ATLANTIC CROSSING MINDELO, CAPE VERDE TO ANTIGUA 22 DEC 2016 -12 JANUARY 2017 2,135 Nautical Miles PART TWO. 25 – 29 DEC 2016

Day 4. 25.12.16  CHRISTMAS DAY!

Christmas Day morning dawns bright, sunny and very warm, even at 0930hrs. Instead of a white Christmas we have a full 360degrees of blue ocean and sky, as Christmas’s go, this is certainly our most unique so far! Terry took over from me at 5am, I climb the stairs from the cabin, juggling a cup of tea for him and peer out of the hatch, “Nollick Ghennal!” I call out to him, “Merry Christmas” in our Manx gaelic. “Nollick Ghennal!” We’ll catch up on festive jollities later, there are more pressing matters, given where we are. Terry brings me up to date before he goes to bed. We’re averaging 100 nautical miles a day so far, this is good, at this rate our journey will take approx. 22 days. The seas are fine, Terry wants to put out more main sail, but I edge towards caution, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. She’s sailing well at 5 plus knots, Frederick’s doing his job, and Sisu isn’t stressed. If our journey takes more than 22 days, so be it. Terry’s frustrated, he wants us to go faster, I do too, but not to the cost of chafe and stressing our girl. We agreed, a steady passage. He agrees, plus it is Christmas Day after all, we had a foul first two days, lets enjoy today, the winds could change in a few hours anyway.

Jobs first though.

The amp meter which worked before we left, now doesn’t, we use a towed generator, christened Jeanette. This produces electricity from our speed through the  water, and there’s no shortage here…… the rope from the generator has a long propeller at the end, this turns constantly, transferring the rotation into electrical energy We need to measure the current, and this is what the meter does. Too much electricity, our batteries fry, too little, we have no GPS, fridge or lighting. Terry takes the meter apart whilst I write up my diary. Terry fixes the meter and soon we’re enjoying Weetabix and Christmas satsumas in the cockpit! We haven’t seen any birds for a day or so, and it’s lovely that today we have been joined by two or three small black birds skimming over the waves, and we regularly see flying fish soaring out of the swell with a real purpose of where they want to go, it never ceases to amaze. It’s very cheering and reduces the sense of being alone out here. By noon, we had 1,821 miles to go. Each time a hundred miles drops off the log, it’s a boost.

Santa Claus hadn’t forgotten us, he has AIS on his sleigh and delivered our Christmas presents! Santa has remembered to bring Christmas cards too, he thinks of everything! Early afternoon, Sisu was sailing well, conditions were stable, so we opened the smallest bottle of fizz we could buy and had half a glass each, we don’t drink whilst on passage, we savoured those few mouthfuls! Munching Christmas ginger cookies and the best Stollen we’ve ever had, which we purchased in La Gomera, wish I’d bought several, we opened our wrapped presents. Surprise!! We had bought each other TT t shirts, my goodness, how did Santa manage that? And they fit! Terry’s t shirts are black, best to camouflage oil stains, mine are girly pink. Of course you have to have Christmas hats. I packed tacky ones. Luckily, Terry hadn’t found the hats where I’d stowed them, he’d have left them on Peel quayside! We’d have our Christmas Day dinner later in the day. The turkey had long since flown, however we did have an alternative, tinned haggis! It looked exactly like a tin of Chappie dog food. I did my culinary best, frying it with onions and tasty small Canary potatoes, carrots and tinned peas. It tasted better than it looked. I see from my diary that “we had a good day despite the bloody rolling which is so vigorous we’re already covered in bruises from being bashed about, will be vv glad to reach Antigua”. It was refreshing to be away from the gross commercialism that pervades Christmas nowadays. We had each other, had laughs and good food, a pretty good day! We miss our boys, families and friends at this time of course, however we’ve already decided to have another Christmas Day when we get home and will even put up a tree!

We can’t put our feet up and slump in front of the telly here though. The evening brought enormous black clouds, obscuring the stars and moon, dumping rain squalls on us. The squalls bring a change in wind direction too and I had to call Terry up at 0300hrs, I so hate disturbing his sleep, but the wind is all over the place, and we were going too slow, only 3.3 to 4.7knots, together we changed the setting of our sails,ah well, we’d had a welcome relief from our routine for a few hours!

 

DAY 5. 26.12.16 BOXING DAY

We’re knackered, we have the main and foresails gooswinged and hope this will reduce the rolling. It’s this rolling that is so exhausting, the constant bracing, even when we sleep we brace ourselves! Our Boxing Day at home in the Isle of Man is spent dancing a traditionasl Manx dance called Hunt the Wren. There’s a song which accompanies the dancers, about how a witch transforms into a wren and how she is hunted down and cooked. It’s a circle dance, and in the middle of the circle someone holds a red and green ribbon and ivy decked pole, and from within the circle of ribbon and ivy is a wren, nowadays we use fake wrens! We then adjourn to the Sulby pub for mince pies and wine. Witches and wrens are safe out here, there wasn’t room to pack a wren pole!

We send Christmas messages to our boys, my Dad, Terry’s sister Carol and our close friends Tim and Gayle Evans, who are weather routing for us from Antigua. We have to be careful with the number of messages we send and receive, the Delorme is vital to us for weather forecasts in a 100 mile radius. Christmas is an exception though and they will welcome hearing from us. We receive a Delorme message from Tim, we’re in for light winds for the next 2 days. Damn. Hope we can keep our 100 mile a day average. By 1700hrs we’d got 1,697 miles to go. The numbers are clicking down, and boosts our moral. Terry is asleep, our sleep patterns have adjusted, we can sleep for two hours over night and during the day if conditions allow, we grab extra sleep when possible. I’m glad he’s sleeping, he carries all the responsibility, the main decision making and takes over when things get rough, night or day. Overnight, the winds decrease, and at 0200hrs, which is my watch till morning, Terry says to stay in bed, he’s going to stay up in the cockpit, put the engine on and keep an eye on things. Even at only 2 knots, and the seas have lessened, we still have a few bendy waves and Sisu twists, at times in bed you become almost airborne!

 

DAY 6. 27.12.16

Terry’s slept and dozed all night in the cockpit, as I come out of the hatch and see him, I feel for him, he looks so tired. After he’s updated me on how the night went, and we’re sailing steadily, I tell Terry to go below and sleep for as long as he needs. By 0930hrs we’ve only done 57 miles since 1200hrs the day before, not good. The sea is quite calm, which reduces rolling, no use to us though! It’s good to eat breakfast, Weetabix and tinned peaches without chucking it over ourselves like we often do when the swells are higher and more irregular. There’s no moon at night, so the nights are incredibly dark, I don’t like it. The dawn starts so late too with the sun finally rising at 0730hrs. The sun sets at 1830hrs, so the nights just now are very, very long. In a few days we shall see a sliver of moon, we’re looking forward to that.

Today I wash my hair for the first time in 6 days! Luxury! Terry runs the water maker, topping up our water tank. I use the test water from the water maker to wash my hair, it’s not pure enough to drink but we don’t waste a drop. I wash down the cockpit too with the soapy suds, Sisu gets so dirty! You’d wonder how so much dust and grit gets in the boat, we’re in the middle of nowhere, where does the crap come from! Now we are into some kind of routine, we make the effort to have an all over wash each day. Having a wash is a normal day to day activity at home, in our roller coaster surroundings, it’s like running a marathon in the effort required. Plus, who the heck’s going to see us?! We do, just to feel cleaner for a short while, and out of consideration of our partner! We fill the little sink in the heads with literally a puddle of water. We conserve water wherever possible. We have a salt water tap alongside the fresh water tap and we use this for brushing our teeth and wash our faces, finishing off with a quick rinse of fresh water. We dunk our flannels in the puddle, holding the flannel with one hand, then, bracing our feet, knees and elbows against the walls in the heads, we then attempt to wash ourselves down. The biggest pain of all is when the boat heels and the bloody plug comes out of the sink, with an anguished cry we try to get it back in before the last molecule of precious water twizzles down the plughole. You really wonder if it’s worth the effort, especially as we are just as sweaty five minutes later. Our ablutions give us a sense of normality in what is a rather abnormal world. Terry’s more diligent than I am, sometimes I just can’t be arsed for a day, it ain’t worth the bruises!

