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The Orinoco, Bandits, Emily, and Puerto La Cruz, Part 8
exchange. At the village, however, about a dozen cayucas, bumper car fashion, came up to Francesca. Several men scrambled aboard and were grabbing at the bags of stuff we had set aside to "trade". Joan tried to get them off the boat, but they would not. I came down from the flybridge and yelled. Even that was only partially successful as two men
refused to go. At the same time, the "trade" items the Warao had in the cayucas was being fought over like a sale table at a department store. Frustrated, I put Francesca in gear and they had to get off the boat. The experience was more like a mild mugging than trading.
At last we were back at sea and thankful for it. We decided to make an overnighter and go direct to Margarita Island. There we would beg for forgiveness at not having the correct clearance papers. The trip was generally good, but we had to skirt thunderstorms most of the night.
Back at Margarita, the trawler "Simplicity" whom we had met at the Dominican Republic came to anchor the next day. They were traveling in the company of the trawler "Cheshire II" and had just arrived from Granada. During the next several days we made several trips to town with them on provisioning runs. Juan, at Marina Juan, argued successfully with the Port Captain that we had been scammed and got our papers corrected for just a few dollars.
On the morning of Monday, July 11 we heard the bad news that Hurricane Emily was going to brush just north of Margarita. It was time to exit, stage right. Simplicity and Cheshire II were going to join us at a safe anchorage in Lagoona Grande on the north coast of the Gulf of Cariaco where we had stayed once before. As we were leaving Margarita, Denise on Simplicity called to announce that their outboard motor had been stolen during the night. The sailing vessel Wombat also had its outboard stolen. Then, at midmorning, Marina Juan's and all the patrons were robbed by three gunmen.
That afternoon we anchored at Lagoona Grande with Cheshire II and Simplicity, but the next morning continued on to the marina at Cumana where we stayed while Emily passed well north of Margarita. We had a reservation for a slip at Puerto La Cruz beginning Friday the 15th of July, so after a nice night at Cumana, we left the marina at 6:00 AM for the 8 hour trip. Just outside the Cumana breakwater, the sailboat Wombat waved us down. He
