Monday, October 14, 2013

Aruba

We had a lovely few days on Curacao with my family. The last night we had Peggy and Shahaira both with their family come over to say goodbye. We had a great night although I found it difficult to say goodbye. It felt like leaving family.  
We had a 
sail to the last bay on Curacao where we anchored for the night. We did some snorkelling and had a good meal and a good sleep. 
Rocky and I got up at 4 am to start our 55 miles sail to Aruba. We picked up the anchor and when I tried to steer the boat to turn out of the bay the steering locked and we ran into the rocks. This caused the auto pilot to lift off the housing but there did not seem to be more damage. So we continued taking each an hour and a half at the wheel as we could not use the auto pilot. The family slept through it all apart from Yvonne who heard it but stayed in bed thinking we were 'shipwrecked'. They all got up less then 20 miles out of Aruba. 
There we were welcomed by Derek's boat with also Gail and Grant on it waiving the boxing kangaroo flag. Quite a welcome with Grant straight away swimming to our boat in quite a strong current. We spend some beautiful days in a marina there. It was attached to a beautiful resort so we could use all the facilities there. We swam a lot and had many cocktails at happy hour.
We also visited the resorts private island where we were up close and personal with the pink flamingoes. 
We celebrated Angelique's 60th with Grant and Gail.
All too soon it was time for them to leave again.