49. Double Dutch

Happy New Year !

s/v Cheers lit a giant sparkler

I’m still in Bonaire waiting for some lighter winds. 30 knot winds, gusting at over 40 knots, are forecast for the whole week, which I don’t really fancy in my condition. I love it here, but the $10 per day mooring fees are killing my budget.

I’ve been thinking about Tristan Jones, and how he always managed to get out of trouble. When my main sail ripped, I remembered he wrote how his mast broke one time, which is much worse. He made it to shore, and in the night cut down a telegraph pole and used that. Although I also remember in St. Martin, Jock said he was full of crap; spent his life in a bar collecting stories from real pirates – like Jock.

On Friday I took the minibus from Harbor Village Marina to the Van den Tweel supermarket to get groceries. Usually there are shuttles like this for cruisers – the bus drivers charge a lot and make good money. Here though it was free. The supermarket paid the driver. It should be like that everywhere. The supermarket was awesome, a clean, air-conditioned paradise, it was like being back in Europe. I went straight to the olives and sun dried tomatoes counter, asked for a cocktail stick, and started to sample all the different types of olives, while I watched a bunch of cruisers wander round the supermarket in a kind of daze. Partly because of all the amazing food – fresh fruit and veg, bread and pastries, coffee and chocolate from Holland, but mainly because all the labels were in Dutch so apart from the obvious, no one knew what anything was.

I asked a member of staff for stroopwaffels, one of the only Dutch words I know, but she was local so she didn’t know what anything was either. ‘It’s a kind of cookie, big and round’, I explained. She tried to help. ‘No that’s a cheese cracker.’ ‘No those are Orios.’ ‘Now you’re just picking up round things.’ Eventually I found them and bought a packet. ‘Did you get some good stuff?’ I asked James and Patti from s/v La Aventura, ‘Yes we think so, we’ll find out later.’