january, 2005

hi folks --


passage to the cape verdes
--------------------------
our passage to the cape verdes from dakar was only 3-4 days and the first
one with just the 3 of us.  we caught a big tuna and wished we had 6 to
share it with.  tuna 3 meals a day got old, i'm the only one who wants
it raw with wasabi and ginger. its a very dense fish and hard to make it
juicy and suculent unless you leave it raw.  the favorite way to cook it
was what we call steaklettes, cut across the grain, about 3/8 inch thick
and sauted in butter with lemon pepper.

we were hurrying to get to the cape verdes because hannah had told her
sort-of-boyfriend that we would be there the 10th because jeff flew home
on the 12th from there.  but instead he flew home from senegal and we
stayed there longer than originally planned.  we left when hannah had
an email on the 10th saying that he (boyfriend) was already there and 
what the heck - she hadnt left yet.  the sail was a nice reach that 
turned close hauled and in the end we had to beat upwind to get there.
should have taken advantage of the wind the first couple of days when we
could easily have gone upwind.  it was close, we rounded the island sal where
we were to meet him at about 6pm but i was unwilling to try the harbor
after dark so we sailed upwind and hove to till morning.  arrived about
mid-day because we had sailed too far away overnight.  checked in all wrong,
did immigration but forgot about the port captain.  other boats straightened
us out though and we were all legal at last, out of the EU and therefore
not liable for the 17% VAT tax they wanted to charge for my boat if i
stayed more than 18 months.

cape verdes
-----------
we anchored at the end of the pile of boats, too far out as i am prone to
do. ended up too close to the commercial wharf where big ships needed to
park and unpark themselves.  they blew their horns and came close.  we
moved.

hannah took off with her boyfriend jeff (different from our crew member
jeff) on his wharum catamarin.  its about 25 ft long, has two bunks, one
in each hull, no place to sit, a bucket for a head, an outboard motor
that he doesnt usually use and all the comforts of home for one person.
jeff is a really good, traditional sailor -- no gps, just sextant navigation,
no cruising guide books, just charts and admiralty sailing directions. he
built the boat and sailed it from australia and i'm learning lots from him.

susha went dancing one night coming home at 3am or so and next morning i
noticed that the dinghy had no oars. they had been stolen at the dock where
she pulled up.  we usually left the dinghy on the beach, but thats hard 
with one person.  its even hard with 2 or 3 people.  we always get a wet
butt launching or arriving at the beach and sometimes get the dinghy full
of water too.  but we are learning to time the arrival and not get sideways
in the shore break waves.

sush went for a walk one day to a tourist attraction about 2 miles away
on the north end of the island.  she was just moseying along when a 
policeman came along and told her she couldnt walk alone, that it wasnt
safe.  then 3 italian women came along in a car and made her get in with
them.  turned out that the italian women had been stopped by 2 guys asking
for water who pulled a gun and knife and tried to rob them.  they drove
away and were not hurt, went to the police and were showing the police
where the incident occurred when they saw susha.

we did get one successful tourist attraction in, a salt mine.  was from
the turn of the century (last one) with wooden dericks still standing but
unused from the old system for getting the salt out.  we swam in the pools
where the salt had been harvested, really wierd, floated half in the water
and half out of it.  you couldnt swim on your stomach you were too far out
of the water and out of balance, on your back worked.

we stayed in sal for a few days, then sailed to sao nicalo, another island
in the northern half of the cape verdes.  sush and i went ashore in the 
dinghy and were mobbed by 20 little boys from age 3 or 4 up to about
12 or 13, all wanting to watch the dinghy for us.  sush was trying to
get the lock for the dinghy from her bag and as she reached into it, there
were about 35 small black hands reaching inside too.  we tried moving 
around, telling them to wait, hurrying up with the find the lock exercise,
but nothing seemed to work.  we finally got the dinghy locked and chose
one boy to be our dinghy watcher.  paid him in advance which is not the
way to do it we learned.  but nothing was taken so either its a more
honest crowd than at sal or our dinghy watchers worked.

we met up with jeff and hannah and we all went to a tiny village for
xmas.  we had been invited by a family hannah and jeff had met to
have xmas dinner with them.  it was quite interesting. the friend
was 23 (same age as susha) with 2 kids, a girl 8 and a boy about 3.
she was one of about 10 children and still lived with her parents.
we met her husband who is portugese, way older (like 55) and trying
to get her a visa to go back to portugal with him to his orange farm
there.  xmas dinner with a family didnt mean that you sat down and
ate together, it meant they cooked and we ate and they had already eaten
earlier.  we took an apple pie that hannah baked, bags of sweets and
3 bottles of wine - a red, a white and a sweet desert wine from a
winery we toured in the canaries.

we did stocking style xmas, with presents that were iou's or little things.
i gave susha her ring that she had lost and i found a day before xmas. she
gave me an iou for a batch of arroz con leche, an especially yummy spanish
version of rice pudding.  the best presents were an iou for a loaf of home
made fresh hot bread from susha to jeff and a pair of home made oars from
jeff to me.

