A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.
- Joseph Conrad -



Map: ©Microsoft Encarta World Atlas


CURACAO

And who is Joseph Conrad? Conrad, an emotional man subject to fits of depression, self-doubt and pessimism, disciplined his romantic temperament with an unsparing moral judgment.* (Wikipedia)

or in his own words: My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm - all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

You may find that the rest of the year 2009 is dedicated to Joseph Conrad by using only his quotes. Don't google them! Let me serve them for you, one by one...



The entrance to Spaanse Water lagoon is narrow, very narrow. After a 6-meter shelf it falls back to 10-12m deep maize of sheltered bays. The waters edge is lined with coral reefs and the water is clear and clean. The navigation is by eyeball, plotter and a few floating markers that might make sense to the locals. Easy in a nice day but for a first-time visitor entering in poor visibility would require that extra bit of confidence.




Curaçao

Funny that Curaçao is spelled with the little notch on the second "c". The Papiamentu name for the island is "Kursow". The origin of the name is a little unclear - at least to me - but it seems the wiggly bit on the second c became from Portugese chart makers. The island has never been under Portugese rule. The Dutch settled there early and while they continue to color the place (literally) with their own culture, the island's 130 000 people are a real mix. Many speak four languages: Dutch, Spanish, Papiamento and English. Like most of the Caribbean, the history is ugly. No aborigines (Arawaks) are alive and the modern-day culture is born from the slave trade which was the main industry in Curacao until 1863. In fact, Kursow was THE trade centre, perhaps second only to Cape Verde. From the masses of Africans, about half a million survived to be sold in the Curacao slave markets. Funny how trading with just one human today would land you in jail but only 150 years ago buying and selling 10 000 humans was simply good business. I often say it's a crazy world, but maybe it has actually become more sane. Whoaaa! I just caught myself with a positive thought about the way humanity is evolving. Cool!




Bastard outboard@#$$$_#@@(*!!!*##*$%. All dressed up and ready to go to customs, I found myself pulling and pulling. Never mind, authorities can wait. We made it next day with a cleaned up carburetor.


Since the slave trade was abolished, so was the economy of Curacao and it wasn't until about 50 years later when Venezuelan oil became the island's economic engine. Today oil refining is the main industry. Tourism plays a major part and the banking is also "important". (Yeah, it's really important for the planet to have a banking industry and lots of smick looking men buying and selling numbers, making big profits along the way. I thought making electricity from thin air is pretty cool, but these dudes make MONEY from nothing?)For us - like many other tourists - the main concern was: "is the shopping any good?"

We don't make money from nothing, only next to nothing and we often seem to spend it on exactly that. It's sand between the fingers. Our first attempt to find a bus from Spaanse Waters to town ended in disaster. The bus never came and we started walking. Until we saw a Budget Car Rental office. We continued with a 50 US per day Daihatsu Sirion. First stop: Willemstad and its remarkably Dutch centre. Pastel colours and beautiful buildings, surrounded by cosmopolitan, cool, relaxed and friendly people. Papiamento was the language of choice around us but the hordes of tourists were obviously half Dutch, half American.




There's nothing like a good little reptile wrapped around you. Beautiful, gentle, soft and cuddly...


"Oh the Dutch!", said a shop keeper, "they just come here to get drunk and sunburnt. They don't spend any money in shops. It is the Americans and the Venezuelans that buy stuff", she continued. Yep, a lot of well-to-do tourists from the country just 100 km south were throwing their passports and gold cards on the glass counters of Willemstad's numerous electronics, jewellery and clothing stores.

The prices were quite good and we cautiously opened our wallets in a few shops, resulting in a few t-shirts for me and a couple of tops for Annina. After the warm-up and a bottle of Grolsch it was time to go crazy. Curacao was so affordable that four days after arriving our visa card stopped working. Pirated DVD-movies, a portable Sony DVD player for those private low power viewing sessions during night watches, a new digital voice recorder to capture my thoughts on the run, a 250Gb portable usb-drive for storing the photos and other files and so on. (The main damage to the credit card had of course occurred during the previous month from the haul-out, wind generator, boating stuff and associated crap.) Our last stop of the day was the food store. Just one trolley and 150 dollars. But the card was maxed out. Bugger! The shop was close to closing and we had no option but to start returning goods until we reached the amount still in our pockets. Ah, the simple life of cruising...




I love the Dutch artistic creativity. It shows in architecture, bridges, houses, colours, clothes and... on this wall.


Simple life my ass!

Yeah, the simple life. My ass. The non-consuming only works out at sea. And even there it's only possible due to over-consuming in the previous port. The frenzy at which we stock up with food and drink is forgivable, after all we don't have a shower and we live in a small boat, so eating well is the last of our luxuries. (And it is a true luxury to eat well. Perhaps one of the biggest luxuries in human life, right after being loved, having someone to love and the company of good friends.) But the frenzy of consuming doesn't end there, not even after the mozzie coils, zip lock bags, AA batteries, creams and lotions, cleaning and insect sprays, detergents and soaps. Throw in a few new tupperware containers, a couple of new baking tins and some alufoil and cling wrap and we definitely look like the average family with their trolley and a half, me rushing to the shortest queue in the supermarket while Annina runs back to get "a little more", perhaps some tooth paste, antiseptic cream and band-aids. "Get more liquid hand soap!", I yell as she disappears between aisles B and C.

The truth about cruising

So we eat well and at least have the ability to keep our home and ourselves clean. So what? That's simple. If you think the rest of our lives is just long walks on the beach, strenuous and healthy hikes up the highest hill, swimming and snorkeling, trimming the sails and working the yacht across the oceans, think again. We are modern cruisers, not some fictional characters from a romantic story of life at sea.




