So I haven't written anything in a while, mainly because my dawn watch didn't come round again before we reached the Cape Verdes.
And yes, we arrived in the Cape Verdes last Thursday, 11th February, at about 5 p.m. Irish time, seven days and three hours after we left Las Palmas by the time we'd put the anchor down in the port of Palmeira, in the very barren looking island of Sal.
Sal is the North-Eastern most island of the Cape Verdes, and it is quite different to what I expected. Firstly I assumed it would be green, given the archipelago's name. Catherine tells me they are just named after the nearest point on continental Africa, but the place is as dry as a bone, with hardly any vegetation. Another thing is it's my first time in Africa. Despite the Cape Verdes being one of the most advanced and wealthy countries in west Africa it is still quite a startling experience. (That's advanced and wealthy in a third world context). The obvious poor state of the infrastructure, the lack of shops, and the sparsity of available produce in the shops that there are, all go to underline this really is a different world.
The locals are generally ethnic African, although a few are obviously European, then there are a few ex-pats, and of course the tourists. Tourism is very much in its infancy here, thank God, compared to the Canaries and other places we have been. Still, there are plenty of white faces about.
Population is just under half a million, with a similar number of Cape Verdean nationals living abroad.
The local kids might hassle us for 50 escudos (about €0.50) to mind the dinghy when we come ashore, and I have come across the occasional surly attitude, but generally the people are friendly and they respond well to my attempts to speak Portuguese - although all I'm doing is chancing my arm with a few Spanish words.
Bureaucracy here is a pain. We have to check in and out of every port. The norm seems to be that they keep your boat papers until you leave, but so far we've been able to manage on 24 hour passes, so they check us in and out at the same time. there is also a charge of 650 Escudos a time (about €6). It seems all the other boats we have met don't bother with check in, and just go ashore illegally. But I'm having enough anxiety in this strange place, not to be adding to my worries by being illegal. And anyway, they obviously need the money.
So far we have had two stops in Sal, Palmeira to check in, then to Santa Maria in the South of the island. Then we had an overnight sail of 80 miles to Carrical on the island of Sao Nicalau. This is a tiny litte anchorage, with a few local fishing boats, no bigger than rowing boats, and us and four other sail boats squeezed into a tiny cove. The village has no police station, and as we hadn't checked into Sao Nicalau yet it wasn't legal to go ashore. So yesterday, with no wind at all, we motored around to the port of Tarrafal on the West of the island, where we did check in.
We had been promising ourselves a meal out upon reaching the Cape Verdes, but we were finding it difficult to even find a restaurant, much less one of adequate quality. We had lunch in a place in Santa Maria, Sal, but Burger and chips meant a burger with three chips in the burger!! The girl did realise, and brought us a plate of chips afterwards, but despite the friendly service and cheap price, I've had better burgers. Then last night, just after we'd given up looking, we stumbled on a neat little restaurant where they gave us three Pizzas, a bottle of wine, and a couple of beers for 2,400 Escudos (about (€20).
The swell in the anchorage overnight was pretty bad. It wasn't so much the big Atlantic swells that were rolling in to the open anchorage, these were gentle enough, but then they bounced off the steep shore and the ricochet came back and hit us as a short nasty chop.
It kept up like this all night and this morning, so we didn't hang around for long and we are now heading for the capital Mendelo. The winds are light at the moment, if they don't pick up a bit we'll have to run the engine for an hour or two to make sure we arrive before dark.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Under Passage, Tuesday 09/02/2010 - 07:55
The way we've set the watches, three hours on, six hours off, means that we're each on at a different time every day, until the pattern repeats every three days. So here I am back on the dawn watch three days later, and writing again. I'm starting an hour later today because i couldn't find the little LED light I was using to write by in the pre dawn, it's either gone over the side or someone's put it away in a "new" place.
