Exploring
7/10/92 Islas de los Testigos, Venezuela

Early the next morning we set off in our dingy to the nearest shore. The beach was sandy and being of the lee side of the Island, there was little wave action to hinder a dry landing. We stood on the shore and wondered what was missing. It was the silence.

Generally there would be taxi drivers wanting to give us a tour, but here just silence. The reason for this was simple. No roads, no town and no taxis.

Near where we beached out dingy was a huge sand dune which must have been over a hundred feet high. I have seen movies about the desert and the actors would climb the dunes as if they were on Park Avenue, New York. The hike up the dune just about did me in. I think maybe those actors had stairs under a thin covering of sand. But the trip was worth it as the Caribbean Sea in is hues of greens and blues spread out before us.

We scrambled and slid down the seaward side to a long wide white sandy beach. The beach was married by the thousands of plastic containers swept in by the sea as it tried to rid itself of the trash thrown overboard by careless mariners.

What caught our eye was the multitude of fresh tracks on the beach. We looked more closely and decided they must be sea turtle tracks made when coming to shore in the night to lay their eggs.

Several hours later they sky began cloud up and the breeze strengthened. A squall was coming, and since we did not want to get drenched, we got enough courage to surmount the dune.
Soon after we returned to Butterfly the wind gusted up to a full fledged storm with thirty-five plus knots of wind. The boat healed in the gusts and this time felt we were lucky to be anchored behind a reef.

The next morning it was still blowing and I became worried about food. Judy says I’m generally worried about food, but we were out of everything except two packages of unknown freeze dried stuff we bought in Dutch St. Martin’s (the labeling was in Dutch), a can of tomato paste, and the last of our box of Rice Crispies.

How could this happen? Bad planning. We had not known a storm would delay us. Next time I’ll be sure we have at least a week’s worth of food for a overnight trip.

We ate cereal in the morning. I went fishing in the lee of the reef and caught a small something, which we ate for lunch. That night we opened the strange bags of freeze dried food. I emptied one bag of lumpy gray dust into a pan of water, and to my delight it turned into a beef stroganoff. The other bag turned into something else that we never identified, but which tasted good anyway. Before going to bed I prayed the storm would be gone by morning so we could continue to Margareta.

My prayers were answered with a bright sunny day and only fifteen to twenty knots of wind. Judy had discovered some sardines we had missed in the bottom of a food locker. We hauled anchor, and after we were jogging along at five knots with jib and mizzen, we had them for breakfast.