Cape Verde
San Vincente, Cape Verde
Mindelo
beautiful St Vincent, Cape Verde
Resolute dressed overall
genoa and working jib – our trusty downwind rig
preparing signal flags for celebratory dressing overall un Cape Verde
provisioning in Las Palmas
Leaving Las Palmas
Sorry to have left all you WordPress devotees in the lurch. Whilst we were in Las Palmas and Cape Verde the programme was pretty full-on and the wifi provision wasn’t….the result being that we didn’t do any more blog entries. Our time was taken up with buying our provisions which could thankfully be delivered direct to the boat and attending seminars on everything from provisioning through weather to gloom and doom scenario management….and of course much socialising too. However, whilst on passage both from Las Palmas to the Cape Verde islands and then onward to St Lucia we were able to use the World Cruising Club ARC+ Daily Log facility by emailing them a contribution through our HF radio with Sailmail. In fact we were awarded the ARC Plus Best Blog Award……so feel privileged that you are now able to partake of an actual (drum roll…..)Award Winning Blog! Here are some extracts from our World Cruising Club/Atlantic Rally for Cruisers Log/Blog.
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Las Palmas to Cape Verde 10th-16th November 2013
13th November
Over a third of the way to Cape Verde! After a great send-off in Las Palmas on Sunday it feels good to be on our way and making progress. Incredible that we all left together but we have soon become out here on our ownsomes with seldom another sail to be seen.
Being only double handed is proving to be a doddle. The four hour watch system is working fine with the dog-watch between 4-8 being our full-on communication time (well, at least Gill talks non-stop and Colin listens!). The dog watch system also means we rotate our shifts which adds variety and ensures some nights with more sleep. The nights are certainly a long 12 hours (3 watches)with the moon being a strict time-keeper and making himself scarce at about 0400 – shirker! He is also upside-down in these southern climes – decidedly dodgy! Tomorrow we hope to be at the half way point…all down-hill from there. Must go! Roast lamb in the oven…
November 14th
Life on board is now well settled into our routine and with just over 400nm in the bag we are, as we enter our fourth day at sea, almost halfway there. Today a bit of a resume of the sailing so far. Yep, sailing I stress, the motor has not been used in anger since just before the start. In the warm weather and with all the e-mails it has however been in great demand to provide power to the fridge, freezer, radio and Sat C. With the wind behind us the wind generator has just not been able to produce more than about 4 amps – a mere drop in the ocean for us power hungry individuals.
We crossed the start about 8 seconds late under headsail only and then had a slow 2 hours as we headed south to Las Palmas airport and the start of the wind acceleration zone. As predicted by the WCC team, we knew exactly where the zone started as we watched the lead boats (with cruising chutes and spinnakers) get blown over sideways. For reasons we do not yet fully understand a sizable proportion of the fleet seemed to head well off to the east from the start line. We however ran through the acceleration zone under a well furled genoa at 7 knots.
Once clear of the acceleration zone we poled out a full genoa on the port side and set a working jib flying free on the other side. This rig has carried us nearly half way without any fuss. Last evening we had a bit of a wobble as we were some 10nm off the rhumb line and the wind went ENE which would take us further west. My reaction was to change the rig over (ie drop the jib – take the genoa off the pole – put the pole on the other side – gybe the genoa – put the jib back up) we just sort of looked at each other and decided to leave it. This morning we are only 5nm off track and with something over 450nm to go what is 5nm between friends? I reflected last night that in the days before GPS we would not even have known that we were 5nm miles off the most direct route between Gran Canaria and Sao Vicente as, given my skills with a sextant, that would be well within the circle of error!
15th November
I’m not sure we should even be admitting we are now sailing a sixth day and that what’s more we will probably be needing its entirety before we find Mindelo (and thus missing our own welcome party tonight). It was all going so well! Last night the wind dropped and started doing a variable dance ensuring our trusty poled out genoa with alongside jib rig which we had not had to touch since leaving Las Palmas was rendered incapable of the task. At midnight it was decided that what was needed was to drop the jib, un-pole the genoa and put up the mainsail….mission. 30 minutes later (be charitable…only two of us onboard remember) mission was accomplished and much neglected full main was put into service along with the full genoa. One vital ingredient was missing from this nocturnal party – the wind. Whilst exhausted Skipper slept, Gilly-Mate watched the now unhelpful easterly wind drop and sails flap despite her trying to keep the bow into what wind there was whilst staying somewhere near the rhumb line. Eventually, after a long but fairly nautical-mile-free 3 hours, when the wind speed and direction was so lamentably contra to our destination, I awoke Skipper (brave woman indeed!). Expecting him to say….” well, enough is enough, we will have to put the gonk (technical term for the engine) on for a bit..”I was still hopeful at this point that we might make it to the welcome party. Instead doubty Skipper said “OK, lets pole out the headsail again and goosewing….no engine for Gilly-Mate…we will not make the party. We must have made a pretty sight slowly goosewinging along in the early hours covering the uncharacteristically grey ocean at 3 nm. The Skipper was left on his watch to tweek the rig further to try to wring a few more miles out of the pathetic north easterly breeze.
So here we are still, half way through our last morning on Leg 1 making very slow headway but bolstered by the puritanical sailing mantra that engines are evil and to succumb to them is the greatest sin imaginable. The result oh Land-lubbing reader, is that Cinderella (aka Gilly-Mate) will not get to the Ball!
21st November – reflections having left Cape Verde
Yep you guessed it we did arrive too late for the welcome function and yes our corrected time allowed us to attend in mind and spirit, if not in person! Our time in Cape Verde was some 48 hours shorter than the top half of the fleet but even so we feel we got to know Sao Vincent well and certainly our one day excursion to Santo Antao gave us a real feel for the place. The beauty is that neither Island does mass tourism. We could have stayed in Mindelo another fortnight and would have loved to have cruised the whole Cape Verde archipelago.
From a Rally perspective the WCC team could not have done more. Just having somebody to talk you into unfamiliar marina, onto a berth and fix your bow line is worth a lot – especially in the pitch dark and with 20-25knts of wind. The marina staff, local authorities, shop owners, restaurants etc could also not have done more for us. We really appreciated the tour guides who all had a genuine pride in their nation and its democratic governance. There is however a but! The weather conditions throughout our visit saw 20-30knts of wind with considerable surge through the marina. At times this made life on board almost untenable – the answer in many was was to be off the boat – however, whilst the long term berth holders had gone to considerable lengths to secure their boats robustly the same can’t be said for all of the visitors and damage was inevitable. The marina staff were constantly checking and repairing the pontoons – the same can’t be said of many skippers who just seemed content to lie to a bow slip (not even with a carbineer) and un-snubbered stern lines. The response to the stern banging on the pontoon was to shorten the slip and drag the bow buoys ever closer to their boats without any comprehension of the effect of allowing a slip to chafe on an old rusty ring or the inability of a vertical chain (however tight) to stop horizontal movement.
All of this is a long way of saying that we did not leave Cape Verde with our batteries re-charged and yesterday produced a day at sea that required more than 2 aging half flat batteries. We have however now had a better night’s sleep (even if it comes in 4 hour bursts)than we did on any night in Cape Verde! Fortunately the winds have now settled and we are on a comfortable course (OK not completely heading in the right direction) so we intend to take life easy until the remaining 1950 nautical miles seem less intimidating and more of a challenge
resolute-en-voyage 