So what's new? We're in the tropics! We had some discussion about whether the tropic of cancer is at 23 degrees or 23 and a half, but either way we crossed 23 degrees lat yesterday morning. Now I know that this conjures up visions of basking in sunshine, but in fact, here I am sitting in three layers of clothes, plus my woolly ski hat, trying to stay warm. Well, it is just after dawn. At least I don't feel the need for my thermals any more, which I was wearing the first couple of nights out of Gran Canaria.
So what's been the excitement over the last few days? Nothing as dramatic as a rope on the rudder thankfully. We tried to pole out the genoa on the end of the spinaker pole on Sunday, to allow us to sail more directly downwind. However the pole is just too big and heavy and long, Catherine and I had it kind of working in a kludged sort of way before, under Neil's direction we tried to do it the right way, but it was so big, we gave up after a bit.
We are getting daily visits from dolphins, the pods are huge. I suppose, 200 plus miles from the African coast, and, according to our instruments, not another boat within a thousand square miles, we are probably as much of a novelty for them as they are for us. But you want to see them, coming towards us in their hundreds, splashing and cavorting on their way, many of them jumping clean out of the water, it is quite a display. Unfortunately they are long gone by the time we have gotten the camera out.
We got the towed generator back online on Saturday. We launched it when Catherine came up to relieve me at 9 a.m. It has been working fine since, except that it has a tendency to slide along the puishpit until it reaches something hard, and then starts to vibrate loudly. We've had to make several trips to the back of the boat to sort it, but it has been OK now for about 36 hours, so fingers crossed.
I'm still not convinced that it is giving us the 1 amp per knot that the manufacturers claim (and that other boats with the same piece of kit tell us they are getting), so I suspect I have something set up wrong. Despite 150 watts of solar panels, we are using more power than we are generating, so we might yet have to use the engine again to charge the batteries, especially if the wind dies off and we slow down. The main culprits for energy consumption are the automatic steering, the fridge and the navigation lights. Still, we're almost holding our own.
The sky at night over the ocean is amazing. No fear of light pollution out here. I spotted the Southern Cross the night before last. At first I thought I was imagining it, as we're still in the Northern hemisphere, but Catherine confirmed it in one of our Astronomy books last night. I went to point it out to Neil when I was taken over from his watch this morning, but he told me he had been steering by it for half the night.
That's another good thing about having Neil on board, he likes to steer. On a good day I might steer for fifteen minutes or so and leave the autohelm to it the rest of the time, but Neil will steer for hours, and the saving in battery power is noticeable.
Sailing wise we are making good progress. Right now we are about 250 miles NNE of Sal, our first intended stop in the Cape Verdes. We've been making a good 5 to 7 knots for the last two days, although we were becalmed for a couple of hours on Sunday. Eventually we ran the engine for an hour to stop the sails banging about, and also to put a bit of a charge into the batteries.
And I nearly forgot to say, we met another sailboat yesterday, "Maueve Piti", from Austria. We came within a few hundred yards of each other, chatted briefly on the VHF, and they gave us an updated forecast. Then we both gybed in opposite directions and we lost sight of them.
That's where we're at now. I probably won't be writing again until we reach the Cape Verdes.
Cheers!
So what's new? We're in the tropics! We had some discussion about whether the tropic of cancer is at 23 degrees or 23 and a half, but either way we crossed 23 degrees lat yesterday morning. Now I know that this conjures up visions of basking in sunshine, but in fact, here I am sitting in three layers of clothes, plus my woolly ski hat, trying to stay warm. Well, it is just after dawn. At least I don't feel the need for my thermals any more, which I was wearing the first couple of nights out of Gran Canaria.
So what's been the excitement over the last few days? Nothing as dramatic as a rope on the rudder thankfully. We tried to pole out the genoa on the end of the spinaker pole on Sunday, to allow us to sail more directly downwind. However the pole is just too big and heavy and long, Catherine and I had it kind of working in a kludged sort of way before, under Neil's direction we tried to do it the right way, but it was so big, we gave up after a bit.
We are getting daily visits from dolphins, the pods are huge. I suppose, 200 plus miles from the African coast, and, according to our instruments, not another boat within a thousand square miles, we are probably as much of a novelty for them as they are for us. But you want to see them, coming towards us in their hundreds, splashing and cavorting on their way, many of them jumping clean out of the water, it is quite a display. Unfortunately they are long gone by the time we have gotten the camera out.
