Visit to Bonaire
Tuesday, April 18, 2006


    My skiing and windsurfing buddy Don Cook (Denver) and myself (Long Beach) just got back from a first visit to Bonaire. We made arrangements through Sailboard Vacations, and signed up for a week's instructions with Andy Brandt. The trip down south on AA is long and exhaustive (red eye to San Juan, Puerto Rico, eight hours lay over with sightseeing the old town and snooze at the local Starbucks!), but in the end it was all worth it!
    The Belmar oceanfront condos were absolutely luxurious, Lac Bay only 10 minutes away, and the wind blowing a steady 15-25 knots day and night. We were 22 campers from all over the US, quite a few from Southern California, many repeaters like myself! Ability varied from never in the straps to perfect reverse monkey jibes but Andy made sure that everybody raised his level by several notches. My weekly goal was to get finally some duck jibes under my belt, so on the last day I got lucky and made three of them in a row, hallelujah! The sandy bay is very shallow, often only knee deep or even less at low tide, perfect for jibing practice (almost as ideal as Coche!) but I got slammed several times when my fin got stuck! Every night we were entertained by Tati Frans and the "Bonaire kids", amazing how they celebrated their spocks, volcans, chaccos and other mindboggling maneuvers!
    Restaurants along the beach were great, but nightlife pretty much non-existent except for a beach party with B-B-Q, live Reggae and breakdancing by the "kids"! Uh, forgot to mention the Casino where you can play with 10 cent chips! If the wind drops off, you might want to go scuba diving which originally has put the island on the map. We were prepared to try a wreck dive but the wind wouldn't let up, the priorities were obvious!
    Gabor warned me before the trip that it would be boring, and he had a point: If you like wave sailing or go cruising, it's not the place for you. If you want to hone your sailing skills, especially jibes and some light wind maneuvers, it doesn't come much better!

See you at Isabella!

Heiner Vogelbach

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