We still have our little Christmas tree up, I say to Terry that we’ll have to take it down soon and put it in the loft…….

With the full main and head sail up we’re only doing 3 knots, then drifting at 2.5 knots. The lack of wind is more trouble than too much! We’re up and down constantly trimming and re setting sails. We’ve stored our fenders under the bed, we not going to need them out here, but they are rolling around as Sisu rolls side to side. During the night, when I’m asleep in bed, Terry manages to remove the fenders from under me and put them in the fore cabin, normally a light sleeper, I didn’t stir, we’re both soooo tired!

 

DAY 7 28.12.16

We appear to be picking up the Canary current, boosting our speed to over 5 knots, achieving a knot faster than with the wind. If this keeps up, we’ll make up the mileage we lost yesterday. Checking the noon mileage has become quite a high point, the numbers either provoke a gusty “hurrah!” or grumpy “Boo!”

To save electricity, Terry has turned off the fridge. The downside is produce is going off quicker. The mayonnaise is decidedly fizzy, so that’s binned. The rolling is getting to us a bit, and we bicker, but any hissiness is quickly resolved. We’ve received a fresh weather report from Tim. He has advised us to go South 70 miles  otherwise there’ll be even less wind for us. His messages are so important and welcome, he is able to see what’s going on way ahead of the range of our Delorme forecasts and steer us where there’s wind.

The seas and swells are hard on Sisu and her gear. Frederick the windvane is broken again. We have to take the windvane onboard and take it apart. I am in tears with disappointment. If we can’t fix it, we are left with just the autopilot and us to hand steer. It’s a low point. I see from my diary that “by 1330hrs Terry and I have taken most of the windvane apart and got it into the boat. Sounds simple on paper, in reality it was fraught”. Oh yes, it was definitely fraught but not dangerous. We had to make sure we didn’t lose any parts over the stern, Neptune has no use for them! But we had no choice, Terry was once again just amazing. Nothing ever fazed him, he was stoic where I quivered and he became my rock for the entire journey.

Once again we dangled precariously over the stern, carefully lifting both blades, the pole, the metal internal rod and the top half of the main windvane body. The problem was that the 6mm ball joints of the mechanism which steers the rudder had flipped over to one side and jammed. One of the ball joint was broken while the other had pulled out of its thread. Having declared it unrepairable, Terry recalled the words of his old boss and close friend Iain Smith a Marine Engineer who always said there are no shops at sea either fix it or sink. While it was not that bad it inspired Terry to come up with a solution. He took a further 2 days to fashion a new ball joint from a 6mm cap head screw. For 2 days he filed away at this cap head screw, then, in between waves, holding the main mechanical lump of the windvane, he managed to reconnect this new ball joint into the workings! I would have thrown the whole damn thing overboard. It was exhausting work for him, I kept out of the way whilst he cursed each waved that knocked the new ball joint out of its fixing. His patience was sorely tested, but he won in the end. Now, all we had to do was put the windvane back together again. Which meant dangling over the stern again. We waited for a calmer day, 3 days later, clipped on, we tied all the bits of machinery together and then Huzzah!!! Frederick worked his magic and continued to do so all the way across the Atlantic! During this work Terry discovered that a restrictor line limiting the wind paddle was not set correctly allowing the mechanism to jam, hence the problems. His hands and face were black with oil, as we went to the heads to clean him off with a bottle of Jif and a rough flannel, this was going to be a big job! He looked like a Black and White Minstrel from the 1970’s. I asked him could he sing “The Swannee River”. Needing no encouragement, Terry launched into a fine rendition, including the full “jazz hands!” We just fell about, the relief of having fixed Frederick and successfully put it back together was the biggest achievement so far and we did it!

You’d think that as our living space is pretty much the cockpit and cabin, we’d be together all the time. Not so. If one of us is awake and on watch, the other tends to be catching up on sleep, fixing things, washing or cooking etc. During tea, I said to Terry that this is about the only quality time we spend time together, to catch up and chat. It’s absurd! The couple of hours in the evening listening to the Ipod, chatting and watching the sun set was our most special time of day, if conditions permitted! We also passed through the first of several time zones, so that evening we had an extra hour together! It was pretty mind boggling to realise we were heading West, physically crossing the longitudinal lines that we had studied on a globe of the world back at home last Autumn when we were just in the planning stage.

 

DAY 8. 28.12.16

Flying Fish. We were seeing them regularly, and retrieving their dried carcass’s off the decks in the morning. Here’s something to think about.… In the sea, they swim. In the air, they fly. At what point does a shoal of flying fish become a flock of flying fish? This conundrum helped us pass the time…..

Terry had a flying fish land on his feet in the cockpit last night, frightened the life out of him!

Today it’s grey and raining, just like home. We’ve had the engine on for some time, heading South, with a little North, at 16 degrees. By 1100hrs, we’ve got 1,462 miles to go, this mileage is beginning to look good! By evening the skies were clearing, clouds depart and arrive quickly and from nowhere. We ate tea, pasta and carbonara sauce, whilst watching a beautiful sunset, this is one of the rewards of our labours, banishing the thoughts of “why the hell are we doing this, we could have flown”. Just being together at times like these, with Sisu enjoying herself, we can take in our surroundings and appreciate the wonder of our world. We’ve learned to tolerate the constant rolling and noise, it’s our way of life for the time being, it’s still not easy by any stretch, and moving around is second nature now, arms gripping hand holds and feet knowing just where to brace themselves for whatever job we are doing. We won’t even notice the movement by the final day!!

 

ATLANTIC CROSSING 2016/2017 MINDELO, CAPE VERDE TO ANTIGUA 22 DEC 2016 – 12 JAN 2017 PART ONE.22-24 DEC 2016 2,135 (or thereabouts) Nautical Miles 22 DAYS

Our blog has been written up in Antigua, after our crossing it being impossible to type at sea.

Finally, we had a weather window, and we were getting twitchy to get going and settled in to our crossing. As always, we were grrr-ing at each other, crabby and snippy, snappy like a pair of angry crabs, scuttling around the boat and clacking our verbal pincers at each other, snap, snap, snap until one of us tells the other to go forth, and to stop chucking their toys out. Then we apologise and hug. We’re both nervous, understandably. It’s very common behaviour, nerves are a good thing!

I see from my daily diary, that until Christmas Day it was too rough and I was too scared to write. The memory’s a funny thing, now sat in the cabin on Green Island, near Antigua in glorious sunshine, surrounded by turquoise sea (and drill bits, rope, screws, wire & numerous tools, Terry’s catching up on boat jobs!) with pelicans swooping past us, I’m trying to recall that fear, but it’s now a faded memory, thank goodness. I’ll do my best for you loyal readers, remember, this is our experience of our crossing, everyone’s is different, some have an easy time, others not so, I think our crossing was somewhere in- between. We know from our sailing friends who’ve crossed that this has been the case, some had days of calms, others found it a challenge. The commonality is that each crossing is unique and life changing. So, having got the T & C’s out of the way, here goes! Just got to remember how bloody frightened I was at some points!

We cast off from our safe, comfy pontoon at Mindelo in the Cape Verde Isles, I went up to the bow and blew our red, plastic fog horn, tooting as we motored out of the marina, passing by Mike and Lulia on Exultans, waving to them, they would be making the crossing after Christmas. “See you sometime!” They had become good friends since we met them in La Gomera. We cleared the harbour, passing by cruise ships and tankers. Very quickly we were into the wind acceleration zones, funnelling down between the Islands, no time to settle in gently, it was knuckle down and forget the security we’d left. The wind shadow and related issues created by the height of the Islands could continue for miles out to sea. Already we knew our watch system that night was just a distant dream, pun intended……. Terry reassured me the seas would calm down when we’d cleared the shadow of the Islands and we’d pick up the Trades. I was not convinced….. That night was awful! High, confused and lumpy seas kept Terry on his toes, I was kept on my toes in the galley, grateful I’d cooked a big pan of mince & veg, this kept up going for two days, cooking was out of the question! Sisu took the seas in her stride, keeping us safely within her deep cockpit, like a mother swan carrying her cygnets safely held in the comforting folded bower of her wings across a lake, an analogy that was rather appropriate, for, like a cygnet, I was grey (with anxiety) and squawking…..

