“Wow darling, we haven’t written anything in a long, long time” I say to Suus surprised while I am opening our website and see our latest post. It is in Dutch and titled “We are landlubbers”. It throws me back to our time in Curacao, when we were living in an apartment, with air conditioning, a swimming pool, a car and even had 2 bedrooms. Covid has its advantages. With tourists staying at home, and rent prices plummeting, we could afford this amazing place during our Curacao refit. Suus had taken on a 40+-hours a week project for the Dutch government helping Senegalese fishermen improve their marketing and sales with the purpose of exporting fish to the European market. I took the whole boat apart for the “baby-refit”. Suus is joining me and together we read my last written blog. “We haven’t even introduced that we were pregnant. It was posted 10 months ago”. “Ok, that is pretty bad, but in our defence; we had some other things on our mind” I reply, “but I would love to write again!”.
So, that is gonna be my promise to you. I will write more regularly again and I will write in English frequently. I hope it is better than what came out of Google Translate before though. Feel free to help or correct me, see it as Open Source software :). And please let me know if changing to English makes you stop following my writings? I will post the next weeks a new blog every Monday morning. Trying to get you up to the present moment as soon as possible! So, if you are up for a good story, or at least… something to read every first day of the workweek. Just to wait a little longer to go back to your work email. Subscribe for the mailing list to get an update in your email when the new story is live.
So back to the “baby-refit”. Oh, and hell yeah, Suus is pregnant during our landlubber time! While having low energy caused by the growing little shrimp in her belly she pushes through a large work project. It gives us the financial freedom to change the boat to be fully baby-proof. Every morning at 05.00 AM I drive to, Curacao Marine, the wharf. The winter months in Curacao are hot, African dessert style hot. So I try to be ready at 15.00 – which almost never worked out – and we try to keep our weekends free – this worked out 3 times. The hull (bottom of our boat) needs to be maintained, large parts of the paint are falling off. I redo the whole propeller/shaft installation, it leaked and we don’t want to continue thinking about it, it needs to be done properly now. We also add a washing machine for the washable diapers and baby clothes. To be able to wash daily, more water is needed, so a watermaker is installed. The bathroom floor is not completely watertight so I decided to break the bathroom out completely and rebuild it so Suus doesn’t need to shower outside late in her pregnancy. We also want to finish a lot of projects on our long to-do- list, so we can spend as much time with the little one before needing to go back to boat- projects. Next to a lot of small things, Yndeleau gets a nose job with a new anchor base and roller system, the large water tank of 1000 liters is divided in two 500 liter tanks and we install a new dinghy engine lifting system.
“Pffff, I can’t even lift my arms anymore, I need one more hour,” I tell Suus finishing the last paint on the nose job. “And I am almost done inside,” Suus answers. Five hours later, in the pitch dark, we are done. Yndeleau is shining and the boat is liveable again. Totally exhausted, we fell asleep in the harbour. After being landlubbers for 10 weeks we moved back to the boat again. Suus’ project and my 60+-hours a week tropical boatwork have totally drained us. But, we are sailing to crystal clear water tomorrow, it feels like we are going on a holiday, we are setting sail to beautiful Bonaire.
Ready to leave! Sailing via the beautiful Punda part of Willemstad. Do you see the coloured houses?
Sailing under the highest bridge of the Caribbean.
Building a new bathroom.
One of the biggest jobs; renewing the bathroom. We broke everything out and fully started from scratch… Built with wood, epoxy and glassfiber. New skills to me but pretty happy with the result!
Everything new and redone, we now have a watertight floor, a window, improved drainage, new location of the toilet, new sink, new countertop, new closets and a WASHINGMACHINE!
Briljant verhaal!! Kijk uit naar de volgende belevenissen en adembenemend mooie foto’s!! ♥️
Antoinetty! Dank u wel voor het lieve berichtje!
Het is zo leuk geschreven en ik kan niet wachten om te lezen hoe het verder gaat.
Dankjewel Heidi! Wat leuk dat je een berichtje achterlaat.
Weer een leuk verhaal. Kan me er wel wat bij voorstellen. Heb kort geleden ook eea verbouwd aan boord.
Ah wauw, wat heb je allemaal gedaan? Je blijft altijd bezig he?
Herkenbaar verhaal. Begin deze eeuw enkele jaren in de Carib rondgezeild. Na een stranding met mijn catamaran een refit in Venezuela overleefd..
veel ook op Curaçao en Bonaire geweest. Mooie plekjes en leuke eilandbewoners.
succes verder met jullie geweldige trip
Wauw dat klinkt als een prachtig verhaal en spannend verhaal. We genieten nu de laatste weken van de ABC. Dank voor je berichtje.
Blij weer wat van jullie te lezen. Gefeliciteerd met de baby
Ah dank je wel Magriet! We genieten van de kleine, we praten jullie snel helemaal bij via deze weg!
O wat fijn dat jullie weer meer met ons gaan delen over jullie belevenissen! Ik geniet van de verhalen en de foto’s en kijk alweer uit naar de volgende editie.
Ah tante! Wat leuk dat je een berichtje stuurt, snel weer een nieuwe :).
Wat een leven! Keihard werken om te genieten! Ja wie had ooit gedacht dat het een lui leventje zou worden? Jullie hebben al aardig wat achter de rug! Gewoon verder genieten met de kleine matroos erbij! Wij verwachten ca 2 oktober Rosan, Arnout en hun kleine matroos terug in onze haven. Ik zie er naar uit! Goede reis!!
Wel anders nu dan in 1970.Vaak in kralendijk geweest met de hr ms Luymes van kon marine.😅
Twee D ‘s Duiken & Drinken.
Nu Perth W Australia