We got the towed generator back online on Saturday. We launched it when Catherine came up to relieve me at 9 a.m. It has been working fine since, except that it has a tendency to slide along the puishpit until it reaches something hard, and then starts to vibrate loudly. We've had to make several trips to the back of the boat to sort it, but it has been OK now for about 36 hours, so fingers crossed.
I'm still not convinced that it is giving us the 1 amp per knot that the manufacturers claim (and that other boats with the same piece of kit tell us they are getting), so I suspect I have something set up wrong. Despite 150 watts of solar panels, we are using more power than we are generating, so we might yet have to use the engine again to charge the batteries, especially if the wind dies off and we slow down. The main culprits for energy consumption are the automatic steering, the fridge and the navigation lights. Still, we're almost holding our own.
The sky at night over the ocean is amazing. No fear of light pollution out here. I spotted the Southern Cross the night before last. At first I thought I was imagining it, as we're still in the Northern hemisphere, but Catherine confirmed it in one of our Astronomy books last night. I went to point it out to Neil when I was taken over from his watch this morning, but he told me he had been steering by it for half the night.
That's another good thing about having Neil on board, he likes to steer. On a good day I might steer for fifteen minutes or so and leave the autohelm to it the rest of the time, but Neil will steer for hours, and the saving in battery power is noticeable.
Sailing wise we are making good progress. Right now we are about 250 miles NNE of Sal, our first intended stop in the Cape Verdes. We've been making a good 5 to 7 knots for the last two days, although we were becalmed for a couple of hours on Sunday. Eventually we ran the engine for an hour to stop the sails banging about, and also to put a bit of a charge into the batteries.
And I nearly forgot to say, we met another sailboat yesterday, "Maueve Piti", from Austria. We came within a few hundred yards of each other, chatted briefly on the VHF, and they gave us an updated forecast. Then we both gybed in opposite directions and we lost sight of them.
That's where we're at now. I probably won't be writing again until we reach the Cape Verdes.
Cheers!
Under passage Saturday, 06:55 a.m., 6/02/2010
I'm sitting alone in the cockpit, taking the 6 to 9 “dawn” watch. I relieved Neil just an hour ago, and turned on the engine to charge the batteries, they were down to minus 81, when they get to minus 100 they are too flat to run the autohelm. The reason they are so low is the towed generator has been down since last night.
I've just squeezed a few more degrees west, currently we're averaging six knots on 204 degrees. Our best course is 212 degrees, but that has us sailing too close to the gybe.
It's still dark, I'm using the head torch to see what I'm writing, which doesn't do much for my night vision, but there is nothing but sea for miles.
The stars are gradually disappearing from the sky, caused by a combination of the approaching dawn and a light haze forming. The moon is just below half, it hadn't risen before my last watch finished at midnight.
We finally got away from Las Palmas on Thursday, filled up with diesel and left the fuel pontoon at 14:30. A few French boats, including Stefan and Didier, left just before us. Paul and Maura from Noble Warrior waved us off from the pontoon.
We deployed the towed generator, seems to be only giving about half the power I was expecting, or about half an amp per knot of speed. The fact that its propellor is trailing on thirty metres of rope is a bit of a worry, I hope it doesn't wrap around anything.
I considered putting a reef in about sunset Thursday, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. I regretted it later as the wind got up to over twenty knots and we were whizzing along at eight knots. So last night just before the sun set we made the effort. Neil suggested heaving to while we reefed, I remembered Catherine and I got ourselves into a bit of a mess when we tried that before, however I wanted to see if there was a better way and if Neil would do anything differently. We were also due to gybe, so it seemed to make sense to combine the two manoeuvres.
