Spanish Water (Spaanse Water)

Spanish Water — Spaanse Water in Dutch — is a large, almost fully enclosed natural lagoon on the south-east coast of Curaçao, and the obvious place to base the fleet. The entrance is a single narrow cut through the reef; inside, the water is flat in any trade-wind state, ringed by low hills, mangrove inlets, and a handful of marinas. We board here for the simplest of reasons: it is calm water every day of the year, customs, fuel, and provisioning are close at hand, and the leeward coast, Klein Curaçao, and the neighbouring ABC islands are all within an easy sail.

Charters open one of two ways: a private transfer from Curaçao International Airport (Hato, code CUR) — twenty to thirty minutes by road, with direct flights from Amsterdam, Miami, New York, Toronto, and across Latin America — or, for guests already on the island, a quiet pickup at the marina. Boarding day is unhurried. The captain's briefing happens over coffee in the cockpit, the chef provisions through the morning, and the yacht is clear of the lagoon and at anchor off Caracas Bay or Jan Thiel by lunch on day one.

Curaçao's great advantage shapes everything we do from here: the island lies below the Atlantic hurricane belt, so we sail reliably all year — there is no hurricane-season shutdown. Steady easterly trade winds blow twelve months a year over an arid, sunny, cactus-and-divi-divi landscape. Spanish Water is where the voyage is organised, provisioned, and made calm; it is the flat-water hub the rest of the coast unfolds from.