November 11 to November 17, 2004
Barnacles and Curacao
November 2004
Barnacles and Curacao
N 12° 06.614’
W68° 55.211’
Greetings Earthlings
It was a relief to be back on the boat after our trip home in October, as life
ashore seemed quite strange. I mean, homes have unlimited electricity, gas
and water. Water comes out of the shower at high pressure. We have cars to
drive and room enough to swing a cat, and then some. The house stays put and
doesn't move up and down all the time. There are tons of kids the same age as
ours that come over and hang out. 200 TV channels and high speed Internet
are available 24/7. We have dishwashers and a housekeeper. I could go on
and on, but you get my drift, it's weird.
Shortly after arriving back in Bonaire, we headed for Curacao, another of the
Netherlands Antilles just 50 miles to the west. One of our objectives in
Curacao was to haul Safari and have her bottom painted. The anti-fouling
paint on Safari had lost its oomph some time ago and desperately needed to be
replenished. When we had Safari hauled in Trinidad in April 2004, the
bottom was beautifully clean and I thought that we were safe for at least
another 6 months. Then, as soon as Trinidad and their wonderful haul out
facilities disappeared beyond the horizon, spider barnacles started to grow
rapidly on Safari’s bottom.
Unlike regular barnacles, which are knob-like and have the decency to stay in
one place, spider barnacles are tubular and spread out like a weed system
until the bottom of the boat is covered with a network of hard-shelled tubes,
each a few millimeters in diameter. The network even develops ganglia-like
concentration points that create the image of some huge alien brain
attempting to capture the boat for itself.
My response to this scourge was to jump into the water with a scraper
whenever we were in the clear waters of some wilderness island. For some
reason, I enjoyed my silent, weightless underwater battle against the alien
brain invaders. What I learned the hard way was that, when your skin is
waterlogged, you do not notice these cunning creatures flaying you alive until
you leave the water. Skinned knuckles are the most painful and take the
longest time to heal. Being a slow learner, it took me numerous dives to realize
that I should only attempt this battle in a full wet suit, with gloves and reef
shoes.
In ports, I would have the local dock hand scrape the bottom, but they never
did a great job and I was always back at it myself once we left the murky
waters of the dock behind. As I scraped away, schools of small fish would
approach to eat the morsels of flesh floating out of the ruptured tubes. As
the hours went by, these fish would become so bold as to swarm all over and
around me in their competition for food. Then, after a day of defending the
family from invasion, I would haul my tired body aboard and relax in the
sunset with a cold beer, happy in the knowledge that I had worked hard that
day.
There are a few ways to get a boat out of the water. The best way is a
modern travel-lift. It is a large contraption, driven about on aircraft wheels,
that straddles the boat as it floats in the water. Large nylon straps attached
to either side of the lift are then run under the boat and used to hoist the
boat into the air. Thus cradled safely in soft straps which conform to its
shape, the boat is then carried gently ashore by the lift. The problem with a
26-foot wide catamaran is that few facilities cater for the haul out boats
that wide. In fact, it takes a 150-ton travel-lift to accommodate Safari’s
width, while Safari weighs just 15 tons, fully loaded. By the time we reached
Bonaire, we learned that the next travel-lift of that size west of Trinidad is
located on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. Scraping barnacles was
losing its novelty, so we decided to move on to Plan B.
Another common way of hauling a boat is to have a cradle positioned under the
boat, and then to pull the boat up a slipway as it settles onto the cradle. As
large catamarans are a relatively new phenomenon, finding a cradle that could
handle Safari was not easy, but we had heard of one at Curacao Marine
Services. We called them from Bonaire with our dimensions and were relieved
to be assured that hauling Safari would be no problem. There had been
similar cradles in Venezuela, but at that stage we had not leaned of the dearth
of 150-ton travel-lifts and were holding out in hopes of finding one.
We planned our arrival off of Curacao to be in daylight as charts in this part
of the world are often off by more than a quarter of a mile. In this case, it
turned out to be very wise as the reef at the southern end of Curacao extends
out more than a mile beyond its charted extremity and the course I had
plotted ran right over its furtherest reach. Richard was on watch when he
spotted the breaking waves ahead of us and we changed course, thanking our
lucky stars that our precautions had paid off.
Willemstad, the Capital of Curacao, is built up around a natural harbor
shaped much like a cauliflower, with the head inland and the stalk, about
quarter of a mile long by 100 yards across opening into the ocean. The
entrance to the stalk is barred by a pedestrian swing bridge that is opened
by a call to Bridge Control. We motored up the canal which was lined with
brightly colored, quaint Dutch buildings, reminiscent of Amsterdam, and into
the harbor proper. We found Curacao Marine Services in a corner of the
Cauliflower and a sorry little place it was. The people were willing and
friendly, but the place had an old and run down air about it and was
surrounded by sinking and decrepit vessels, a forlorn and lost little corner of
the harbor. It was almost a relief to quickly discover that the length of our
fixed keels made it impossible for Safari to fit onto the cradle.
Plan C was located in another sad corner of the harbor, where we were told
that a ship servicing company could use their monster crane to lift Safari,
swivel round and place her on the ground. Andrew and I took off in the
dinghy in a light rain to investigate this promising alternative. We quickly
found the place. The crane was there and it was huge and there were a few
boats scattered around, but all of them looked as if they had been on shore
for years. A meeting with the manager revealed that the crane had been
stuck in its current position for over a year and would be unable to lift
Safari. The manager seemed happy to have an inquiry and told me of his plans
for turning Curacao into another Trinidad with respect to marine services for
cruisers. He even showed me a business plan he had drawn up for the
consideration of the owners of his operation. There was such a distance
between the man’s dreams and the hopelessness of the surroundings we were
in, that the whole affair became quite surreal.
After a few days of exploring the charming town of Willemstad, we departed
for Aruba, leaving our disappointments behind us, and looking forward to
happier times, notwithstanding the company of barnacles.