We had quite a bit of speed on bouncing along in a moderate sea, I crawled onto the foredeck on my hands and knees to rearrange the gybe preventer line. All went well until the sheet caught in the jackstay, and we had to depower the genoa and I had to crawl forward a second time to release. By the time we had that sorted I realised in all the fuss I had dropped the preventer line, which was now trailing in the sea off the end of the boom. Another struggle to retrieve the line, and then I had to crawl to the bow a third time to lead the line through the fairlead and back to the cockpit.
Finally back in the cockpit Neil spotted that the generator had stopped turning. Seeing that I was knackered he went back himself to see what was wrong. It turned out gybing the long way round to heave to in the process wasn't such a good idea, considering that I didn't stop to think the effect this would have on the thirty metre rope we were trailing from the generator, and which was now wrapped around the rudder.
Hot, tired, and sweaty, the last of our daylight disappearing with the imminently setting sun, and a rope around our rudder, all I could think to say was a swear word, and only one at that, but I repeated it multiple times. Fortunately Neil was a bit more positive in his thinking, saying reassuringly from his vantage point at the back of the boat that it was alright, he could fix it.
I confess I was a bit circumspect of youthful optimism, but I nodded to him to have a go, as the alternative plan forming in my mind involved launching the dinghy & trying to poke out the rope from it, and in the fading light this was going to be a lot of grunt work. Thankfully my circumspection was misplaced, and in a few minutes Neil had the rope free. I had sufficiently recovered to go back and help haul in the rope.
We had started all this to put in a reef before dark, but by now the sun had long set, with the very last traces of daylight in the sky. I decided that redeploying the towed generator would best be left until the morning. Hence, when I started my watch ten hours later, the batteries were low, and hence we are now running the engine to put a charge back in them.
In the process the jackstay, which is what we clip our lifelines onto when going on deck, came under such force when it was caught in the genoa sheet that I no longer trust it, and it'll be replaced at the next chandlers. Other than that, we lost a boathook overboard in the excitement, but considering the damage we might have had to the generator or the rudder, this was small price to pay.
While I have been writing it has become daylight, it takes less than thirty minutes at these latitudes, and the haze I referred to earlier is making for a somewhat grey dawn with no sign of the sun yet. It'll show soon enough and we'll be back to blue skies.
The “Mother – Daughter – Son” watches are working with mixed success so far. We started on Thursday with Catherine as mother, me as daughter, and Neil as son. So Catherine roasted the chicken, but all I did was the wash up, and the son role is probably a little il-defined. Yesterday Neil produced a fine dinner of sweet and sour left over chicken, albeit with a bit of coaching and assistance from Catherine.
So far Neil is the only one with a full appetite, Catherine and I are still feeling a bit quesy in the swell. Oddly I was fine on Thursday, and only began to feel iffy yesterday. Today being the third day I am expecting we'll both improve.
The boat is stuffed to the gils with provisions. We've been buying bottled water to drink, especially in the Canaries, where the tap water is all desalinated and has a bit of a taste. However, generally we don't drink the water from the boat's tank, except in tea and coffee. We left Las Palmas with our 500 litre water tanks full, plus an emergency 80 litres of tap water, plus almost 200 litres of bottled drinking water. On top of this we have about 80 litres of beer, ten of UHT milk, three litres of skipper's whiskey, two litres of brandy, plus the bottles of Port, Madeira, vodka and wine that we have picked up in our travels. Although, comparatively, we have very little wine. Catherine, when doing the final shop was, I think, less concerned about Aragorn's waterline than the one in our bank account!
Ahh, finally, I see the sun, a hazy yellow disk off the port beam (left of the boat to the non-mariner). Well, ok for 08:25. Just over half an hour of my watch left. Catherine will be up to relieve me soon. It went fast enough while I was writing. When she comes up I'll have a go at redeploying the towed generator. We have a rule on board, no one goes on deck without someone in the cockpit to take appropriate action in the event of anything going askew.
Before we left home a friend of Catherine's bought her a little brass sign that reads “My husband is Captain, but I have been made Admiral”. I promptly put it up in the boat with enthusiasm, in the galley! It's my turn to be mother today, but no less than Neil, I'll be under the strict supervision of the admirtal of the galley.
