posted 04-07-2009 11:10 AM ET (US)        

Together with other boats we accompanied Mr. Taty Frans on his windsurf board (see link) from Bonaire to Curacao the other day in a 32’ whaler (Bimini Twist). It is a 30 nm trip in a boat if you go straight across but of course we could not so we did close to 80nm . He made the crossing on his board in one hour and 41 minutes from Bonaire to the east point of Curacao and another 40 minutes from the east point to the Jan Thiel Beach. Taty is in the middle of the picture and I’m on the right. The other guys are from citizens rescue (Citro) . The whaler is also used for their rescue operations (smaller picture on the right below)
From left to right we have Jonny Imperator, Ivo Stomp (fellow windsurfer), Taty Frans, Edwig Fontilus and I
Some waves were about 8’ and the guy was going really fast (20 to 25 knots) . The maximum speed that we did was 40mph it was a good thing that we did not have to take the waves head on at those speeds.

Captain of the boat is Curd Evertsz. He had the bright idea to provide Taty with a Spot GPS device. The information that the Spot provided was send to us by cell phone from Curd wife at home that was following Taty’s progress on the computer. This was important as it was our job to locate him after he left and guide him in the right direction

This is the link:
http://www.star-board.com/2009/pages/news/news.php?readmore=510

Don’t know were Curacao is?
Check this link Just copy and paste it on your browser:

http://www.caribbeanmag.com/search/map/Curacao/

Want to know more about Citro then check this link:
http://www.afras.org/orgs/citro.html