the village had about 200 residents, road access under repair, sea access
most of the time, or hiking access.  the electricity went out at midnight,
so the dancing was early, rather than starting at midnight or later as is
common in spain.  we went to church and then a dance xmas night. they do
a dance called the zouk that was quite sexual in appearance, but we decided
they just werent hung up on sex the way we americans are, and just danced to
their body's feelings.  after the girls realized they could dance that way and
the guys werent hitting on them, it was quite comfortable and because the
guys held you tight and led, you didnt have to know what to do, you could
just follow along.  the little kids (10ish) were incredible dancers too.

i sailed with jeff on the cat back to tarafal, the main town on sao nicolo
and hannah and susha sailed wonderland by themselves.  susha was captain
and han was mate.  we raced them but they didnt know it; we won by an hour.
they did a fine job and can sail the boat by themselves just fine.

we met a taxi driver in tarafal on sao nicalo who wanted to practice
his english, so we kept running into him (susha is kind of cute and they
were both 20ish so maybe the running into was not totally random).
he invited us to ride along when he took his mom back home after xmas.
the ride was hair-raising and i seriously wished i had a seat belt and
that susha would stop talking to the guy because he would look over at
her instead of the road when she did.  we finally got there (at the
end of the road) and it was a beautiful valley with lots of fresh water,
farms, fruit trees, etc.  we hiked up thru town before going back.
the houses all had thatched roofs with the palm fronds held on with
fishing nets.

next we sailed to mindelo on sao vicente to pick up peter, our crew member
for the crossing to brazil.  we had loaded him down with so much snack food
from costco that we went to the airport to meet him.  mindelo is a big 
city compared to the other places we had been in the cape verdes.  the 
dinghy watchers were grown men and charged about $5/day to watch your
dinghy.  if you didnt hire them, apparently your engine at least would be
stolen.

peter had a run in with the dinghy watchers one time when he went into
town to use the internet.  as he came back to the dinghy, one of the 
watcher dudes suddenly jumped in the water and said that peter had
kicked his car radio into the water and had to buy him a new one.
peter hadnt seen (or kicked) a radio and refused to be scammed. the
next day our watcher, carlos, who had apparently been in on the scam
was asking for reimbursement for the radio. he also asked for a backpack.
we took him to the port police with us when we went to checkout and the
port police told us to pay him $5/day for 4 days and to bring a radio
for him the next time that we came.  right.  jeff had a different watcher
and he seemed more honest, actually watched the boats, and didnt scam
him.  we just chose poorly, but didnt really realize we were choosing.
need to get these things agreed to up front i guess.  seems wrong to
have to pay guys not to rip you off, but thats the way it was.  almost
always when you came back to the dinghy dock there was no one there
"watching".

did lots of boat chores in mindelo, notably going up the mast and checking
everything out.  jeff, hannah's boyfriend and a very experienced sailor,
did it and found that the top of my mast is made of poor grade aluminum
and is corroding badly. its a cast or specially made piece that fits at
the top of the mast and holds the sheaves for pulleys and places that
the stays holding up the mast connect.  he fashioned two sister plates 
out of a piece of stainless that i had for a brace for my windlass and
installed them beside the forestay to reinforce it.  i was pleased that
the aluminum wasnt as bad as he first thought, at least as measured by
how hard it was to drill the hole to bolt in the sister braces.  took
2 drill bits to get the holes drilled.

we spent new years eve in mindelo.  the custom seems to be that groups
of young people visit restaurants, homes, etc. and sing a song that says
they need some food or some money so they can continue to party.  susha,
hannah, and jeff got invited to join a truckload of singers and went to
several houses, then dancing and had a great new years eve.  peter and 
i got separated from them (i couldnt find the internet cafe where we
were to meet) and were with a single hander who had just arrived from
the canaries.  the single hander was definitely strange, seemed afraid
of black people (everyone except a few boaty's like us and some tourists)
and afraid of crowds and generally a jerk.  but we had brought him ashore
so were stuck with him for the duration.  at midnight, after some loud
fireworks, everyone goes down to the sea and gets in to wash away the old
year and welcome in the new year.  we avoided that, since we had plenty
of opportunities to sit all evening with wet butts without doing it on
purpose.

we checked out of the cape verdes in mindelo and stocked up on
food for the crossing to brazil.  got both feul and water there too, very
hairy parking job at the feul dock, strong wind (25kts) blowing off the
dock, less than optimal throwing jobs on the dock lines from my crew, etc.
it took 2 tries and was not pretty.  lots of other folks were there also
waiting for the feul/water place to open up after lunch, so we had help
and finally made it.  getting off the dock was no problem !!

once checked out you are supposed to leave and not stop at any other islands
but we wanted to stop at sao antao, the last in the chain of northern
islands.  so we snuck there with "sail problems" but no one challenged us.
found a nice hotel/restaurant there run by an american woman and german
guy.  we ate dinner there one night and had beers and soup another time.
gave her some pistacios, parmesan cheese and turkey jerky.  she was very
pleased.  we used her phone to call home and then next day left for brazil.