Hasta Luego!
I've just squeezed a few more degrees west, currently we're averaging six knots on 204 degrees. Our best course is 212 degrees, but that has us sailing too close to the gybe.
It's still dark, I'm using the head torch to see what I'm writing, which doesn't do much for my night vision, but there is nothing but sea for miles.
The stars are gradually disappearing from the sky, caused by a combination of the approaching dawn and a light haze forming. The moon is just below half, it hadn't risen before my last watch finished at midnight.
We finally got away from Las Palmas on Thursday, filled up with diesel and left the fuel pontoon at 14:30. A few French boats, including Stefan and Didier, left just before us. Paul and Maura from Noble Warrior waved us off from the pontoon.
We deployed the towed generator, seems to be only giving about half the power I was expecting, or about half an amp per knot of speed. The fact that its propellor is trailing on thirty metres of rope is a bit of a worry, I hope it doesn't wrap around anything.
I considered putting a reef in about sunset Thursday, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. I regretted it later as the wind got up to over twenty knots and we were whizzing along at eight knots. So last night just before the sun set we made the effort. Neil suggested heaving to while we reefed, I remembered Catherine and I got ourselves into a bit of a mess when we tried that before, however I wanted to see if there was a better way and if Neil would do anything differently. We were also due to gybe, so it seemed to make sense to combine the two manoeuvres.
We had quite a bit of speed on bouncing along in a moderate sea, I crawled onto the foredeck on my hands and knees to rearrange the gybe preventer line. All went well until the sheet caught in the jackstay, and we had to depower the genoa and I had to crawl forward a second time to release. By the time we had that sorted I realised in all the fuss I had dropped the preventer line, which was now trailing in the sea off the end of the boom. Another struggle to retrieve the line, and then I had to crawl to the bow a third time to lead the line through the fairlead and back to the cockpit.
Finally back in the cockpit Neil spotted that the generator had stopped turning. Seeing that I was knackered he went back himself to see what was wrong. It turned out gybing the long way round to heave to in the process wasn't such a good idea, considering that I didn't stop to think the effect this would have on the thirty metre rope we were trailing from the generator, and which was now wrapped around the rudder.
Hot, tired, and sweaty, the last of our daylight disappearing with the imminently setting sun, and a rope around our rudder, all I could think to say was a swear word, and only one at that, but I repeated it multiple times. Fortunately Neil was a bit more positive in his thinking, saying reassuringly from his vantage point at the back of the boat that it was alright, he could fix it.
I confess I was a bit circumspect of youthful optimism, but I nodded to him to have a go, as the alternative plan forming in my mind involved launching the dinghy & trying to poke out the rope from it, and in the fading light this was going to be a lot of grunt work. Thankfully my circumspection was misplaced, and in a few minutes Neil had the rope free. I had sufficiently recovered to go back and help haul in the rope.
We had started all this to put in a reef before dark, but by now the sun had long set, with the very last traces of daylight in the sky. I decided that redeploying the towed generator would best be left until the morning. Hence, when I started my watch ten hours later, the batteries were low, and hence we are now running the engine to put a charge back in them.
In the process the jackstay, which is what we clip our lifelines onto when going on deck, came under such force when it was caught in the genoa sheet that I no longer trust it, and it'll be replaced at the next chandlers. Other than that, we lost a boathook overboard in the excitement, but considering the damage we might have had to the generator or the rudder, this was small price to pay.
While I have been writing it has become daylight, it takes less than thirty minutes at these latitudes, and the haze I referred to earlier is making for a somewhat grey dawn with no sign of the sun yet. It'll show soon enough and we'll be back to blue skies.
The “Mother – Daughter – Son” watches are working with mixed success so far. We started on Thursday with Catherine as mother, me as daughter, and Neil as son. So Catherine roasted the chicken, but all I did was the wash up, and the son role is probably a little il-defined. Yesterday Neil produced a fine dinner of sweet and sour left over chicken, albeit with a bit of coaching and assistance from Catherine.
