get from eating toxic coral fish or so. Hmm not good.. anyway in no time the animals were properly prepared, and the fillets awaited in the freezer for their next destination. We were going  to ask local fishermen for advice.

The fishermens camp...

The first night we anchored at the Yaque beach, the winds remained rather strong, but, at least in the beginning, no swell. Our first trip to land... Isla Blanquilla is flat, sand, stones and cactos, and aparently home to about 2000 donkeys as we later learned..

Explore

Onda Boa at its busy anchorage..

The colors, the beach

Dora Explorer

During the night the wind picked up and so did the swell and it became rather uncomfortable.

The next morning we did a longer land expedition.  By the time we got back to Onda Boa, the conditions remained unchanged, so we decided to try to find a calmer anchorage. We did, moving more towards the north West tip of the island. There we saw a fishermen camp so we went over to check out regarding our baracudas. According the friendly crowd... Sin problema.. without a problem, we could eat the fish over here....So, that was great news. We did some afternoon snorkeling, and spotted our first (two) lion fish.

The infamous Lion Fish....(just fyi.. these fish have no natural predator in this region, so they are a pest)

We had seen a nice little bay (too small to anchor, Americano Bay) and a natural formed bridge near our anchorage, and so we went over to explore... Great views, awesome snorkeling...

...and some tree climbing

Bright colors

Vacation pic... Onda Boa tour

Americanos Bay, Isla Blanquilla

Say nothing

The bridge

Under the bridge

Snorkeling below

Still no sight of any coast guard officals, I believe it was weekend anyway... During the third night, the wind picked up again, and also the swell, rather choppy so we left early on our way to Los Roques.