Bonaire to Panama Day 3

The winds have been good all day - they started to pick up mid morning and have built steadily. We had full main and poled out genoa all day but then around 8pm last night we had to reef both when the wind reached 35 knots in some of the gusts. The waves are betting quite large and we are surfing down them at upto 10 knots which is exciting but quite scary at the same time. Fortunately the wind seems to dropping a little this morning, but still around 20 - 25 knots so the reef will stay in a while longer!
Hoping to arrive either Sunday night or Monday morning - it will depend if we can keep the good speeds up we have been making.
Distance run on Day 3: 164 n/m

Bonaire to Panama Day 2

Jonny had just gone to bed when we got a radio call from the Los Monjes Coastguard, part of the Venezuelan navy. he wanted to know our name, position, flag, last port, next port, cargo on board and no. of crew but his english wasnt very good so everything had to be spelt phonetically!! We eventually made him realise we were a small sailing boat with 2 crew and no cargo!!
We continued to motor until about 4.30pm as the winds stayed light. By this time we could see Christine Anne. In the evening the winds picked up and we were sailing nicely with genoa on one side and main on the other. The winds have started to die again now.
Distance for Day 2: 146 miles.

Bonaire to Panama - Day 1

We left Bonaire yesterday morning after going to the marina to fill up with water and pay for the mooring bouy we had used (there is no anchoring at Bonaire as the whole island is a national park). We set course for the south end of Curacao and rounded the corner just after lunchtime. Christine Anne called us on the VHF to tell us they had just left Curacao and were therefore about an hour and half ahead of us.
We aimed for the 20 mile channel between Aruba and the Paraguana peninsula of Venezula and passed through it during the early hours of the morning. We could see both Aruba and Venezula clearly but also what we thought was a large fishing fleet off the west coast of Aruba - this later turned out to be about 30 oil tankers all parked up (why we are not sure). After picking our way through the tanker parking lot we heaed for the Guajira Peninsula - the northern most point of Columbia. We are currently passing the Monjes Islands just before this peninsula but are officially in Columbian waters!
Wind has been light and we had to turn the engine on around 5am - but we have 2 knots of current behind us which is making for good progress.
24hr run - 164n/m (a Newtsville record!!)