Finally we got the weather we were waiting for and headed back to Bonaire, which was to be a stepping stone towards Puerto Rico.  Not too much wind and a flat'ish sea which would allow us to motor-sail peacefully the 40 miles between the islands...... 

Except that after the first few miles the engine started overheating.  Not a serious problem, almost certainly some crud in the heat exchanger, but tricky to do underway.  We decided to press on to Bonaire.  After all we are suppose to be a sailing yacht, we can tack!

It was slow going with the contrary current, occasional squalls and 20 knots of wind right on the nose.  In the end those 40 miles turned into 72 miles and took us 15 hours.  The biggest problem when we arrived would be finding an empty mooring buoy in the dark and not being sure how long we could run the engine to manoeuvre on to it.

If we could make radio contact with a boat that was already there and who could tell us where the free buoys were that would help a lot.  We tried Toujours who we knew had headed back a few weeks earlier - perhaps they were still there, perhaps they had their radio on......   Success!  There was a buoy free outside Yellow Submarine which would be easy to find.  Tom also volunteered to sit on the buoy in his dingy with a light and take our lines when we arrived. 

There was a pretty active social scene amongst the cruising boats.  Happy hours, drinks parties, dinner parties, etc.  And then there was Christmas - celebrated with braised local lamb-goat and then New Year - celebrated with yet another happy hour followed by impromptu spaghetti for 7 aboard Samarang.

Of course Bonaire was only supposed to be our stepping stone to Puerto Rico, but it was a very, very easy place to stay.

and then we were rammed by the very drunk skipper of one of the local tourist boats who normally moored on a buoy close to us!  A huge crash and then he drifted off into the night.  Nothing to be done during the night (except inform the coast guard), but in the morning the boat had reappeared on the mooring and fortunately the boat is plastered with contact telephone numbers.

The owner didn't remember hitting us, but did remember drifting about in an alcoholic haze.  He was desolate and accepted without a moments hesitation full responsibility and agreed to pay all the costs associated with the repairs.  He was as good as his word and the good news is the repairs were completed on time, they did a good job and we had the chance to equalise batteries, do lots of washing etc whilst we were in the marina.  We were also finished just in time to catch the weather window which we'd been watching.

The bad news is, as is often the case with "sort of" windows, that the window proved not really to exist.  Turned out to be very squally, neither the wind angle nor the wind speed was what we'd hoped for and there was a very short steep sea.  We had more green water on the boat than at any time since we left the UK -  Apart from that and the rain everything was perfect!

Our biggest problem was that the only way to keep up boat speed and punch through the waves was to come off the wind (ie head further west) and with the forecast we had, without some very long tacks (which would have extended the trip into a very bad forecast), a landfall in Haiti (with its world class facilities plus added cholera) was looking a pretty real possibility!  So after 8 hours, we gave it up, put the wind behind us and headed for Curaçao.
 
On the plus side, although it's not where we wanted to be, being in Curaçao gave us the opportunity to receive our first mail package for 6 months, including much needed debit cards, our repaired AIS and to order some engine spares (which would hopefully stop the heat exchanger problem from reoccurring)  - though of course we could equally have done all of those things in Puerto Rico. 

We now return to waiting and watching weather. 

Nothing promising at the moment.