Terry still maintained that “It’ll calm down when we clear the Islands and we pick up the Trades”, for two days he kept reassuring us! The swells were huge and breaking, I felt sick and was terrified. This was a steep learning curve! These seas were the result of the unsettled weather we’d had locally a few days before we left and Terry gave the option of turning back. If we turned back, given how far we’d sailed, this meant a round trip of 200 miles back to the Marina and we could then leave when the seas had settled more. It wasn’t a sensible option, although a Breton boat had done just this before we left when one of the crew felt they could not cope with the trip. But to go through this again? No way! And to turn back meant going against these conditions. No way! And there was no guarantee we wouldn’t have similar conditions when we left the second time! We ploughed on. I was in tears, this was so early in the passage and I wondered, aloud, how we were going to get through this if it carried on for 22 days, Terry reassured me once again. Dusk came, Terry had been hand steering all day and now he would be steering through the night too. We hadn’t had time to settle into our passage. It’s common that when sailing a passage of a few days or more, it takes a couple of nights to settle in, to focus, to get into sailing mind set, to learn to adjust to the constant movement and noise. Neptune decided to fast track us into dealing with big seas. We sailed past the Islands, at 6 to 7 knots, conditions were far from ideal, sails reefed to the maximum. The coastline was stunning, and despite the conditions we enjoyed seeing them as we sailed down the gap between the islands. As we passed by Santo Antao we could see how the height of the mountains at 5,000 ft had created such a long wind shadow changing and accelerating the wind, giving conditions totally different from the weather forecasts. In these conditions though, I was very scared. Pulling myself together, I went below as objects could be heard moving around. When you’re tucked up in a Marina or at anchor, you think objects are secure. Ha! Oh naive and frivolous thoughts! The veggies which were tied up in their handmade scaffold netting bags, secured to the wall of the quarter berth were swinging across the narrow gap near the heads. Like the old fashioned fairground boats we used to sit in and pull with ropes to swing back and forth, the potatoes were arcing high into the air, having gained enough momentum to knock you out if you timed your trip to the heads wrongly. The netting hammock which held the peppers and fruit so tidily whilst moored up had hurled the lounging veg out across the cabin. Tangerines were skittering up and down the heads, in fact Terry had managed to stand on one! What a dumb idea of mine that turned out to be! In the end we kept the veg under the seats where Terry keeps some of his tools, we were still finding onions a week after we arrived…… We were tired, hungry and dehydrated, things could only get better. The night always makes seas feel bigger and more scary (for me anyway). Terry said go below and try to rest, if conditions improve I could come up and keep watch. Crockery, pans, anything which could bang against the prison of their cupboards were loudly complaining of their confinement by crashing against the back of their doors. You think you’ve taken care of things that can rattle, but no. Luckily we had lots of foam matting spare. I cut up lengths of matting and stuffed it into gaps in all cupboards, between containers in the racks by the sink and hob, even the washing up bottles were rocking to and fro, seeking out and stopping the cacophony was maddening. I could hear a metallic tink…tink….tink….tink…..tink…… What the hell was it? Was it outside, inside? I strained to identify the source. Eventually I found it was the weights off the pressure cooker in the cupboard under the sink. The weights were rolling from side to side in the metal tray which fits inside the pressure cooker. That bloody noise took all night to find…. I see from my diary the final sentence of day I reads “VV low and moral zero.” Yup, that just about summed it up!  Hang in there folks, it does get better!

Terry had steered through the night, he was exhausted, adrenalin had kept him going. He admitted he’d been at the edge of his 20 years of sailing experience, but he did it and I loved him all the more for his sheer “can do and deal with it” attitude, this attitude kept us going the whole journey. The seas were still very lumpy and confused. By noon we still had 2020 nautical miles to go, we’d done well over night though and each mile covered was a mile past the effect of the Cape Verde Islands and out into the expanse of the Atlantic. The waves were massive. One wave in particular carried us high into the air, began to break and we tipped, almost vertically, sliding down a green wall of angry ocean. Sisu tilted and from the cockpit I found myself staring directly below into white, frothing, foaming seas as we slid, down and down. I screamed. In fact, I was screaming, plural. I lost it. Terry gave me a right rollocking for panicking as Sisu just took it in her stride. At that point, I didn’t care, In fact I didn’t care about anything at that point. I was in absolute, abject fear. I’d never experienced these kind of seas before, sure, rough Irish choppy waves and seas. Back home I relished Sisu chopping her way through those, with waves rolling over her sides and over the coachroof. In the Irish Sea, you know you’re going to be holding a pint of local ale somewhere in Ireland, England, Scotland or Wales in 12 hours or less. This was a different game altogether, I think at that point, the full enormity of what we were undertaking hit. I couldn’t stop crying and shaking. I wailed at Terry through snot and tears that every bugger had been lying about “this being the easy part”. Reader, I was pathetic. Well, we just had to get on with it, we are both very stubborn characters and we were not going back! However, being stubborn meant that as strong characters we scrapped as Terry told me to snap out of it – oh dear – never, ever light the red touch paper and tell a woman to “snap out of it” if you haven’t retired to a safe distance first. In our boat you can’t go far. I couldn’t snap out of it, I was terrified and felt ill. I told Terry that I wanted to enjoy this experience too and make the most of it, we’d planned this for over a year! It wasn’t a pretty time it has to be said, this first couple of days and it took Terry a while before he understood my rather black sense of humour. Looking back, I was in a state of shock, this was real, not a ride you got off in 60 seconds at a theme park. But I’ve got my mother’s determined streak and rallied and Terry apologised. He knew that I would always do whatever he asked of me, no matter how tired or scared I was, and this proved to be the case. I was angry with myself too, for being a wuss, there’s no more exacting critic of myself than me. Bear in mind this was very early days and conditions far worse than those predicted.

Sisu was pitching and rolling far over port to starboard with the large and irregular swells. We eventually became used to the continuous rolling, it’s well documented and until you experience it, nothing can prepare you, you either get used to it, or struggle. By the end we were covered in bruises and aching all over from hanging on as you move around the boat. We both dozed and slept in the cockpit the first couple of days. I was too scared to go below, I like to see the conditions. In bright sunshine, the seas were exhilarating, however once the sun disappeared behind a cloud, those seas became grey and threatening, not nice at all. We decided to motor and escape the effect of the Islands, Frederick our windvane was also just not coping with the irregular swells. Another long night passed. Darkness fell around 6.30pm, we usually had tea around 5.30pm. This was our biggest meal, and something we looked forward to. I say “we”, I enjoyed it after sweating and swearing below in the galley….. I must say though, we ate well! The moon finally would make an appearance around 4.30am with the sun heralding a fresh morning at around 8.30am.

By Day 3. Christmas Eve, we began to see a steadier Trades swell. Sisu still rocked from side to side, I put more foam matting into spaces. Overnight I found the crockery container would slam from side to side, so we tied it down, everything on board had a life of its own! In the early days it was incredibly noisy down below, from the halyards rattling, sails flapping when being changed or reefed, anything on deck is magnified below. In the cabin, Sisu creaked and groaned, her wooden interior being flexed, when a wave caught her midships, it was like being hit by a double decker bus, BAMMMM! You’d have thought she’d split in two, as she shuddered from the blow. We got used to it and could sleep too, we had to. We were also getting used to the constant motion. Try doing anything, making a hot drink, cooking, washing your face, going to the loo and having someone push you, at different times, in different directions and the ground moving under your feet 24 hours a day, day after day. This may give you some idea of how we lived, and all those who undertake a passage like this! By noon we had 1,921 to go. It felt good to see the 2,000 mile mark vanish.

