Made it! anchored off in the bay next to a Pole who lost his mast coming from Granada.
Having made the decision to leave the Cape Verde Islands even though the forecast was not ideal, to wait would have meant at least another week,
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| Sunset in Mindelo |
and I was tired of the red dust and being tossed around at the anchorage; so we set off first thing, after breakfast, on the Wed 4th Jan, getting the sails up took a bit longer than usual as I cleared all the other anchored boats before securing the anchor for the crossing.
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| rare visible sunset |
The main swells were from the north and the east, the biggest from the east, varying from 1m to 6m, with other variable ones coming and going, which meant that it was impossible to put anything down without it flying off suddenly, I managed to spill coffee down my front only once, that day the milk was off also so ended up making three cups; we got to half way on the morning of day 11. On day 10 we had a downpour which cleaned allot of the red dust off, and I had a shower under the stackpack, then more persistent rain after day 17, saw two rainbows, when the sun was low on days 13 and 18. My water tanks emptied on day 11 (found a hole in one today) at the time did not worry me as I had not refilled them since the Canaries, as I did not trust the water in the Cape Verdes and had bought bottled water, until I opened the cover to find allot of water sloshing around the tanks.
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| Floating seaweed |
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| Rainbow |
During the crossing I saw three sailboats the last pair on the night of day 12, occasionally I saw lights on the horizon but no boats until close to Trinidad; dolphins came around on days 16,19 and a large pod on day 21, the first tropical birds were (strangely) tropic birds on day 13, they came by in the morning and evening looking for flying fish, being joined by Frigate and other seabirds after day 16 , apart from the flying fish the only other marine life was a jellyfish looking like a discarded child’s toy, with vivid blue and orange colouring on a sail it could inflate, the only other thing of note was the floating seaweed which passed in clumps or long lines for most of the crossing.
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| flying fish |
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| Jellyfish |
The best day we had was day 10 covering 137n miles, the worst being day 7 at 87.4nm, we were under engine on days 1,7 and 20 to 21, for a total of 48 hours. The last week the nights were very dark, not only because of cloud cover but the moon was waning with a new moon just before arriving, and the moon was rising from early morning. I had my last ginger biscuit on day 16 and of the fresh fruit from the Cape Verdes the oranges lasted until day 7 the apples until day 12 and bananas day 15. Tea bags ran out on day 19 (I was convinced I had another box), the shop here sells not only ginger biscuits but also Liptons tea!
At midnight on day 17, there had been a thunder storm earlier, it was blowing force 3 to 5 from North to East and raining hard, as I was writing up the log there was a tremendous bang, and I saw what looked like a rigging screw flying past the window, my first thought was ‘there goes the rig’ pulled out a rain jacket and found the boom lying broken partly on the deck with the mainsail flapping around, so pulled the sail down and tied it down to the boom and the deck rails, had to cut the topping lift free as it was stuck on the cross trees, and after making all lines secure and having a quick look to check all the mast stays were in place (thankfully they were) left the deck so we had just a mostly furled jib out for the rest of the night, it took most of the next day to bag up the main and remove stackpack and secure the boom with the swells running, but got it all done without too much drama and only a few expletives; a swivel shackle on the mainsheet pulley had failed putting all the strain on the boom break, which is where the boom parted, I had had a number of problems with the mainsheet pulleys and had replaced them three times (we were on the last ones) Having sat down and thought about my position I decided to divert to Trinidad as there are allot of spares available here and very little in Tobago; on day 19 with extra swells building I found it impossible to hold a course without the jib flogging and not wanting to put any more stress on the rig than necessary decided to start the motor, and leaving just a small amount of jib out for stability motored the rest of the way, making port without any further mishaps.
