Bonaire SUP Sailing

I finally got around to putting together a short video clip from SUP sailing at the Lac Bay reef in Bonaire - here it is:


Go to Vimeo to view the movie in HD.

I did a couple of SUP trips out to the reef during our two weeks in Bonaire. The first was with Andy Brandt and several other campers during the ABK camp; the second on, from which the video is, was a few days later with Nina. It was great, if not essential, to have Andy show us the way during the first trip, since the reef has a number of very shallow areas that just love to eat fins. On the days I went, winds were marginal (15 mph), perfect for SUP sailing. The waves are slow and very beginner-friendly; most of us fell once or a few times, but no damage was done. Being on slow SUPs was a big advantage - we were going slow enough that we could pick our way between coral heads in the dicey areas. A German windsurfer, Rainer, came out to join us during the second trip, but he was planing on a shortboard. Even though he is a better windsurfer than I am, his speed did not give him enough time to avoid the corals. He hit on, and broke off the fin. There was not much we could do to help him, other then keep an eye on him. He tried to tie the harness around the back of the board as a fin replacement, but that did not work. Fortunately, the wind was onshore, and within a few minutes, he had drifted in past the reef, from where he slowly walked his way back.

I sailed to him to check if everything was fine, but underestimated how fast the wind made me drift sideways, and ended up falling off at a really shallow spot. Since I did not want to climb over the pretty much untouched corals there, I had to let go of the board, and swim around through deeper channels to get back to it. But perhaps that was a lucky fall, because the GoPro took some nice footage of the corals while the board was drifting (I was using the dive housing, which works great above and under water).

I used the oldest and longest SUP that Jibe City had lying around, because Andy had called it "unbreakable". It worked fine for me - I don't think that I would have done anything more dramatic on one of the newer, fancier, turnier SUPs. There's not much action going on, even after piecing together a few small rides, but I thought that the reef was just so beautiful that I had to share the video.

Broken lines, lost customers

This is about my 7th trip to Bonaire, but it's the first time I feel the need to write something other than "I love this place". The reason is a silly little $2 item - an inhaul line (for my non-windsurfing readers: that's the piece of rope that attaches the boom to the mast). During 10 days of windsurfing on Bonaire, an inhaul line broke twice, forcing a long walk back to Jibe City. Today's break was especially frustrating, since it (a) happened just as the wind was finally picking up, and (b) it was the second time this happened.

I fail to understand why this happened. I have rental at various centers more than a dozen times, usually for two weeks; the only time ever that a line broke before this vacation was last year, also at Jibe City. At home, I sail between 100 and 150 sessions per year, and don't recall ever having a line break. I exchange lines when they start looking old, maybe about once a year. The sails I have been using here at Jibe City are mostly brand new - sometimes a few weeks old, sometimes a few months old, rarely older. However, the same is not true for the (aluminum) booms - some are new, others are beat up and badly in need of re-gripping; one boom I used had the end pieces taped, probably because it started opening up while sailing. The first time the lines broke, they looked ancient; the remaining pieces were very hard to get out, apparently after having had a long time to get pulled deeper and deeper in. Obviously, the lines were not changed when the new sails were rigged on old booms.

I lost a good chunk of two nice sailing sessions because of that. That's not too terrible - but would you keep trusting the equipment afterwards? I usually sail in the deep water between the mangroves and the harbor, because it's much less crowded there, and the water is a lot nicer and less choppy. A line break somewhere in the middle of the bay would require a really long swim and/or walk.

I can perhaps understand why a rental center may keep using booms that are still sound, even if they'd need a re-gripping; but why anyone would rig a new $500 - $800 sail without replacing the lines completely escapes me. For this trip alone, the three of us are spending more than $1,500 just for gear rental; over the years, our rental fees at Jibe City have totalled more than $5,000. So far, we have always preferred renting gear instead of bringing our own, even if it costs a bit more. We probably would have kept doing this in future trips, even though getting the gear I would have liked sometimes was difficult. But now, it is much more likely that I will bring my own gear to my next trip to Bonaire, especially if we stay at the Sorobon or go from more than one week. That should drive costs down by quite a bit for longer trips - not just from saved rental fees, but also from significantly lower bills at the Hang Out bar.

But perhaps it is time to visit other places for our winter vacation again. This year, it has been very crowded in the water here in Bonaire. But Margarita always was lovely and is windy at this time of the year.; just a little later in the year, the wind in Corpus Christi tends to be fantastic; and new places like Brazil, Costa Rica, and Egypt deserve exploring (although perhaps during a different time of the year).