Day 3 brought 2 things breaking. One. My Kindle went “phut”. Crisis! What would I read now on the long nightly watches? All my mind reducing chick lit and the mind expanding “proper” books I always should have read but never felt the need. Damn and curses. Fortunately Terry had a handful of books on his Kindle and I had 4 paperbacks. The bonus of a broken Kindle was that I became pretty good on spotting constellations and planets in the night sky. We do tend to forget to look upwards at our glorious sky, taking it for granted, so there was a definite upside. The other thing that went “phut” was Frederick, our windvane. He’d been working beautifully up till now. The problem was our wind vane ceased to steer. Terry’s an incredibly resourceful man, “Where there’s a Hill, there’s a way” is his motto. A very good motto too, the other version of his motto is “Where there’s a Hill, there’s always an item of clothing scattered there”………. To see what had gone wrong, Terry had to take the windvane apart. This required him to dangle over the stern, clipped on with a safety strap and harness, take it apart, and hoick the sections into the cockpit. We tied every part to the boat that could fall into the 5 mile deep ocean below us, no mean feat in the swells. We manoeuvred the long central column, the wind paddle, the smaller oar. What a job. There was also a thin metal rod over which the central column fitted. We managed by balancing on the edge of the cockpit and hanging on to guard rail at the back known as the pushpit. The ball joint mechanism had flipped over and jammed. With a screwdriver and much perspiration, Terry eventually manages to flip the balljoint back into its correct place. We then have to put the windvane back together again! In heaving seas we managed it!

The sea had also now settled throughout the day, making life a bit easier, though we still have to grip our way round the boat, we’re getting accustomed to it now. That evening we enjoy good tea of pasta, chorizo and mushrooms. Well fed, we lie in the cockpit chatting, watching a sensational sunset, with the Ipod playing and life is good. We live in the moment when sailing, situations can change so quickly at times. My watch is the 8pm to 11pm, then 2am to 5 or 6am. At 9pm, on my watch, the wind changes. Frederick requires both the sails to be balanced, so any change to a sail means readjusting Frederick, and this is a dark art, Terry’s the wizard, so I gently prod him awake to work his magic. Night passes easily, and for the first time we, each of us, watches, every 15 minutes or so, scanning the

dark grey horizon, for what? Ships? There are no ships here, no tankers, no sailboats, just us….whilst the other sleeps. Sleep. Ah yes. Believe me, when you’re knackered, you sleep despite the almost continual background of sails being adjusted, winches winching, obstinate domestic plastic plates clacking, plus the other noise you still haven’t pinned down, and the swish of the sea against the hull, a matter of inches away from your ears. During the night I rescued a flying fish which had landed with a fluttering thud in the gap between the stern and the cockpit, just behind the towed generator. I couldn’t figure out the noise in the dark, scared the bejeesus out of me! We got used to flying fish landing on and around us, some we could save, others we discovered later in the day, dried out, like unsmoked kippers on the decks!

This will be our way of life for another 19 or 20 days, cloistered together in a 38ft boat, it’s going to test our relationship, our strengths, our weaknesses, our humour, our comfort levels……. and our demons. Mindelo seems a long way away, Antigua even further.

 

 

 

 

 

MINDELO, SAU VICENTE WED 13 – SUNDAY 17 DECEMBER 2016 LAST BLOG FOR THIS YEAR!!!

The forecast isn’t looking great for the coming weekend, the Marina is rather bouncy, we’re relatively sheltered on our pontoon, but nevertheless Terry was up again in the night checking and re-roping our bow lines. Sisu is surging forward a bit and we don’t want her bashing her nose on the metalwork of the pontoon. There’s quite a swell in the Marina, the waves pushing the boats to and fro, you can hear ropes creaking, groaning and metal springs squeaking as they take the strain of the boats lifting several feet up and down as the water jostles around their hulls. Thursday evening saw boat owners walking like drunken sots down towards the Marina, swaying and tottering along the walkway from their writhing boats, and that was before folks reached the Floating Bar, whose fairy lights strung around the perimeter of the seating area were looping the loop in the strong winds! Terry and Steve from the boat next door to us once again re roped, adding centre cleat lines to help share the load of the stern and bow lines. As we’re bow to pontoon we clamber down our gangplank strung off the side of the hull close to the anchor. It’s a quick sprint down the wooden gangplank this evening as Sisu surges away from us as the gangplank leaves the safety of the pontoon and dips into the water, we time our sprint down with the “hey ho and up she rises” landing safely! The forecast is for this 20 knot wind to increase Friday and Saturday, the problem is that it accelerates through the islands and 25 knots can easily make 35knots as it passes through, we recall that at home Terry would probably be down at Peel Marina keeping an eye on Sisu and this wind would be relatively mild! It’s warm too, and we haven’t been rained on since Tenerife!

The water maker brackets are now welded and the marina workshop has done an excellent job. Now all Terry’s got to do is fit them. So, dismantle the steps into the cabin, and take out every tool box once more. He spends the day fitting the brackets and watermaker alongside the engine, these guys aren’t moving anywhere now with all that steelwork! Terry also has to remove the rest of the oil which is floating on the surface water in the bilge. You can buy proper marine soak up sponges, or, you can buy thick sanitory pads from the local supermarket, ducktape them to a plastic grabber, and dip ‘em into the bilge. Cheaper and just as effective! And we’ve got half a bag of pads left, they have an additional use in the First Aid kit, they make excellent compression pads if either of us gets a deep wound! I have Helen McCubbin of Milvina, retired Medivac Nurse to thank for this cracking and innovative medical advice. Terry fills 4 large water bottles of grey oily water from the bilge. This oil would have clogged our bilge pumps or gone into the sea, so it really had to be removed. Terry had a morning of lying around with his arm stretched deep in the bilges, armed with his dipper soaking up this mucky infusion. He also retrieved some lost nut and bolts! This is a huge job well done and Terry’s very relieved to tick this task off his list.

Thursday. We take a break off jobs on Sisu, we’re both feeling a bit of cabin fever. Basil asked if we’d like to join him on a taxi tour around the Island, it would share the cost and be good fun in each other’s company, we jump at the opportunity! We were on a mystery tour and left our route to the taxi driver. There are only four roads, three form a circuit. He drove us high up to the 750 metre mountain, Monte Verde, the road was double lane, some of it tarmac, most of it laid with flat cobbles. As we climbed, this main arterial road became a single track of cobbles! I’ve no idea what we would have done had we met a vehicle coming the other way as we rose up around the hairpins! One side was volcanic cliff and fallen rocks, the other side a low wall was the only thing preventing a long drop. In some parts the roads had broken up and in a couple of places, rock falls meant our driver had to steer round them whilst still on a single road! We could see Mindelo spread out below us, it’s a big town, we didn’t realise how much it sprawled, houses spread out along the sandy beach and as far into the land where it was possible to continue to build. At the top of the mountain are a mass of communications aerials and we stop here to take in the panoramic views. It’s breathtaking and beautiful. One side is quite flat with long stretches of sandy beach and what looks like superb surf, the other side is largely Mindelo from what we could see. We head towards the long sandy beach of Salamansa. We sailed past this coast en route to Mindelo. It’s paradise. The village is quite small, there’s a little school and a lot of young children running around. Sau Vicente is known as a young people’s Island, it’s so good to see this, as this healthy percentage means continuing growth for the Island. We drive on along the coast, and along the same stretch of golden beach with its turquoise surf to another small town. The houses are striking colours, purple, orange, lime green, bright yellow, I make a mental note of the colours, wonder how our cottage, Close-E-Kee would look?! Think Terry might not agree! With the azure blue skies and clarity of the sunshine, the colours zing in this environment, guess they’d look garish at home, worth an experiment surely?! We pass farmsteads, each one has its own windmill and well for drawing up water, this part of the Island is quite lush, with small trees and palms swaying in the brisk winds. Each farm has a large allotment which looks healthy, there’s even some cows and goats, the first we’ve seen on any of the Cape Verde Islands. Some of the houses look derelict yet there’s lines of multi coloured clothing freshly washed hanging out to dry. A lot of the houses aren’t painted on the outside, but they always look well kept, doorways always brushed. We go back over the mountain route, we come across a truck, we breath in as it drives past us without slowing down, with centimetres to spare, our driver and Basil didn’t appear fazed, Terry and I were! Soon we were back in Mindelo, and we thanked our driver for his mystery tour, if you visit, we can recommend a tour this way.

