The Roughest Passage Ever!Bon Bini, Bonaire!
- sheri1943
- Mar 20
- 6 min read
I do not think I have ever wanted to see land any more than I did when we saw the outline of Bonaire in the distance. Sure, we do our sail-planning using apps like "Predict Wind", etc, and these showed we would have winds up to 24 knots and seas up to 6 feet on the Passage from Samana, Dominican Republic to Kralendijk, Bonaire. In past crossings, we have been beating the estimated passage times predicted by 25-33%. We saw that the models had us traveling with an average of 12 knots boat speed, which is, in my opinion, TOO FAST to sail for days on end. Not that our cat cannot do it, it's just a comfort thing.
Slamming fast boat speeds break boats and crew. Not only is it not conducive to sleeping well due to the pounding through waves, there is the constant fear that something is going to break. Once again, those weather apps were way off! We saw waves of 10 feet on our beam, and winds up to 39 knots, but steady over 24 knots. There were literally rain squalls every hour with winds sometimes shifting 90 degrees. We could easily have done 12+ knots, but my voice of reason was telling me to reef often and reef early and keep furling the genoa to slow down if needed. We had at least one reef in the main and the genoa partially to fully furled for much of the trip down. Boat speeds (Speed over ground) still averaged 8+ knots and maxxed at 11.5 knots.
There were some casualties. Although our catamaran is super-stable, taking a 12 foot wave broadside has the capacity to break things. Our industrial size Jura coffee maker fell off the counter, but remained intact (LOVE THAT!) The bathroom vanity opened, spilling all the contents from one shelf. Again nothing broke. We had rigged the refrigerator door closed with a heavy sewing kit in front of the door. This made meal prep even more challenging, since one never knew what might fall out when the door opened. My crew learned to love "Pasta Surprise" for dinner. This is a Mediterranean Pasta dish with Penne, olives, artichoke hearts, Wagu beef, etc that I made up at the start of our passage from DR to Bonaire. The Surprise is that we had it every night for three nights since microwave left-overs is about all we could do in those rough seas.
Amazingly, our dinghy and lift stayed intact as did our hull. We did learn that taking waves over the bow and the sides and rain showers resulted in a pretty wet boat and hatches that never leaked did leak with that much water pounding into them. All in all, the boat and crew fared well.
Bonaire, even nicer than I remember it. Thirty years ago I visited Bonaire staying at a dive resort but diving much of the time with a local dive instructor/friend and her beau. We were all about 24 years old and diving 3-4 dives per day from the shore. This was when diving was new in Bonaire and there were not many people doing shore dives, though a few pioneers did. they aptly named the dive spots "Rappel", "LaDania's Leap", and "Oil Slick Leap" because the entry points required a cliff jump/rappel, etc. Rob and I looked at "Rappel" and I marveled at the fact that I was crazy enough to shimmy down a rocky cliff with my dive gear on and jump 25-30 feet into the blue water below. We opted to do a dive called "Ole Blue" instead. This was the exit point years ago when we had cliff jumped in and drifted around to come out at a sandy spot. It was still a bit rough getting in and out with the waves and the smooth rocks on shore, but much better than gnarly cliffs! I guess getting older and wiser is conducive to getting older and not dying in a cliff-diving accident!
Bonaire is my favorite dive destination island thus far. It was even more special to be there on our own catamaran. The local people are a mix of Dutch and islanders and many Hispanic people from Columbia and Venezuela. They speak English, Spanish and Dutch and it is easy to communicate. The Bonaire government's slogan is "It is in our nature" and they realize that their reefs and ocean ecosystem must be protected at all costs. They do not allow anchoring anywhere, but have plentiful mooring balls. We were able to come in and easily pick up mooring balls within 50 yards of shore, close to the dinghy dock, yet with the aft of our boat positioned conveniently right over the edge of a hug wall dropping to several hundred feet and over 1000 feet 100 yards behind the boat.
This island is the shore diving capital perhaps of the world. We rented a car (hard to get 4 WD for <$120 per day) and we used that to travel to many of my favorite dive spots: Karpata, Oil Slick Leap, etc. We considered doing some of the cliff jumps at "Rappel" and "LaDania's Leap", as well as at Slagbai Nat'l Park, but with age comes common sense, so we drove to less treacherous spots. We free-dived the Salt Pier down to the bottom at 55 feet (scaring the scuba divers beneath us!) and never found the elusive frog fish I found years ago. We also dived "Tolo" and "Red Slave", named after the slave huts from over a century ago which are still there. Both of those had rocky and partially sandy entry and exits, so required good strength and balance. We also dived "Something Special" from our dinghy and also did a great night dive starting right behind our boat.
On the night dive we were immediately met at first by two then soon three big 5 foot marauding Tarpons, which were using our dive lights to hunt for unsuspecting sleeping fish. They did not mind bumping into us repeatedly to get the smaller fish they were chasing. We saw no sharks...and don't think any saw us either!
Bonaire is an excellent blend of unspoiled, arid wilderness, loaded with cacti, lizards, wild goats and donkeys and equipped with several well-stocked grocery stores, many nice restaurants and Bars and a friendly island vibe. The Slagbai National Park is named for the old slaughterhouse that was on the north shore where they slaughtered goats. There are still buildings on the grounds and slave huts.
So far, Bonaire is still at the top of my list of safe, beautiful, developed but unspoiled islands. It will be hard to beat in our upcoming travels, but...we head to Panama soon and cross the canal to the unspoiled Pacific Islands!!!!!
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