In which we cut our bonds to Europe and head down to Cape Verde Islands
November 2016
started with Ruby in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Lionel was in the U.K.
for routine medical checks and family visits and Elsie was on board,
organising provisioning and having some overdue dental work done.
Lionel returned on
the 7th with usual small chandlery items, including
Caribbean flags and a piece of marine ply. This latter was for an
attempt to re-fit the lower wind steering gear bracket. On the
voyage from Gibraltar this had moved, sheering a bolt. The hope was
that by substituting a wooden packing piece for the existing
plastic, the bracket would be more firmly held, enabling us to
actually use the system on ocean passages. A happy day was spent
trimming, sanding and varnishing before re-installing the bracket.
We also had a major shop for dry stores as we were sure that these
would be either much more expensive or unobtainable over the next few
months. Ruby is blessed with many spaces beneath the floorboards,
seats and beds and these were well packed though even with our best
efforts, we could still have fitted more in.
One of several food stores!
One of the major
items was bottled water. We have 330 litres in the main tanks and,
with practice, we have learned to extend the duration of this from
about 4 days to over 2 weeks. We have a sea water pump in the galley
sink and, when at sea, this is used to wash everything – dishes,
clothes and ourselves - before a final rinse with fresh water. This
should mean that, for our planned voyages, we should have sufficient
but ‘should be OK’ is not good enough in the middle of the ocean
so we bought 20 X 5 litre bottles so that, if all else failed, we
would not get dehydrated. The weight of this, together with 4 cases
of beer and 20 litres of wine was definitely having an effect on our
water line.
The weekend of the
11th - 13th was spent attending a series of
seminars with the Jimmy Cornell Odyssey organisation. Jimmy was the
originator of the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers). He has passed
this on now but still organises smaller rallies of 20-30 yachts.
Having made countless ocean voyages and supervised literally
thousands of others he is definitely someone who knows what he is
talking about and we were grateful to be able to pick up what tips we
could from him and his team. We were re-assured to find that we had
got most things right in our preparations but took enough new stuff
away to make it 3 days well spent.
Monday was spent
with final provisioning for our leg down to Cape Verde Islands,
including lots of fresh fruit and veg and a new fishing lure. As we
were settling our bill with the marina, we spotted an advert for
anchor chain. A German couple had bought 70 metres of 10mm chain,
only to discover that their spurling pipe wouldn’t accept anything
larger than 8mm. Our existing chain was both a little short, at 50 M
and worn, with the galvanising being almost exhausted over much of
its length. It would last another year or so but the price asked for
this length was so attractive that we decided to go for it and our
evening was spent checking that it would fit our windlass and stowing
it in the chain locker. Elsie wasn’t convinced that it was a
perfect fit so we were loath to dump our existing chain before proper
trials and we now had an additional 200 kg on board. As this was at
the bow and the beer in the cockpit locker, I reasoned that at least
we would be well trimmed!
We finally left
Santa Cruz at 1100 on the 15th. The forecast winds to the
South were not good but the atmosphere with dozens of other aspiring
Atlantic crossers making their own final preparations and having
their own doubts was starting to affect us so we wanted to get away.
We had a good sail down the Tenerife coast, starting stately in a F3
and finishing spiritedly in a F5, broad reaching all the way to
anchor at our familiar place at Montana Roja. The plan was to spend
a couple of days here and then pop across to La Gomera for a top-up
of fuel, water and fresh food before our crossing. On the evening of
the 17th, however, the forecast showed that the following
morning would give us our best chance of good winds for the
foreseeable future so made the decision to go for it. Accordingly,
we lifted anchor at 0900 and motored the 3 miles to San Miguel to top
up on fuel. There was the usual chaos here, but only wasted 20
minutes or so and at 1010 cast off and headed south.
This was a major
decision point. Up to this now, we knew that we could change our
minds, spend another winter in the Canaries and remain in Europe. We
were now losing that possibility – we were committed to the big
crossing!