Now it’s back to getting our boats ready, Basil has work to do and so do we, the break was energising and we feel ready to focus on what needs doing. Sisu needs a good scrub inside, the engine and brackets job meant she’s a grubby girl inside, so that’s my part of the ship. With Ipod music on loud I spend Saturday morning cleaning everywhere, and filling rice and pasta containers so we’re ready and not searching under seating early on in our passage. We make note of what stores are low, why are we consistently running out of biscuits and swiss roll Terry??? The water tank is filled yet again, we’ll top up once more before we cast off. The days are passing so quickly now, filled with countdown preparations, including final beers! We put things away we won’t need for the next 20 days, the fruit basket, cushions, anything that bounces around, we’ll put a piece of elastic around the small collection of 6 or 7 books stacked in the corner of the cabin, when we say we’re looking for a book to read, we grandly announce we’re in the Library! Terry plots a course, it’s pretty much a straight line West to Antigua! We’ll be spending Christmas Day and New Year mid Atlantic, we don’t drink when on passage, however, we’ve a large bottle of fizz stowed away for when we make landfall!!! We’re having tinned haggis on Christmas Day and have a Stollen saved as a treat. It’ll be a very unusual Christmas Day for us! We’ve stashed a delicious, dense and spicy fig cake we bought in Madeira for New Years Day. We anticipate our 2,120 nautical mile journey will take 20 days or so at an average 100 miles a day, so we’ll catch up with our blog when we get there! I’ll try to see if family will post on Facebook as to where we are, we can’t and of course our blog will be temporarily suspended. I’ll be taking lots of photos and film for you as we cross, and look forward to sharing our journey with you all in January 2017. Terry and I wish you Nollick Ghennal as Blein Vie Noa! Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year to all our families, friends, and blog readers!

 

MINDELO, SAU VICENTE, SUNDAY 11 – THURSDAY 17 DECEMBER 2016

The Watermaker bracket work continues…… Or…. DIY in exotic loacations……

I’m not sure if Terry’s tan has deepened or he’s ingrained with the dark brown oil he’s been working with….. He’s spent the last few days grafting on the watermaker brackets, an activity which has involved him lying full body length in the saloon floor or up to his armpits, literally in the engine workings and rooting as far into the temporarily oily, filthy bilges as he can. I still favour getting off the boat or sitting amongst the tool boxes, as at present, writing up our blog!  Later I help him clean up, including hosing and scrubbing the Cap’n down later on in the cockpit! It’s true to say that I never in my wildest dreams imagined our relationship would be like this, it’s bizarre and curiously wonderful, it’s certainly close!!!! We’ve both had to learn tolerance, patience and humour with each other, these facets of being human are still ongoing work in progress, but we’ve come a long way from when we set off that’s for sure! We’re not alone in these situations, I’ve seen during our travels that things mechanical will break, wear out and do unusual things on all the  boats. To be fair to our girl, Sisu, she’s had to work damned hard and though she does the best she can, and we’ve been fortunate so far, she has a “bit of a to do” occasionally and in the words of Star Trek’s Engineer Scottie “She cannae take anymore Captain!” Bless her bilges and all the dropped screws, nuts, bolts, and suchlike that lie deep within it…. Doing this work in the sunshine does help however and the reward of a couple of big beers afterwards, the ice cold tankard makes for a very soothing compress for Terry’s weary hands as he grips the glass and rehydrates him too!

We’ve been following the wind and weather patterns on Windyty and Predictwind each day. There’s been an increase in wind speed across the Trades, from 14/16 knots to 22/25knots, still fine for us to sail in, but the forecast for here this weekend isn’t great. It’s certainly been more windy than usual, Terry had to adjust our ropes in the middle of the night as we were blowing onto the pontoon. From what we’re seeing on Windyty, this has been caused by a big depression circling around just above and towards the UK, so we’re content to get this work done and sit it out, we can see a more settled pattern emerging later in the week, and we’ll be ready to set off shortly after.

Boats are still arriving, our neighbours change regularly. We’ve met a lovely guy, Basil, age 72, he is originally from Greece and has lived in UK for 52 years. He’s sailed here on his 25 foot boat Jaba from Tenerife, solo, it took him 18 days. He’s tremendous, sails solo, having completed the Jester challenge to the Azores a number of times and taken part in the Fastnet race. He’s excellent company, Terry and Basil enjoy swapping tales and books!

We’re still working on the bimini shade. We need shade around the sides, but only partially down the sides, and we need to have visibility too. Having decided against wrapping our white floor matting around the bimini metal side-structures, we now favour using plastic green netting, the sort you see surrounding buildings during renovation. It’s cheap, provides shade and we can see through it. I don’t think Terry enjoys “out of the box” solutions, and if it works, is cheap then Bob’s your Aunty, that’ll do for us! He’d have made an excellent presenter on Blue Peter with his innovative ways. This is our next job.

As the gopher, I’ve been back and forth to the Drogaria do Leao, the main local ironmongers. The guys behind the counter are fantastic, laid back and humorous, both wry and dry. They recognise me now as an almost daily regular. I wait to be served wondering who will serve me, two of the guys find my facial expressions and hand waving quietly funny which is good, one has reasonable English who’s vocabulary expands the more I spend and one knows no English but patiently appraises with a gentle twinkle in his eyes at what I’m attempting to describe, it helps if I’ve got an example of what I need. In the case of the netting, I haven’t a bloomin’ clue what the Portuguese is. Fortunately there’s a building across the road whose frontage is covered in the very green netting we require! I’ve got one of the two humorous guys, who find guessing what I wish to buy as funny as I do miming the object. Pointing to the yellow building across the road I say “netting”. He looks at me, then slowly at the building. “You want building?” No. Waving my arms, I try to describe a wrapping motion, hoping to give the impression of the netting surrounding the building. “Windows?” Nope. His deep, deep chocolate brown eyes narrow in concentration. His daily work is not meant to be this hard! They’re chilled behind this counter man! People are watching, it’s comfortable, as they are being entertained and playing the “what’s she describing” game too. In my purchases so far, this for him, is my most extreme challenge, way beyond miming hacksaw blades. My rubbish Portuguese and his halting English fail us both, I’m invited into the bowels of their shop which is like Arkwrights shop in Open All Hours. Sliding in behind the lady at the Caixa payment desk where we settle our bills, and following the lazy sway of my green coated shop keeper, (how do they do this relaxed hip swing walk??) we squeeze in between rows of ladders, deep, dusty shelves of buckets, plumbing gear, sinks, and rolls of mozzy netting. I spy and point at the netting required, right at the back in the gloom of the store. “Ah!” we both exclaim! He gets it now and shaking his head, he laughs. Four metres should be enough, necessity is the mother of invention and I’ll let you know how our bimini shade works out!

Playing charades with the boys conveniently delays me starting to scrub Sisu’s decks with a handbrush and toothbrush. The steel iron filings have created ugly rust marks all over Sisu. What a job. Three days, and believe me, the novelty, along with the skin off my knuckles wore off four hours into the job. Still, it’s increasing my tan as I’m dressed in very tatty knickers and an M & S bikini top. It’s a grubby job and I’m not creating any more laundry than I have to! We get through three bottles of Jif in the process. She looks good though and I’m pleased with the end result, particularly the large Gin & Tonic reward!

