Curaçao is one of the A-B-C islands (Aruba-Bonaire-Curaçao) and nicely positioned outside the hurricane zone in the Caribbean, close to the coastline of South America.

These islands are considered a hurricane safe zone (as well by many boat insurance companies) and so many sailors seek ‘shelter’ in these islands.

What’s special about Curaçao, is the area called ‘The Spanish Water’.  It is a 360° protected anchorage in the middle of the islands, creating a lagoon/swimming pool like anchorage.

This creates a superb place for passing the hurricane season (or some months of it).  Curaçao offers quality living for sailors, including filled supermarkets at very acceptable prices, a
unique free shuttle bus service to get to the supermarket, nice restaurants surrounding the anchorage and most of all, a vibrant cruisers community with an impressive activity listing.

Scuba diving, wing-foiling, snorkeling, windsurfing, kids camps, fishing, lion fish hunting, salsa & bachata dance classes, playing dominoes, yoga, noodling, karaoke evenings, hamburger nights, sailors happy hours, captains dinners – the list keeps on going!

Sailors can get good marine services, provided by several marine supply shops (Budget Marine, Freedom Machine), but also haul out services from Curaçao Marine and even dry storage.  Airplane connections to Curaçao are really good and price worthy, especially to Europe, USA and Canada, with multiple daily flights!

Cruisers doing good for the environment

But this article is not about promoting Curaçao, this article is all about the cruisers at Curaçao and their involvement in the local community and doing something good for the environment.

With September 17th being designated as World Clean Up Day we (SY Blowing Bubbles), took the initiative to organise an ‘underwater’ clean up at the anchor zone of the Spanish Water. Together with fellow cruisers and scuba divers, we undertook a mission to clean up the ocean bottom surrounding our boats.

Organizing this event was a “handful”. Not only did we need to get permission from the local government (as we would be scuba diving in the navigational waters of the anchorage, controlled by the Harbour Master), but also safety of the event was an important issue, so we consulted with the Coastguard about the diving activities.

Cleaning up garbage is one thing, keeping it all safe is another thing.

In preparation for the event we created a group of cruisers that would be scuba diving and trained these cruisers to be able to safely use air-lifting balloons to lift heavy objects from the bottom, filling special recovery balloons with air.

This training would also be helpful in their future adventures, for example when an anchor gets stuck or a heavy object gets lost from the boat.  This course in search and recovery was offered for free by ScubaBiz.help, a company that does what its name says: Helping within the Scuba Business and for sure, help was needed here to get this project go from idea to reality.  (Check out: www.scubabiz.help and you can even download their monthly scuba magazine for free).

Making an inventory!

After their training, the cruiser scuba divers had a 2nd task at hand in preparing the event! They had to make an inventory of the objects to be recovered in order to prepare all needed gear for the Clean Up day itself.

The inventory list became rather big and challenging:

• two sunken dinghies
• one outboard motor
• Several big boat batteries
• Several truck tyres
• Etc…

In order to lift all these objects, several air lifting balloons were gathered and multiple dive tanks were needed for inflation. The list of needed equipment was handled by us, SY Blowing Bubbles (we are a specially-equipped Scuba Charter sail yacht on “hurricane break” in Spanish Water).

A local dive operator, Curious 2 Dive, gave a special discount on dive tanks and dive gear so more people would be able to join in on the Clean Up Day, as there was also a lot of smaller trash that needed to be collected from the ocean floor.

Preparations for for C-Day (Clean-up Day)

After about three weeks of preparations, C-day (Clean up day) was approaching and one day before C-day, marker buoys were attached to the large objects to be airlifted from the bottom. This could only be done one day in advance as the risk for outboards/boats getting entangled in these buoys would be too great.

C-day was a reality. 29 people showed up at the start of the event bringing dinghies, dive gear, ropes, masks, snorkels and most of all, a lot of positive energy! Even teams from the Coastguard and the Airport Fire Department came out to help!

During what became a five-hour clean up event, a total of 2400 pounds (1200kg) of garbage, rubbish and litter was collected from the sea floor.

This impressive amount was piled up in front of Uncle J restaurant, located next to the Spanish Water.  This was the perfect place to exit with the heavy objects, but also because of Uncle J restaurant – where a large container for the rubbish was placed – who made sure all the collected garbage would be taken away to get recycled.

A special moment during this day was the recovery of a large dinghy (15ft/5m) with the help of many sailors pulling it out of the water because of its large weight, as you all can imagine (filled with sand, water) and the rescue of an octopus living within the sunken hull of the dinghy.

So, no animals were harmed during this clean up event!

At the end of the day, the beautiful moments, the positive energy and so much more was celebrated with a cold ‘drink’ (read: beer) with all those (+18) involved BUT, don’t get me wrong, as the young cruisers were present as well and took on their share of the clean up, they too were rewarded with a cold soft drink!

Truly a unique example of teamwork, community work and excellent spirit spanning ages, gender and nationalities as ‘only’ 16 nationalities were present during this International Clean Up in Curaçao making it a truly INTERNATIONAL Cruisers Event!

Are you joining us next year?

See a video about the Clean-Up here.

Jean-Marc and Karen
SY Blowing Bubbles

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The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of Noonsite.com or World Cruising Club.

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