There are many
debates about what sails to set for downwind passages. The
‘conventional’ way was two headsails, wing-on-wing or in tandem
but Jimmy Cornell had impressed upon us that this was far from ideal
as, once in a big swell, hoisting the main might prove impossible and
heaving-to would become impossible if required. His view is that a
main, however well reefed, is required at all times and we were happy
to accept his wisdom so set off with 2 reefs in main and Genoa in a
F6 quartering wind. This gave us a flying start and we averaged
nearly 8 knots for the first couple of hours. The wind gradually
abated as we left the land affect but for the following 36 hours we
had at least F4, giving us about 6.5 knots. On the morning of the
19th, we shook out one reef, putting it back in that
evening for the night watches. This proved to be wise as, for the
rest of the passage, there were periods when the wind rose to over 20
knots and it was much easier, on single handed watches, to adjust
power using just the furling genoa. The average wind, however,
dropped and with it our speed. The first day’s run was 159 miles;
this was followed by 143, 123, 114 and 122 mile days. Not classic by
any means but we had plenty of food and water and no deadline to
meet. Our progress was monitored by my kind brother-in-law who got
twice-daily messages of our position, course and speed with
instructions of what to do if they stopped! This almost failed when
one of our messages went, inexplicably, to his spam box, but he
queried us and we were able to re-assure him that all was well. Our
new Iridium Go hotspot device was also used to download daily weather
forecasts. While these were not totally accurate, at least we were
re-assured that nothing nasty was heading our way.
We had not shipped
our wind-steering rudder and were relying on George. The battery
monitor showed that we were building up big amp-hour deficits and ran
our little petrol generator daily to try to close this. This was
only partially successful as the charging rate dropped sooner than
expected. As the voltage was holding up well, there seemed to be a
miss-setting somewhere but we were loath to run the batteries down
and damage them. The big deficit continued after our arrival. We
knew that, with the wind and sun that we were experiencing, we should
be reducing it but it continued to increase. Nothing to do but
continue to monitor the situation until we could have 24 hours on
shore power and know that we were fully charged. Something else that
we had picked up from Jimmy Cornell was to set the autopilot to wind
angle rather than compass heading. This may result in a slight
meander but it means you don’t have to keep re-trimming the sails
to sail efficiently. It also means that, if there is a squall and
big wind shift, you should keep the same wind angle and not round up
– this could result in an even greater apparent wind speed with
attendant dangers. A further benefit is said to be reduced
steering movement and power consumption.
At mid-day on the
23rd we had 95 miles to go and with the wind now forecast
to continue at 15knots on the beam, we decided to reduce sail and
speed to ensure a daylight arrival. This, of course, put the jinx on
the wind. It dropped and backed until we had less than 10 knots from
directly astern and we even had to motor for an hour or so. It did
pick up again in the small hours and we arrived off our destination,
Palmeira at first light on the 24th. All the best
anchoring spots were taken but we found a place not too far out.
It would have been
nice to just collapse but I didn’t want to start off on the wrong
foot with the authorities so the dinghy was dug out of the locker and
inflated. Motored ashore to land at the little dock where the locals
land their fish from open boats. The fish is cleaned then and there
so the dock is a little ripe with scales, gills etc. I had not
visited Africa for over 25 years but the village was immediately
recognisable as belonging to that continent; the unpaved streets,
buildings either unfinished or brightly painted, shops with small,
barred windows. I was neck-and-neck with a Frenchman who had arrived
the night before and was on the same mission. While I located the
building which the pilot book suggested would hold the port
officials, he looked in the one next door, which actually housed them
so got ahead of me in the queue. This would be the story for the
next couple of days, with lots of time spent waiting, having missed
my turn by seconds. However, my old experience of Africa stood me in
good stead: be patient, it would be good to do the job today, but
tomorrow is also a good day. Paperwork completed, after a mere hour
or so, I moved on to the next task: water carrying. From now on, we
would be relying on carrying all our water to the boat, except when
in a marina and there was only one of those in the whole island
group. Most houses have no running water and there is a village
‘fontanerio’ to fill cans, buckets etc. Most of it is carried
away 100 litres at a time in wheelbarrows so I looked a little
pitiful with my 20 litre carrier, but every little counts. It was
then time to return for that much needed rest. We made another foray
ashore later, to show Elsie the village and get more water but the
fontanario was locked for the night. We were met at the fish dock by
a teenager who offered to look after our dinghy. I tipped him a Euro
and his wide grin told me that this was over-generous but it didn’t
seem a lot to spend to share a little joy around. I also ferried a
couple of local fishermen from their boats to shore so, hopefully, we
did no damage to the reputation of European sailors.