I’ve now sewn up the green netting into three shades for our bimini, and you know, with the aid of sail thread, I’m pretty pleased, even made up two bags for storing potatoes and onions, and I don’t even like sewing!!!

 

 

 

 

 

MINDELO, SAU VICENTE WED 7 – SAT 10 DECEMBER 2016

Not all of our time here is spent enjoying G & T’s, some of it is beer!

Wednesday & Thursday. Terry has made a drawing and written what he requires for the water maker brackets, we take it to the Marina’s ship shop. It shouldn’t be a problem, this is good news. Time here is manyana with attitude, which is not such good news. After four days we get part of the brackets, but the steel for the main part of the bracket is proving more difficult to source. The workshop is doing the best they can, but it’s difficult to get things here. Terry is resourceful and we have a boatful of tools and gear, but it’s frustrating for him when he could make what he needs himself, but doesn’t have an arc welder on board! The time delays are frustrating too, we can see days passing us by. We have plenty of other jobs to do though, and between us we get these done and make modifications on bits of gear that require it. I scrubbed one of our two bean bags that we use for seating outside the other day, left it out to dry, it blew away in the constant wind we have here, very frustrating indeed!! We’ve got thick foam floor matting we bought in Santa Cruz, and thought we’d use it somewhere, so I make a replacement long seat pad out of the matting, its bright orange, but does the job well, is scrubbable and looks funky! The wind sock we put over the forward hatch works well and keeps a steady flow of cool air through the boat. We use plastic piping to keep the sock rigid and with rope through a couple of bits of piping, we can secure the sock to the boat. But… the piping without rope through it kept blowing away! I sew up the ends of the sock which hold the piping and voila! Small jobs, but ones that make our lives easier. We have to look at the veg netting, plan A works, but the bag is too deep and narrow, forcing peppers through the netting and renders them to pulp before we can use them! Plan B is being worked on.

We visit the local iron mongers, there’s 3 or 4 here, and armed with a list of drills bits, taps, tape and discs that Terry requires, we achieve 90% of the list, a good morning’s foraging!

Terry also takes the opportunity to move his gear, tool boxes and other manly toys he plays with/uses from under seating areas to different seating and berth areas. I go shopping for some provisions or bits for the boat. Inside Sisu it will be a total shambles, imagine your front room, kitchen and spare bedroom in complete and total disarray, it’s necessary, our saloon and galley areas are also Terry’s workshop and I understand that, I just don’t wish to witness it! I shall return later when he’s put it all away, given our space a wipe over and got rid of most of the oil and flotsam and I can actually clean the area, then we can walk from one end of the boat to the other without straddling the steps lying in the middle of the saloon! It’s like overhauling your car in the front room and kitchen! I’ve got used to it, and have adopted a better facial expression compared to my eyebrows shooting to the top of my head and mouth gaping in shock when I first saw what has to be done when any mechanical work is to be done!

Our dinghy has sprung a leak too! I should add at this point, we are by no means alone in things breaking, blowing away, leaking etc, it’s part of the fun of owning a boat…..We suspect the leak around one of the air valves occurred when Terry pressed his foot against the valve when he pulled up the Danforth anchor into the dinghy whilst we were anchored at Tarrafel. We blow it up on the pontoon, and find indeed the leak is where we thought, luckily it’s easily fixed. After the glue’s dry we test the dinghy out in the marina. Some time later we haven’t had to retrieve a sunken, deflated dinghy so that’s a job successfully completed!

Boats are leaving to cross the pond and the marina is beginning to empty out, and each time a boat leaves, there’s a tradition of blowing your foghorn as you motor out of the marina. One day it can be just one horn you’ll hear, another day, two or three blasts. We are looking forward to blowing our foghorn! I find it quite emotional, the blast makes you look up from whatever job you’re doing to watch another boat go past, I have to stop and pinch myself, soon it will be us!

 

Friday. We had a rather exciting taxi ride! The marina can’t find the type of steel bars we require, so have advised us to take a taxi and go to an engineering works/machine shop that is just out of town, run by a man called Paulo. As it’s Friday, and nearing mid day, when lots of shops and businesses shut for the weekend there’s not time to lose, we grab a load of Escudos and jump into a taxi by the marina. We ask the driver can he take us to Paulo’s workshop. No problem. As we’re pulling out into the road, a burgundy pickup truck goes past us, we’re the vehicle behind it. “That’s Paulo” says our driver. I gave the command I’ve always wanted to say, “Follow that car!!” We head out of town. On the outskirts our driver suddenly veers off onto a dirt track. Where the hell are we going? I fear for the taxi’s chassis as we bump over rocks and rubble. We turn into small an industrial area, where there is a large steel building, outside there’s a barnacle covered ships propeller lying on blocks, still attached to its huge propeller shaft. There’s engine parts of varying sizes and condition around too. Our driver pulls up and we are greeted by a young guy who speaks very good English and is on the ball with what Terry requires. The workshop is big, airy and tidy, twenty or so workmen in overalls are working on machinery that makes Terry’s eyes sparkle. He’s able to dig around the spare pieces of steel lying around too, he’s a very happy bunny! We’re sorted quickly, the steel he needs is cut from a large 10mm thick  sheet of steel and cleaned up for us. We pay a very reasonable price indeed for what we needed, considering the work involved, and head back to town with our booty. Since we arrived here, it’s the furthest we’ve been from the marina!

That evening, we had a very enjoyable evening with Neil McCubbin of Milvina, his two sons Derek and Michael and Michael’s wife, Clare. Tomorrow, they are leaving for Barbados. We’ve been meeting up with Neil and his wife Helen since La Coruna, Galicia. They’ve become close friends and we’ll be keeping in touch, we’re going to miss their excellent company, but we’ll catch up with them again on distant shores and the internet makes keeping in contact so much easier. We look forward to hearing of their arrival and how their passage went. We wish Neil and crew a superb passage!! We also celebrated four months since we left Peel, Isle of Man, way back on the 9^th August, often we awake not believing where we are!

 

Saturday. We’ve just waved and blasted our foghorn to wish Neil and his family Bon Voyage as they motor out of the bay in good winds, bright sunshine and sparkling sea, see you again one day!

I’m holed up in the fore cabin, our bedroom, Terry’s working on the water maker brackets cutting 10mm thick steel with a hacksaw and drilling it with a battery drill. The cockpit and pretty much the rest of the boat is out of bounds while he makes things and creates a mess. With his Ipod playing, he’s working away, using the gangplank as his bench, it’s as far removed from working in his man cave at St Judes as could be! Here, the problem is getting too much sun and burning, at home it would be keeping the rain out of Terry’s coffee mug and his biscuits dry as I scampered through the rain across to the garage and his workshop! Terry will have the brackets ready for Monday, we’ll get the parts welded. Terry can do it, but doesn’t have welding gear with him, damn near everything else though…. This is another common conversation topic between sailors, how they’ve got just the right tool in their workshop or garage but left it at home thinking that of all the stuff they have brought, the one thing they now find they need, they left behind!

 

 

 

 

 

MINDELO, SAU VICENTE 5 – 7 DECEMBER 2016

Mindelo Marina where we are currently stopping, was established by two Germans, Kai Brosmann and Lutz Meyer-Scheel in 2003, from a derelict dock on the Eastern side of the main shipping dock. They filled the need for a marina and they’ve successfully done this, building a marina with room for 120 boats which opened officially in 2008, they reported in 2008/09 well over 1,00 yachts visited their Marina. Looking around we can see this figure must easily now be exceeded. They also have a workshop and can repair just about anything, they’re tag line is “If it’s man made, we can fix it”. We put them to the test with making new brackets for our water maker!

