Kelcey Chandler-Yates and Jim Yates present...

UnderSeaPhotoVideo.com

July 27,2001
After five weeks back in the states and a good dose of family, friends and good ole American corn fed beef, it sure is nice to be getting some wave action!  Life was a bit precarious when I left on June 7.  After one year to the date living, eating, sleeping, eating, fishing, etc. etc. with my family and no break, I was definitely ready.  And so were they!!  Nick and I headed for Florida where we had a great visit with my grandmother who is almost 96 now.  It was great to see her and know that her cooking is still the best in the east and that the peach tarts are still scrumptious, of course I had to fight Nick for them.  Out of the nine pans gram made I was lucky to get two of the tarts!   Not that I could not have stolen some more or asked Gram to make more, but better on his hips than mine!  Anyhow, it was great to spend time with her conversing at the kitchen table about family history and the many other subjects we like so much to be engrossed in.  Mom was there too with her new Great Dane puppy -- cute as can be -- but with two of them I am glad I'm not the one picking up that back yard!

Next was the trip to my brother Ed's house in Ft. Walton Beach.  Nick had a kick playing with cousins and I enjoyed doing stained glass with Ed.  We all spent lots of time yapping and eating D'Lane's wonderful kitchen creations.  Next...

California bound!  Sad as it was to leave Grandma and the rest of my family it was time to visit Jim's family, see my brother Kyle and his family and spend time with the much-needed GIRLFRIENDS!!  It's a good thing I gave myself 5 weeks.  Between calling on parts, sending off cameras, finding supplies and visiting, I was lucky to get 6 hours sleep a night!  Nick spent the whole time with Grandma Mary Ann, Grandpa and his cousin Amy while I flitted between Paula's and Michele's with occasional stopovers in between.  I had such a blast spending time with everyone during the first week and a half that it was a very welcome break to go to San Francisco for 4 days to visit Kyle, Katherine, Sydney and the baby to be seen!  (Kath is pregnant).  Syd is now 5 1/2 and such a joy.  She spent the weekend playing army men with Nick and enjoyed petting the stingrays at the aquarium.  I was in heaven when she asked me for a huge favor.  "Aunt Kelcey, will you take me diving with sharks!" That a girl!!  That's impressive!!  Naturally, I said yes but told her we would have to start slow with snorkeling with the whale sharks, as these are 40 to 50 foot monsters but they live on plankton so no teeth to scare little girls with!!  I can't wait for that adventure!!  The west coast of Australia should provide the location -- time and the shark gods will determine when.  Back to Redding for more parties, a bit of time in the glass shop, final follow-up on parts and opening day of salmon fishing!!  During the last hours, it was hard not to cry but with so many good friends and such a great family, they would have to be tears of joy not sorrow.  After rising at 3 am to go fishing with Kim and Mark I returned from the trip with a huge filet and cooked it up for the family, enjoyed time and stories when Michele stopped by with a platter for the boat still warm from the kiln.  Beautiful is the only way to describe it.  Then Paula showed up and it was off to the airport to catch the 12:30 am flight!  24 hours later after haggling with the airline personnel about how this bag was 3 lbs over and that 2 lbs under and finally pleading, we made it through the Grenada customs without so much as a fee or even having to open a bag!  Quite an accomplishment. By the time we reached the boat, Nick had gained a whopping 16 lbs.!!  Those grandmas took fattening him up seriously!!

A little sleep and it was off to spend time with friends Chris and Jim had met while we were gone.  Leave it to them to find friends that are previous restaurant owners and charter boat chefs!  They were great fun.  Now we are sailing to Bonaire.  So far, we have had gusts to 47 miles per hour with lots of rain but we are all thankful for the relatively calm seas and the wonderful fact that we are heading dead down wind!

Ahhhhh, after 36 hours of rocking and rolling the small amount of swell we are experiencing here off the coast of Blanquilla is as restful as a crib.  Not much else here besides a bunch of sand, cactus, and oriental guys whooping it up when I go out in a tank top.  Guess I will skip the bathing suit this anchorage!

July 30, 2001
After two days in the Blanquilla anchorage I had baked all I wanted to bake and smelled enough bird do-do for a life time!  It was time to talk to some one!  So I headed out with my newly baked Mango muffins of which I had 50(!) and made friends!!  We went to every boat with a flag where the people would speak English.  Just did not feel like speaking French today!  We met some wonderful people from Holland who had been sailing for the past year and had just come from Bonaire, and a very nice couple from Florida who have been sailing the Caribbean for the past 9 years and living on a sailboat -- a 42-foot monohull! -- for 20 years.  Now that is close!  These guys needed to be adjusted so I invited them over after dinner, adjusted them, made brownies, and yapped it up for a few hours!  They left close to the same time as we did this am for Los Roques.  About 2 hours into our 30-hour sail, I saw a HUGE flock of birds!  This to me only means good fishing!  Down came the spinnaker and on went the motors and off we were chasing the flock.  When we arrived, we were to be surprised with a large school of porpoise!  They were not for eating but man did we enjoy watching the 20 or so of them spin in front of the hulls.  It was the first time we had seen a large school of them since our inaugural passage from Trinidad to St. Thomas last year.  What a kick to see Nicholas sooooo excited.  We wanted to stop and snorkel with them but when we slowed down, they left for bluer seas.  Back to schoolwork!  What a life at sea!

August 1, 2001
We are off the coast of Venezuela on a god-forsaken sand spit in the middle of the ocean on our way to Bonaire!  The water is sooooo clear and all shades of blue but unfortunately, the snorkeling and diving are bad due to hurricane damage over the past 4 years.  Anyhow life is good.  I am frantically cleaning the boat in all the crevasses that the boys missed when they cleaned (?) while I was gone - but hey, it will be fun to let it get dirty again while all visit next month!

August 2, 2001
Today we awoke to thunder clouds and high winds-so much for a stellar start to the dive site!  Therefore, we hung, doing a bit of reading and a bit of cleaning until around noon when we decided to move to the next anchorage.  Before doing so I radioed the other folks we had met on a boat named Voyager.  I wanted to know their ETA to the next anchorage and ended up hearing a sad story.  Not only do they have their fore sail jury rigged with but now their fuel pump is leaking like a sieve!  Translated this means they cannot sail with safety and they cannot run their engines.  I might note that these are the same people who are out of water and propane!  Jeeeze the people you meet!  What hard luck and here in the middle of nowhere.  The closest place to get anything fixed is Bonaire and there ain't no Fed-X that delivers here!  So we will be following them to at least the Aves which are the next little islands on our way west.  We scouted the new anchorage today to see if they could sail into it with out much problem and they can, so hopefully we will see them here in the morning and perhaps Jim can fix the pump.  Otherwise we will just have to watch them and help them if things go bad.  We would want the same kindness.

On a brighter note, Jim and I did a nice dive today.  There was a bit of surge but that just made the forests of sea fans ever more impressive.  There were huge French angelfish and schools of big eye jacks.  In addition, a rather large hogfish and several Spanish mackerel with a huge tuna who thought it appropriate to check out all our bubble noise.  The place is also littered with basket star fish entangled by day in the swaying coral limbs and by night swaying their multiple arms to gather food along with their hosts.  Best dive in a long while and then at sunset we finally saw the GREEN FLASH!  We have been looking for that for a year and today as the sun set into the horizon there it was-a bright teal green flash!!  We were jazzed.

More to follow...