Well look at us go! We made it to Gomera with an empty diesel tank and dreams of a full night's sleep, and by gum was that sleep a goodun. We were only in Cape Verde for 1 1/2 nights, if you count getting in at 3am as a cheeky half but lets go with that. Nat has written all that needs to be known about Cape Verde so I'll leave that post with just the point, wish we had more time to discover the islands. It's a very dramatic and beautiful place. Next time?
Motoring out of Porto Grande Bay away from Mindelo about 11am. All pretty relaxed and well prepared.
Fortunately and unsurprisingly given the flat conditions nearly the whole way down, we didn't break anything so nothing needed replacing. Fortunate given this is a very remote place and supplies are rare. The other challenge here is food. You could get most of the staples but fresh foods were very limited so this adjusted the menu a bit, not too bad though. The key thing was diesel and they had loads of this. I wanted to be able to bring an extra 100L as we 'only' had 420L so far but the forecast was for very light winds for the first half of the trip meaning quite a bit of fuel. We picked up 4 extra 25L jerry cans and left with everything at the brim, enough for 10 days continuous motoring so plenty for our trip. The only real gotcha was that we misinterpreted the flying out date for Maddy and Ollie and instead of flying out on the 28th from Barbados as we though they were due to leave on the Xmas day. Nay bother, let's roll.
A little breeze taking us away from Mindelo and hopefully jumping us off the island. Alas, the forecast was right and it was just the morning's land breeze that we left behine a few hours away from Cape Verde.
As we sailed slowly down the channel, we all took bets on the date and time of arrival. Given Penny, Helen and I had only really had an in depth look at the weather at that stage and Maddy and Ollie were flying out on the 25th, bets were firmly before that date allowing for a good sleep before the flight. Penny and I had a quiet word to on the side and to mentally prep for some extra flights at a later date but we shelved it and it would be a problem for another day.
Pretty soon what very little wind we had died off so the motor had to be turned on and we started our decent down to a sailable latitude. The trip down to the Canaries and the sail plan was still in recent memory for the sail plan for this trip. We didn't have a spinnaker pole which would have been preferable for dead downwind sailing but does come with some distint disadvantages. Dead downwind is easy poled out with good consistent seas but it turned out we'd only have that sailing for half a day on this whole leg. Gybing with a pole requires a number of people on deck and my whole plan required noone on deck at all for sail changes from a saftey point of view. Also, the danger of backing sails with large ocean swells meant I wouldn't relax with the autopilot in charge and also with a learning crew. Most importantly though, the ARC boats had cleared out supplies in the med and I couldn't get a track and pole. It would have been a waste of money though as it turns out, I was happier without it for the above reasons. But since we didn't have one we were sailing the angles for the trip so with the motor we used that to our advantage and sailed a more southerly route to make those angles easier.
When there's no wind and you have to motor, make the most of it
As you can imagine, the first night was very uneventful and the next 3 days meant that while we left on the 8th, it wouldn't be until the 12th that I reported we had some wind and could sail, and on the tracker you can see this shallowing of the route pretty clearly as we take a more easterly heading.
So on day 2 as the motor was running and would be running for quite some time we busted out the watermaker and filled up both water tanks. We decided against filling up with water in Mindelo as while I'm sure some do this, there were too many reports online of bad water and susbsequently illness and having to ditch it. We had about just under half remaining anyway so filling up took about 3 hours and gave us something to do, plus enjoy showers without worrying about supply and we did some laundry by stomping around in the big bucket. Gold. I didn't realise it to the extent that is happend but it turns out Maddy and Ollie are from the pure water appreciation society and La Gomera's quite frankly sub par offerings simply didn't melt the butter over the toast, so pretty much dehidrated themselves on the way down to Cape Verde. Fortunately, desalinated water was much more in keeping with their views so were adequatly catered for during the remainder of the trip.
Fish also came to us during this calm period. When sailing, slowing the boat down enough to get the fish onboard is a challenge so these calm periods were great for fishing. Some Mahi Mahi joined the provisions in the fridge and fresh fish was for dinner for a few nights.
Breakfast, Colette style!
But fishing was about to come to an end. The Atlantic at this latitude is absolutely filled with Sargassum weeed and it's getting worse. While motoring and you were down below, you could hear the engine slow as the propelor churned through it. It would get caught around the keel, shaft bracket but worst of all the rudders, making them very heavy and vibrate. This increased load on the autopilot and slowed us down. The only way to clear all this off was to come into wind, reverse out then carry on. Everytime I did this the rudders felt buttery smooth and were bliss until they were next clogged.
A small patch of sargassum avoided during the day. At night you'd know you went right through the middle of one due to the smell
The other constant companion during this trip and pretty much every ocean crossing are flying fish. They are absolutely everywhere and are incredibly stupid. Every morning you'd need to clear up a number of them littering the decks, and it wasn't uncommon to get snotted by one during the night as they kamakazied across the cockpit area. In the morning, picking them up and throwing them overboard was fine, but in fresh state getting broadsided by some nutter was not a 'that'll come out with a wipe' affair. Sadly, as the trip wore on we noticed the smell less and less which meant it's just as well the number of flies and bugs out on the ocean equals zero.
Before the wind arrived on day 4, we were able to stop for a couple of swims, but these were a little more challenging as while there was no wind, there was a bit of swell around and when stopped this throws the boat aroudn so more of a dip rather than a long swim. Still, it's swimming in the ocean which remains epic.
Ollie finds some form
The last thing really that happened before the wind arrived was we went past a poor turtle with a plastic bag wrapped around a flipper. Just beside it was a group of fish just circling and waiting for it to die so they could have dinner. We tried our best free the turtle with the boat hook but couldn't get close enough to free it. I ws quite keen to haul one of the Mahi Mahi on board but that didn't work either so sadly, we had to leave it to it's fate.
Fish circling the poor turtle caught in the pastic bag
During these quiet times I was not against having a drink the in the evening. I've been on dry boats and not dry boats and if drinking you can't go bananas. If something happens you need your wits about you and it can happen even in glassy conditions if you hit something. So a friend who I've also sailed with had himself adopted the approach of "we only have 1 drink a day, except on days when we have 2!". Didnm't have any more though but a beer in the evening isn't a shit way to end it.
A near crisis was narrowly avoided from a bad batch of tabs by using the giant screw driver
Bliss
That'll have to do for part 1. Lord knows you're probably asleep by now.
Join us next time for actually sailing, whale and swordfish encounters, Penny either flirting with or inadvertantly insulting a passing french boat, poetry at sea, a near muntany when the skipper hits a new speed record then reduces sail and a controversial and overdue confession.
Stay tuned
I forgot to put this in the last post so a nice way to finish