The showers and loos are clean, though it takes some getting used to showering in cold water, I can’t dither about under the shower head but have to dive in under it squealing for a minute, wuss! There is no natural freshwater here and all the freshwater on the Island is extracted from the sea which makes it expensive when compared with harvesting rainwater. You pay for the water used, the first 100 litres is free and you then load up your security card with water “points”, I got caught out on the third day when my card ran out of water points leaving me with a head full of conditioner, won’t be making that mistake twice! In Sal and Tarrafel we use a solar shower which is ecological, effective and simple. We place a fresh water filled water bag to which is attached a shower hose, on the top of the coach house roof. During the day the sun warms the water for our shower. Then, to the entertainment or alarm of neighbouring boats and in Sal, tankers, we shower in our birthday suits! We’ve showered at the same time as a couple of our nearby anchored up neighbours, also partaking of their ablutions, and it’s no big deal, once you get over yourself, get a grip and strip off!

We have a floating bar adjoining the Marina, decorated with flags and fairy lights. It’s rather unique and is a lively meeting/chilling place from morning to midnight, the food is excellent too, we enjoy several early evening (Bonus of winter time is that the sun is over the yard arm around 5pm!) large G & T’s and hearty breakfasts here!

We will try to fit in some sightseeing around Mindelo. Coal and cables brought prosperity to the Island, and there are many fine examples of beautiful colonial Portuguese architecture in the centre of Mindelo. Its heyday was in the 1890’s and one such example of colonial building is the restored two story central market, apparently it’s the most spectacular market building in the entire Atlantic basin! We paid a visit, it’s certainly grand and full of a wide range of fruit, veg and fresh fish, it was weird hearing piped jolly Christmas songs though, Jingle Bells just didn’t quite fit in with the setting! The stall vendors are good fun, vying with each other for your trade, all good natured and unpressured, we make this our one stop shop for produce during our time here. There’s a feeling of reasonable prosperity, plenty of shops, iron mongers – which we visit regularly – good restaurants and bars. The couple of supermarkets we’ve found so far have the widest range of food we’ve come across so far, including deli, fish and meat counters. There are numerous and I mean numerous, Oriental supermarkets, selling all sorts of things from baby clothes, to kitchen ware, beauty products to furniture, all run by Chinese who employ local youngsters to help you find whatever your looking for, and they’ve generally got it. As the boat gopher, I was sent out to get some tarpaulin. I tried many of the Oriental shops, it was a big ask admittedly, however I was offered tea towels, bath towels and table cloths as a good substitute! I’ve never seen so many of these shops they seem to be on every street and corner! Christmas is celebrated here too, in a small way. I’m tempted by the baubles and decorations they have here, but we have some on board and I reluctantly put the gaudy Chinese inspired glittery Santa Claus wall hangings back on the shelf.

 

The Marina also has good Wifi, the 250mb is free, then you pay a fair price for continued usage. We use this, but also find a good café across the road which has Wifi just as good and is free for as long as you wish, for the price of a beer.

All around us boats are getting ready to jump off across the pond. The steep gangway down to the security gate of the pontoons is busy with people lugging provisions and water to their boats. Even a shopping trolley is dragged up and down, I make a note to do that too! I feel excited but a bit nervous seeing all this activity. We’re here, we’ve made it this far but now we’ve gone up a level. Terry’s excellent and is reassuring, the facts speak for themselves, the Trades are establishing, out in the Atlantic there won’t be acceleration zones, no freaky wind changes either. There are all ages and types of sailor here and all makes of boat. Over the three days we’ve been here, some have left and one boat next door to us, left yesterday and today has come back with engine problems. They’ll set off again tomorrow, like us, many have no fixed schedule of arrival at their destination, the best way to be!

We’ve enjoyed Neil and Helen’s hospitality often and it’s good to return their generosity so we invite Neil and Michael over for dinner. We dine on fresh fillets of meaty tuna, we got in the morning, 6 good steaks for Euros 4, salad, fresh bread and wine. We’re still exploring the red wines, one Terry chose is rather like a dodgy port, but for Euros 3 we don’t mind pouring the bulk of it down the sink, better that than the bad head or stomach we suspect it would induce!

Neil introduces us to Tom, a fellow OCC member, with his boat “Arctic Smoke”, an Elizabethan, a similar size and age to ours, and his crew mate Mick, they are sailing to Martinique in a day or so, they’re excellent company and we enjoy another chilled night out in town at the Café Royal, an impressive French style building with a good restaurant. We swap family and sailing stories over spaghetti with langoustines and I had 4 cheese pizza, I’d craved one for ages!

 

 

 

TARRAFEL, SAO NICOLAU TO MINDELO, SAO VICENTE, SUNDAY 4 DECEMBER 2016 46.4 Nautical Miles

Rather like the film Groundhog Day, it was another sunny morning just like previous mornings. At 0700hrs we hauled up our anchor in calm winds and water. We’re not fooled though, we’re gaining local knowledge and local knowledge is power! We had one reef in the mainsail as we knew once we cleared the Island, the wind would funnel between Sao Nicolau and Santa Luzia the small Island we would pass on our way to Sau Vicente. We could also see the darker change in colour of the sea ahead of us, signifying a change in sea state. Very quickly we had the strong winds we anticipated, 20 knots from a passive 14 knots, it may not seem much to you but 6 knots increase is quite a jump for us! It was fine, and we were happy to be sailing rather than motoring all the way! We quickly pulled in the headsail some more and put a second reef in the mainsail, best to reef early rather than when matters become too exciting! The swells increased in height, funny how we’re getting used to seeing the sea rising up behind our stern as we swoosh down the waves! Frederick our wind vane leaves long and wide cream coloured lacework trails of white froth in the blue sea as we shift up a gear in our speed. We let the mainsail out a little, slowing us down just a knot, we were sailing on a good fine reach at 6 to 7 knots and Sisu was enjoying herself. We quickly passed smaller Islands, these are uninhabited and we could see why, there’s nothing but volcanic rock and steep cliffs. The waves were coming across us and cheekily flicking over the side of our starboard hull, suddenly, BOOOMMMFFF! Neptune decided to have a laugh at our expense, a huge wave washed right over us, dumping a mass of water into the cockpit, totally drenching us! Of course, it’s warm, but a bit of a shock nevertheless! Terry said afterwards my face was a picture, I’m not surprised, I’d put on a clean t shirt thinking we were in for a dry run!! We were clipped on and always wear our lifejackets so there was no danger, we would be rather salt encrusted when we reached Sao Vicente though! We had a couple of other waves into the cockpit, naturally just as we were drying out from the original soaking!

The difference between lively situations in daylight and night are so marked. That big wave over the side would have been frightening in the middle of the night, yet easy to deal with in the bright sunshine. Similarly, when Sisu heels over as she’s sailing, if she’s going too fast for our comfort we simply let out the mainsail to reduce the power of the wind across the sail, this can feel very dramatic in the dark but fine in the daytime. Sisu has a narrow cockpit, so we can easily brace our feet on the seat opposite and there’s lots of handholds around us, more so with the bimini metal work. We were in for a quick sail to Sau Vicente!

Once again a pod of Spotted Atlantic dolphins joined us, big boys in this pod, they joined us for a short while, I wasn’t going to leave the cockpit to film them in this wind and sea state, so we enjoyed their company. A flock of birds circling and diving ahead of us, told the dolphins there was fish to be had, so with a final belt of power they passed us, their minds were on food and nothing else!

Nearing Sao Vicente the wind changed to North East, on our stern, now we were riding down the waves. We sped down the coast and made the decision to go round the outside of Ilheu dos Passaros, a huge rocky outcrop which sits out in the bay of Mindelo. There’s certainly a light on the top of this hulk of rock, and what looked to be stairs, not unlike the wall of China, leading up to a small lighthouse, we could see people walking up the path to the lighthouse as we sailed around it. With a controlled gybe we turned in towards Mindelo and pretty much sailed into the Marina, only dropping our mainsail just outside the Marina. A good and vigorous sail all the way, a good confidence booster for me and Terry was a happy bunny at not having to motor!