passage to brazil
-----------------
brazil is about 2000 miles from the cape verdes and across the equator
and the doldrums.  the doldrums are called the inter-tropical convergence
zone these days and are an area of light winds, squalls, thunderstorms,
lightning, etc. where the northeast tradewinds of the northern hemisphere
meet the southeast trade winds of the southern hemisphere.  we decided our
course to minimize our time in this zone.  got weather info from my buddy,
john, at noaa and did a rhumb line sail straight for the island of fernando
do naranho about 2/3 of the way to salvadore, our eventual landfall.  the 
distance was about 1300 miles and we made it in 12 days.  only had one
night of lightning and rain storms, where other boats that crossed the
doldrums further east had 3 days of messy weather.  we motored 37 hours
in the 12 days, several of them to charge our batteries.

there are 2 big rocks in the middle of the passage between the cape verdes
and brazil, peter and paul rocks, that we had to avoid.  all the charts
say PA (position approximate) opposite them, so we gave them a wide berth.

we had a few close calls with ships, two big freighters that we had to
alter course to avoid and one a fishing boat who was planning to check
us out but really scared us.  he was headed right towards us, so we 
started the engine and turned, and just at that instant he turned the
same way.  that continued for a couple more turns and finally he slowed
down and turned away totally.  our responses were confused by me saying
turn this way and gesturing with my hands and peter at the wheel not seeing
my hands and turning the other way.  seems like the biggest danger on the
high seas is another boat hitting you.  we met two boats who were dismasted
by being hit by a cargo ship, usually from behind.

have finally given up on the watermaker.  tried all the things the company
suggested and nothing works.  i lost a screw that we jury rigged and
replacing that is the only thing left to try.  i am ready to send it back
and get my money back.  nice idea, a watermaker that you tow behind the
boat and that doesnt need battery power, but it just doesnt work.  also
since xmas the company doesnt answer my emails.  maybe i should try
calling them.  or maybe write a scathing review of their product
for a sailing magazine.  at one point we were changing the point of
attachment to closer to the waterline and the caribeener got locked
in the open position instead of the closed position.  all of a sudden
the pricy unit was free and sliding into the ocean.  peter had hold of
it when we noticed that it was free and i was able to grab it and the
two of us could hold it till the caribeener was secured.

about half way to brazil, susha decided to shave her head as a way to
cool off in the heat of the tropics.  first step was for hannah to cut
her hair to about 1 inch long. then she was going to borrow peters
razor to shave it.  unfortunately, or fortunately, peter couldnt find
his razor, so sush settled for very short hair that looks great and 
is cooler and easier to deal with in the heat.  have i mentioned that
its hot in the tropics.  a shower lasts about 10 minutes and we didnt
have enough water on the crossing to shower more than once a week.
pretty raunchy crew.

fernando is a national park with a hefty anchorage fee ($47/night) and
a use fee $11/person/day.  its a beautiful island, but a bit pricy.
we stayed 3 days and visited nice beach where we snorkeled and saw
turtles (hawksbill) and a small shark along with the usual brightly
colored tropical fish.

the girls did a night of dancing, we were going to do it the night we
arrived, but were so tired after a nice dinner at a buffet that had
fresh vegetables and salad items that we all went to bed early.  but
the next night hannah and susha went in to a local bar/dance place
and wandered home at about 4am.  turns out hannah had forgotten her
shoes and not only danced for 6 hours or so barefoot, but then walked
home 2 miles.  aahhh, to be young and 20ish again.

we caught several fish on the trip, the highlight being a 4 ft mahi mahi
that we could barely get into the boat.  one morning while i slept susha
caught and gutted and fileted and skinned a fish.  a first among my
mostly vegetarian female crew members to date.

the trip from fernando to salvador on the mainland of brazil was fast --
we did some 140 and 150 mile days.  arrived at night, but salvador is
in a big protected bay and we thought we could go in and anchor in one
of the designated anchorages on the charts.  trouble is when we got there
at about 9 or 10pm, there were about a dozen big ships anchored in that
anchorage.  its was too deep for me to anchor comfortably, so we found
a shoal that was too shallow for the big ships and out of the way of
the entrance to the actual marina and harbor area.  dropped the hook
at about midnight and went into the marina the next day.  got a dock
space, the last one available just before carnival and i even parked ok.
lots of surge and we are med-moored (front tied to a floating dock, back
tied to 2 "lazy-lines" that go to a big block of concrete in the water).
trouble is that in the med there is no tide so being tied to the dock
and something in the water is ok and your lines stay the right tightness
all the time.  but here in brazil there is 6-8 ft of tide and the water
is only about 15 ft deep, so there is considerable difference between
the tightness of the lines at high tide and at low tide.  after tying
us too tight and breaking two lines due to chafe, i figured it out and
have us nice and loose with a separate line to pull the boat in when 
you want to get on or off.

brazil
--------
this is getting way too long, i will leave brazil and carnival for the
next installment.

hugs.

-evi