Eskimos, they say, have over 400 words for "snow". If the people of Los Roques, an archipelago off Venezuela, had their own language, I imagine they'd have at least that many variations on the word "blue". There's the blue of the ocean: steely cobalt in open water and aqua-marine along white beaches. Electric turquoise on sandy shoals, iridescent sapphire in deeper channels, and thousands of variations in between, depending on light and bottom conditions. And then there's the sky: clear like ice at dawn and gaining pigment all day until the sun dips past the blue lip of the horizon and the heavens go magenta to violet to indigo.
Blue is a way of life here. The people of Los Roques (they are called Roquenos) paint their boats blue, and their fishing buoys, and their houses. To witness the sandy streets of Gran Roque, the only town on the islands, is to understand how environment shapes aesthetics. For Eskimos the palette is white-- snow for the igloo wall and a bear skin for accent. The buildings in Gran Roque are a study in blue-- every shade the sea and sky can muster, with exotic shades tossed in for good measure.
Los Roques (and its neighboring island cluster, Los Aves) are as far off the beaten path as Gypsy has ventured. Just 90 miles from Caracas as the gull flies, these pristine waters might as well be in the mid Atlantic. With 40 named islands and cays (and 300 others that emerge at low tide) scattered across 556,000 acres, it is a sailor's paradise. Steady winds, protected waters, shallow anchorages, and outstanding snorkeling and fishing are just a few of the reasons Los Roques are described in almost reverent tones among the cruising community. It is as good as it gets.
We sail to Los Roques from Trinidad. My Uncle Bob joins me for the 400-odd mile crossing, with brief visits to Isla Margarita and Tortuga along the way. The sailing is refreshingly easy after pounding into the wind the entire way down island from St. Thomas. The wind and current are behind us, finally, and we make great time. On the 140-mile overnight passage from Trinidad to Margarita we average almost eight knots, arriving in Pampatar before dawn despite best intentions to make landfall during daylight. The overnight sail from Tortuga to Los Roques is a gentle glide.
We arrive in the islands giddy with expectation; Bob and I have both been regaled with stories of its wonders. Straight off we misjudge our bearings and get trapped behind a barrier reef for several miles. Much of this area is uncharted, or poorly charted, and riddled with reef and shoal. Navigation depends on constant attention and a watchful eye. We steer across a maze of blue, tracing our way through safe depth of darker hue. Often times, Bob perches on the bow, guiding the way through particularly shallow stretches. I call out our depth from the sounder, and he points the way, "Ten feet... ten feet... nine… eight feet..." "More to starboards!" It can be stressful, but the challenge of finding your way in Los Roques is one of its charms. We wander remote waters by day and anchor in pristine lagoons at night.
The Roquenos don't have a language, but they invented words for their islands. The original names were English and Spanish-- given by European visitors-- and those names have evolved with local usage. What was once Northeast Cay is now "Nordisqui" on the chart. Sailor's Cay is "Salesqui." Domus Cay (Home Cay) is called "Dos Mosquieses."
At Crasqui, we are invaded by pelicans. Squadrons of them dive-bomb the anchorage when we arrive, feeding on abundant baitfish. The pelicans wheel overhead and then plunge into the water with all the grace an adolescent doing a belly flop. When they surface, throat-pouch inflated with water, small terns land on their heads, hoping to harass them into dropping their catch. We arrive mid-day, and after a swim and a walk on the beach Uncle Bob and I retire for a nap. When we wake, Gypsy is covered bow to stern with resting pelicans-naval carrier for the Roquenian air force.
At the Noronsqui anchorage, a sea turtle circles the boat all afternoon, surfacing for a shy peek and then slipping gracefully below. We meet a family there-- Neil, Sarah, and their three children. They are on the final leg of a four-year circumnavigation aboard their ketch, Margarita. Neil tells us they were planning to return to Seattle by August, so the kids could enroll in school, but when they put it to vote everyone decided they should spend another year getting home. Watching the boy and two girls frolic along the deserted beach, it's hard to imagine the choice was a difficult one.
At the Isla Sur anchorage, in Los Aves, towering mangroves along the shore are filled beyond belief with roosting birds. Boobies, shearwaters, frigates, pelicans-cluster like over-ripe fruit from the branches. When I snorkel to the nearby reef, boobies fly out, one after the other, and hover just a few feet above my head. They are clearly confounded by the alien spectacle of a human being.
Los Roques are part of a dwindling global resource-- particularly pristine places kept pure by there own inaccessibility. In our modern age of "adventure" travel, finding such gems is the holy grail of international pilgrims. It's why people pay good money to trek remote reaches of the Himalayas or hack through the jungles of New Guinea-- to experience a world unblemished by human development. Sailing offers a distinct advantage in this quest. In the age of jet planes and bullet trains there are still backwaters on the planet that can only be reached by boat. What I realize, as we mature from students of sailing to cruising veterans, is that finding unexploited places becomes the primary objective.
The irony to the unique access afforded through sailing is that it hails back to the roots of global exploration. Captain James Cook was one of the most prolific and successful explorers ever, and he circled the globe many times under sail. At around the same time the upstart American colonies were declaring their independence, Cook was "discovering" land as far flung as Tahiti, New Zealand, Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands. Cook was predecessor to the contemporary adventure traveler. For him, the payoff for years of hardship and misery was the thrill of discovering new places. He was obsessed with documenting what he saw-- the people, the geology, the flora and fauna-- and his true passion was charting, drawing for posterity all the details of his world. The pure rush of discovery was enough for him to relinquish family, glory, and the comforts of civilization. He was killed by provoked natives on Hawaii at age 50, having been at sea most of his adult life.
While there can be no comparison to how Cook must have felt when he first set foot on Hawaii, there is an overwhelming sense of wonder as we explore Los Roques. Sure, others have visited these islands before, but to drop anchor in a pristine lagoon, birds wheeling overhead and white sand beaches stretching as far as the eye can see is to experience a certain magic. The blue of the sky, the blue of the water-I only wish there were more words to describe it.
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August 3 - On The Rocks