We radioed Mindelo Marina and were asked to moor at the fuel station where two Marineros were waiting for us. We moored up and the Marineros asked did we wish to refuel. This makes good sense as re fueling is often a job that gets done last, just before we leave. Here, we got our fuel sorted straightaway, one job less when we have enough to think about on departure. The other smart move at this Marina is clearly marking each pontoon finger. At the end of each pontoon is signage, a large white sign very clearly stating the letter of the pontoon, in our case “A” which, even better, is brightly lit at night. We are so used to being told which pontoon to moor at, only to find there is absolutely no sign as to what letter or number each pontoon is. So vainly we motor up and down, frequently in tight berthing, and in windy conditions, trying to guess where we ought to be mooring! Big gold star to Mindelo Marina! The Marineros took our ropes and efficiently tied us up. We have to pick up a “slime line”, this is a rope which stays in the water, and we tie our stern rope to it. Unlike marinas at home there are no fingers on the main pontoon and we are either Bow or Stern to and have to clamber off the boat. Because the rope is constantly wet, it becomes slimy, hence it’s nickname! It’s normal in continental marinas to tie up stern to pontoon. Boats with a flat, open “sugar scoop” stern are easy to get on and off, we can’t get off our stern due to it’s canoe shape and because we have Frederick fixed to the middle, so we tie up bow to pontoon. Getting on and off for us is literally walking the plank! We tie a plank over the bow and climb down onto the pontoon, it’s easy once you get the hang of it, and as you haul yourself up the plank and then balance carefully going down, it’s a good over all work out each time you get on or off!

We made good time, in fact it was beer time! After a quick beer, we paid a visit to the Maritime Police in the port to check in our passports and paper work. The port is next to a fantastic golden sandy beach, I hope we get a chance to swim before we leave. Neil McCubbin, s/y Milvina is already in Mindelo Marina with his son Michael, we last saw them in La Gomera. It’s so good to see our friends and catch up, we make plans to eat out and enjoy a meal of excellent roasted quarter of chicken and a big plate of chips washed down with large glasses of Estrella beer, food always tastes wonderful when you’ve earned it!

 

SAL TO SAO NICOLAU 1 DECEMBER 2016 89 Nautical Miles

The day before leaving we asked Jay to bring out some water for us, to fill our – relatively small – 250 litre water tank would mean many trips back and forwards with our one container! Jay has been a regular in our stay at Sal, helping us with water, information and sharing lemon liqueur over an evening, we’ll miss his ready humour, he wished us “Bonne Noel” when he’d finished decanting the water into our tank. Our first Christmas greeting! Our thoughts turned to home, our families and friends will be getting ready for Christmas, our Christmas will be spent afloat somewhere in the Atlantic! I’m sat in the saloon in Sao Nicolau typing, it’s evening and still very warm, we’ve every hatch open, I can hear the surf breaking on the nearby shore and we’re listening to The Boys of the Lough, by co incidence, some of the songs are Christmas carols, it definitely beats having to hear Slade screaming out “It’s Christmas”!

 

We upped anchor and set off in the early evening, sailing at a steady 5 knots in a 14 knot NE breeze, into a beautiful sunset. The plan was to sail overnight, arriving at Sao Nicolau at first light making the bay we planned to stop in around lunchtime, this way we arrive in daylight, which is far safer than arriving in the dark, unsure of what is there. Sailing in these waters is very different from the Irish sea, The seafloor drops rapidly as you move away from an island dropping to 3000 feet deep in only a few miles. We watched the lights of Sal gradually vanish, it’s been a really good experience and the people will stay with us for a long time. We were blessed with stars, the wind died down and what little there was, was all over the place, though we weren’t in a hurry we didn’t want to dawdle either so on went the engine, so noisy after sailing! We were able to fit in some sleep down below too, each taking a turn on watch. There was even some activity on the AIS to keep us alert, tankers and freighter’s flit between the Islands and a couple of other sailing boats were exploring the Islands as we are. I’d prepared a hearty chorizo and pasta stew which we ate under the starlight. We both stayed in the cockpit by 5am, taking it in turns to doze, when I awoke (thanks for the picture Terry, at least I didn’t have my mouth open dribbling……) the sun was rising, and we were steadily motoring past the end of the Island. It’s an “L” shape, the longer leg is about 30 miles long lying east/west and the shorter leg about 12 miles lies north and south. It’s a high Island with the highest peak at 4,300 feet on the western end. We were heading for Tarrafal at the base of the “L”. The low volcanic rocks were bathed in apricot and rose from the early rays of the sun. How could people live here? Yet they do, the principal town Vila da Ribeira Brava lives in the middle of the Island, we could see it, almost built into what looked like a crater, its cooler there than on the coast and closer to the water supply, the location also made it less accessible to pirates! Well, it deterred us, we never got to see it!

As we turned by corner of the coast, the morning got even better! Spotted Atlantic Dolphins, twenty or more took time out from their fishing and bow rode with us for fifteen minutes or so. Full of fun they leapt out of the sea, this time I managed to photograph it! The sheer joy at seeing dolphins just doesn’t fade, this was a mixed pod, adults and youngsters, all barrelling along our hull, showing off and why not!

Further down the ridged coast dotted here and there with sparse greenery, leading out of Tarrafel we could see a modern road winding its way through the mountains, apparently it takes 40 minutes by car to get from Tarrafel to Vila da Ribeira Brava, which has a good internet café. We found a good café with excellent tuna and chips in Tarrafel, and reasonable internet which lasted longer than a couple of beers so we saved ourselves the taxi fare to the middle of the Island! Even more incredibly, although we didn’t see it the Island has an airport! When we were cruising down the length of the Island I honestly couldn’t believe anyone would want to live here!

SAO NICOLAU

We anchored in Tarrafel  bay, where there were already a couple of boats and three catamarans, the small roll on roll off ferry came past too and neatly slotted into its berth past us.

We have to check in with the Maritime Police or local Police and register our passports and Ships documents. So, out with the dinghy. Along the bay and harbour the black volcanic beach shelves rapidly and steeply, with a small surf so getting out of the dinghy at the harbour is a quick leap into the shallows before the dinghy was pulled back by the pull of the surf! One local lad was sat in a prettily painted boat. He called out to us, we thought he simply wanted a ride back to shore. We beckoned him over, he dived in and swam like an otter quickly reaching us and grinning, climbed into the dinghy beside me. This was a sign for 5 or more of his friends to run along the sand into the water towards us! The boys thronged around us, grabbing the ropes around our dinghy, all wanting to earn some money. We told them our lad who was in the dinghy is “Boss” he gets the money, he did the work. What a clamour! Oh no, it was very clear that wouldn’t do at all, it was money for all of them! Luckily a man came along who sorted the jostling lads out and we left them dividing a handful of loose change. Bit different to Sal where the lads seem to have some pecking order, but then, there are far more boats visiting so more money to be earned. We saw a Policeman in a pick up truck with the Blues & Twos lights on the roof. When we asked where the Station was he indicated we climb in the back, we were off to an exciting start! Papers sorted, and, as in Sal, the Ships Registration document is held by the Police till we leave. We had a quick explore, there wasn’t much to explore, the town is basic, again very clean, a few grocery shops, a bank, a handful of bars. We got some provisions at a Chinese run cash & carry type supermarket. We were shadowed by staff the whole time we were there, had they seen us in the Police truck and word had got round already?? We picked up fresh fish from the harbour side for only 200 Excudos (Euros2) We enjoyed our dinner sat in with cockpit eating fish we didn’t recognise with several easily recognisable and decent sized Madeiran Rum and cokes watching a stunning sunset, the boat only rolling slightly due to Terry dangling his flopper stopper over the side……..

The following morning after our now daily swim we went back to town. This time we’ve got the lads organised, the first lad with his hand on the dinghy is “Boss” and he shares our payment out! Then after a good lunch and catch up on emails at a bar we headed back to Sisu, who had been joined by a classic two masted schooner, it was like stepping back in time, we could imagine ships of old visiting here and trading! We only had time for a day and half here, tomorrow we’re off to Sao Vicente, staying in the marina at Mindelo where Terry has some work to do on our water maker and a final provision up before crossing the pond!