On Friday, we
decided to make a morning trip to the big town, Espargos where
wonderful things like banks and supermarkets could be found. After
one round trip with the dinghy to get another 30 litres of water, we
found the way to town. We were hailed by a passing minibus which
then did a tour round the village picking up more passengers before
heading off and dropping us just outside the town centre. This area
was again very African, though the centre itself looked more
European. We had a good walk round and did a little shopping before
returning. Although it was now 10 days since we had provisioned in
Santa Cruz, we still had fresh fruit and veg on board – very
encouraging, so it was mostly fresh (or, rather, frozen) meat and a
few treats. We had noticed mobile phone shops and I decided that I
needed to get a data SIM card, so we returned to the town in the
afternoon, hoping to spend 15 minutes getting this and then spending
a leisurely hour over a beer downloading a weeks worth of ‘The
Archers’ and other stuff at a bar we had spotted advertising free
WiFi. I went into the first phone shop, but there was a bit of a
queue. Elsie returned a few minutes later to report that the other
shop had no queue and an assistant who spoke perfect English, so we
moved to there, only to find that a queue had now formed. After
half-an-hour’s wait, I got my SIM at a very good price. It was
Black Friday and there was a special promotion. Elsie insisted that
they activated it for me. A good idea as 90 minutes later they had
not managed this task – it seemed that everyone else on the Islands
had taken up the offer and the system had crashed. So, back to shop
1 where I eventually got connected. We did go for our beer and
‘Archers’ download but had to cut it a bit short as it was
getting near sunset and we try to avoid dinghy travelling in the
dark.
Queueing for water
The controller of the fontenario
On Saturday, we had
an early trip ashore for bread and water. While looking for the
former, we came across a family butchering a pig on the front
verandah, not something you see every day at home. Final farewells
were made to the lady at the fontanario and to our boat watcher,
Gonias. We then heaved up and proceeded 5 miles down the coast to
Mordiera, a beautiful bay where spent the next couple of days in
almost perfect isolation. The only thing missing was the sun, with
overcast skies and frequent light showers. As this end of the Island
group is basically desert (the drinking water comes from a
de-salination plant) the locals were probably pleased but our tans
needed topping up. Instead of doing this, we spent Sunday on little
maintenance tasks including a new joker valve for the heads. Anyone
familiar with marine loos will know about the joy of this and the
associated de-scaling. Others will probably prefer not to.
On Monday we heaved
up and headed south to the next Island, Boavista. The wind was
forecast to be light so we left early. In fact it was perfect, with
15 knots just behind the beam and we had a fine passage, anchoring
just to the south of Porto Sal Rei shortly after 1400. A hurried
lunch and dinghied ashore to find the port officials. Their office
was closed and looked as though it had been for some time. A bit of
research that evening suggested that they had moved to the main port
but when we went there the following morning, no interest was shown
so we concluded that we had made an honest attempt and gave up.
After the joy of Palmeira, there was a depressed air about Sal Rei.
The poverty may not be worse and, judging from the lack of water
carrying, the facilities may even be better but there was not the
same feeling of happiness. Tourism, albeit on a small scale, has
reached the town and possibly the inhabitants are suffering the envy
from seeing not only those with much more but those locals who are
making a good living from the visitors. On Wednesday, we hired an
aluguer (pick-up with seating in the flat bed) for a half day tour of
the north part of the island, visiting a (very small) sandy desert,
complete with locusts. From under a bush emerged a local artist with
his sand pictures with which we were very taken but we have a rule of
no souvenirs so I just took a couple of photos (and made a small
donation). We also visited a couple of very well kept villages and
saw the local agriculture which consists of free range goats and the
occasional acre or so of market garden, surrounded by wind- and
animal- proof fencing. Our driver, who spoke excellent English,
came from one of the villages and said that he would rather be there,
tending crops but agreed that the money from driving was much better.
It was a very enjoyable trip apart from the spiders. Where the road
passed between bushes, there were huge webs with dozens of monsters
lurking. As there are no large vehicles using the roads we, sitting
outside, passed inches below these. On the way ‘home’ we bought a
bottle of the local Grog, a spicy 92% proof rum. Definitely an
acquired taste.
Aluguer
Boavista road
Elsie in the desert
Sand art
Monthly stats:
Logged 885 miles
Over ground 845
miles
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