Gotta buy more. Aliisa's lap tops are full and the portable drives show the evolution from 2005 to 2009, going from 40Gb to 80Gb to 120Gb to 240Gb. My life is sooooo full of zeros and ones. There's too much data in my life.


When we're not shopping for external wi-fi antennas, usb-extension cables, portable hard drives and dvd-players, digital voice recorders, movies and music, memory sticks, chargers, converters, inverters, plugs and adapters, we are most likely found living our lives either trying to get online or being online. Face-booking, skypeing, chatting, surfing, uploading, downloading, back-upping, de-fragging, ripping, copying, pasting, playing, googling, file transferring and blogging. (We are yet to learn twittering and many other things that are a part of a modern active life, virtually.)

There's never enough time to go out. I have not even started packing our DVD collection into our numerous hard drives. I only managed to convert all my music into MP3 format during the year I lived in Finland, working two jobs and living the suburban life. Back then I had some spare time. Our bagful of SD-cards and USB-sticks are still loaded with the same play lists I made before leaving Finland. They desperately need updating but my music is packed on some folder somewhere and my lap top is over-heating and its hard drive is almost full.

Our three digital cameras keep recording more photos - most of them stored indiscrimately - and I had no option but to buy yet another portable USB drive for them. The deleting of all the duplicate and triplicat files in our disks will have to wait. Just like in the old days, when photos were stored in shoe boxes and arranging them into a proper photo-album was one of the first tasks after retirement at 65. Things haven't changed, only the way we store our precious memories.




Oh bugger! He doesn't want to come down here - he's got more important things to do - but HE WILL, if need be.
Live in fear, for the boss says: "Clean up your own bloody mess."
Or is it just because the planet is not clean that HE doens't want to come here?
No worries, God. I got the message. We're on our own. Or we're doomed. Probably both.




If this sounds like my life has nothing to do with cruising and sailing, think again. You should see me in a chandlery or in a hardware store. My enthusiasm and excitement is second only to that of Annina's when she's given a large trolley in a fine western-style supermarket. There are always genuine needs like epoxy glue, electrical tape, self-tapping screws, oil- and fuel-filters and other consumables. Then come the spares. I love spare parts. There nothing like having a spare of everything. If I could just have a spare moment or a spare million dollars...

My collection of 100 hose clamps can always do with a few new ones. The electrical bits are my favourite. Crimps, switches, fuses, fuse holders, heat-shrink, soldering tin, pilot lights, wire and cute little pliers are all a pleasure to put in the basket whether I'm in Budget Marine, Island Water World, Radio Shack or any other shop with loads of little electrical bits. Then there's of course the sikaflex / silicone / grease / lube / teflon / threadlock / lithium grease / lanolin oil / pvc-glue / marine grease etc. The list goes on but I think you got the idea.




As we drove past this boat in the Curacao fishing harbour I could hear a voice from above: "No worries, mate! Anything else?" I would have asked for something better but given Gods threats to come down here and sort things out, it was probably good not to to push it too much.
Try to catch HIM on a good moment.


Every now and then there's a slightly bigger purchase and that of course generates a great deal of consumption too. Aero4gen wind generator didn't come without side effect. Stainless pole, fittings, bolts and nuts, rubber and rope for absorbing the vibration, switch, ammeter, cables etc. Oh, I think I mentioned them already. And I also mentioned the effort that goes into keeping our IT going and being able to put this writing on the net in the comfort of our music-filled saloon while anchored in the Spaanse Water in Curacao. That effort included cleaning battery terminals, buying more distilled water and just to be sure, spending 100 bucks on two spare blades for the new wind charger. Jeesus bloody hell or something! But hey, I'm not complaining. I'm just exhausted and baffled about the so-called simplicity that ideally would go with living "away from the normal society". But we're not living away from anything. We're just cruising from a consumer society to a consumer society, one complexity to another, consuming and complexing ourselves around the world.




Now this is more like it. A table, some chairs, a bag of Dominos and a bunch of old friends. Some people just know how to enjoy life - in a simple kinda way. One day I too will do that.


Phoaa. I'm exhausted just from writing all that down. I'm really busy now. The new 120-dollar service kit to our Simrad WP32 wheel pilot is installed. The wind vane is still loose and I haven't even looked at the damage that occurred in Trinidad from the aft mooring lines getting caught in its worm gear. We're loaded with food. The weather has turned tropical with light winds and strong squalls. Unstable, like me. We've cleared customs and immigration but with the relaxed atmosphere we dare to visit town again tomorrow and leave on Wed 8 May.


Spaanse water anchorage A is the windiest. B and C a little less windy. With our new wind charger we were more than happy about the breeze. Curacao is low lying on the southern end and not that high on the other end either.





Local boys climbing the rocks and jumping down to the sea. The shore is steep and falls into deep water within meters from the beach. Yet, the island doesn't rise up to any significant height.





Willemstad boasts the world's largest swinging pontoon bridge. Hinge on one end and a propeller on the other, it opens the narrow entrance to the busy commercial harbour.



The claim outside was: "THE BEST MOJITOS IN THE WORLD". But they were not kidding. Only fresh ingredients and lots of them.





And when the bridge is open, the ferry starts running. Willemstad is split in half and the traffic across the harbour entrance is busy.




Previous: Trinidad Next: Santiago de Cuba 2009 special: Change
You've come a long way with me and you have deserved a bonus video. The going has been sometimes difficult, sometimes easy. As life is. Maybe one day I'll take a video of a shit day. Here's one of the easy ones.