The Caribbean We Refuse to Lose
Every sailor knows that charts can lie. The reef drawn as a hazard is often the safest anchorage. The “danger zone” marked in red can hide the calmest lagoon. And sometimes, the loudest warnings come not from the sea, but from those who want to keep you away.
For years, Venezuela has been painted as a place to avoid. Stories of chaos, of danger, of shadows on the horizon. But ask anyone who has truly sailed here, and they’ll tell you something different: our waters are calm, our people welcoming, our islands untouched. The real story is not one of crime or cartels — it is of oil, the black gold beneath our soil, the largest reserves in the world, and the contested Esequibo territory that holds even more. That truth is harder to print, so the world is told another tale.
Nations have always fought to redraw the map in their favor. Yesterday it was Iraq and Libya; today it is Venezuela and the Esequibo. The tools are always the same: sanctions, headlines, speeches about freedom. Yet while governments argue, sailors see what endures — turquoise seas, coral anchors, fishermen who serve lobster on the sand. Out here, there is no “failed state,” only a sanctuary of blues and whites more vivid than any flag.
Even those who shout the loudest cannot hide the truth forever. The same hands that sign sanctions also sign oil contracts. Chevron’s renewed license is proof enough: what they want is not our downfall, but our resources.
This is why we sail, why we write, why we keep a logbook. To remember what is real, and to share it with those who only know the headlines. The Caribbean we love is not a battlefield. It is a sanctuary — one we refuse to lose.
Where the Maps End, We Begin
It all begins with an idea.
They say the Caribbean has already been discovered. That every island has been charted, photographed, and sold back to us in glossy brochures and Instagram reels. But the truth is simpler: the most extraordinary places aren’t on those maps. Not yet.
Welcome to Caribbean Logbook, a magazine written like a captain’s journal and dedicated to the last untouched frontier of the Caribbean: the uncharted islands of Venezuela. This isn’t another glossy travel brochure. It’s a smuggled treasure map, a logbook of real stories, and a love letter to the waters where the horizon still feels endless.
My name is Alejandro Linares. For more than two decades, I’ve cleared in everything from thirty-foot catamarans to ninety-meter megayachts. I’ve guided sportfishing legends through reefs with no charts, delivered bread and fruit by dinghy to sandbanks invisible on the plotter, and led captains to safety when their instruments failed. And through it all, I’ve discovered something most sailors never see: the ultimate Caribbean sanctuary. A place where you feel, even if only for a moment, that you own the paradise itself—where the sea reveals eight shades of blue, where the sands stretch wider than anywhere else in the Caribbean, and where silence is broken only by wind and tide.
I created this magazine because too many sailors still pass us by—steered away by outdated blogs, dockside rumors, and old headlines. And in doing so, they miss the most breathtaking waters in the ocean. My mission is to change that.
Inside these pages, you’ll find routes and anchorages still whispered about by fishermen, live stories of life on the sand where seafood becomes five-star under the stars, and glimpses of how NAVIA—our AI for the sea—is rewriting the way we navigate.
This isn’t just a magazine. It’s a logbook. A movement. A blueprint to reclaim paradise and return it to sailors, dreamers, and the coastal communities that keep it alive.
So sail south. Drop anchor. And discover what the world forgot.
— Alejandro Linares
Founder, Yachtservice Los Roques