We set off for the Isla de Margarita to do our provisioning but with strong head winds we changed our minds, anchored overnight at the Araya peninsular and went to Puerto La Cruz instead.

We had one overnight stop on the way in a small bay and my first swim. The water was 32 degrees and beautifully relaxing until the jellyfish came along. A week later I still have the marks!

Venezuela is a strange place to shop at the moment. Milk in any form, eggs and sugar are unavailable. There is a government fixed price on these commodities with the laudable intention of keeping basic foods available to the poor. However, since this price is below the cost of production, producers are either exporting or going out of business so this doesn't seem to be working as intended.

 We are still doing a lot of repairs and replacements as we go and testing things like the mer-veille ( French play on words) our new radar detector. We decided that radar was too expensive in power to run constantly and detecting when something out there was using radar in our area would be adequate. So far so good. Our new solar panels seem to be supplying me enough power to run this, the computer and the fridges.

Waterfront houses in Puerto La Cruz. The area where all the marinas are, is a 'reclaimed' swamp/lake area which has been turned into huge and rather fancy housing developments and which is in effect a gated community where half the local population appear to be employed to prevent the other half from getting in and thieving.

The houses vary from fairly grand to mansions with parking for your yacht or gin palace.