So far Neil is the only one with a full appetite, Catherine and I are still feeling a bit quesy in the swell. Oddly I was fine on Thursday, and only began to feel iffy yesterday. Today being the third day I am expecting we'll both improve.
The boat is stuffed to the gils with provisions. We've been buying bottled water to drink, especially in the Canaries, where the tap water is all desalinated and has a bit of a taste. However, generally we don't drink the water from the boat's tank, except in tea and coffee. We left Las Palmas with our 500 litre water tanks full, plus an emergency 80 litres of tap water, plus almost 200 litres of bottled drinking water. On top of this we have about 80 litres of beer, ten of UHT milk, three litres of skipper's whiskey, two litres of brandy, plus the bottles of Port, Madeira, vodka and wine that we have picked up in our travels. Although, comparatively, we have very little wine. Catherine, when doing the final shop was, I think, less concerned about Aragorn's waterline than the one in our bank account!
Ahh, finally, I see the sun, a hazy yellow disk off the port beam (left of the boat to the non-mariner). Well, ok for 08:25. Just over half an hour of my watch left. Catherine will be up to relieve me soon. It went fast enough while I was writing. When she comes up I'll have a go at redeploying the towed generator. We have a rule on board, no one goes on deck without someone in the cockpit to take appropriate action in the event of anything going askew.
Before we left home a friend of Catherine's bought her a little brass sign that reads “My husband is Captain, but I have been made Admiral”. I promptly put it up in the boat with enthusiasm, in the galley! It's my turn to be mother today, but no less than Neil, I'll be under the strict supervision of the admirtal of the galley.
Hasta Luego!
Finally leaving Las Palmas, bound for Cape Verdes
Wed, 3 Feb 2010
If you didn't receive this one by email, you might not be on the mailing list, let's know if you want to be added.
Hi All,
We have had to abandon our earlier plans to go to La Palma, one of the more remote and smaller Canary Islands. Partly because of the delay getting away, we originally planed to leave last Monday, but the main reason is the wind is coming from that direction, and a 140 mile trip into wind is not too appetising. So we are bound for the Cape Verdes. About 800 miles, and 7 plus days from here. The long range weather forecast is good, promising trade winds behind us for most of the journey. We do expect a couple of days of almost complete calm at the weekend, so it could be 10 days or more before we arrive.
10 days at sea is no problem, we are carrying enough food and provisions for at least 5 weeks. Catherine says that she thinks she has cured herself of her love of shopping, we have spent about €800 on groceries since Monday. Amazingly, Aragorn's lockers and bilges have absorbed it all, I am looking schemingly at still available nooks and crannies that I am sure would hold another few cases of wine. I hasten to add, the wine is for when we reach land, we don't go in for much booze under way, a single 33cl beer at sundown is each crew's daily ration of grog. However we've been told that wine and beer are more expensive and lower quality in the Caribbean, so we are bringing a small supply.
My nephew Neil, who is crewing with us has been a real bonus, he has already serviced all the winches and the life jackets, and done several other jobs around the boat..
I hope to write a bit for the blog while under way although I won't be able to post it until we reach the Cape Verdes. If you haven't already done so, click on the "follow" button on the Blogsite & you will get automatic notification of updates that we make.
Wishing you all fair winds and safe anchorages.
The crew of Aragorn
Pat, Catherine and Neil.
A final note to my old school pals meeting for a reunion on the 9th April, regrettably I won't be able to join you this time, but enjoy the bash, and maybe next time...
If you didn't receive this one by email, you might not be on the mailing list, let's know if you want to be added.
Hi All,
We have had to abandon our earlier plans to go to La Palma, one of the more remote and smaller Canary Islands. Partly because of the delay getting away, we originally planed to leave last Monday, but the main reason is the wind is coming from that direction, and a 140 mile trip into wind is not too appetising. So we are bound for the Cape Verdes. About 800 miles, and 7 plus days from here. The long range weather forecast is good, promising trade winds behind us for most of the journey. We do expect a couple of days of almost complete calm at the weekend, so it could be 10 days or more before we arrive.
10 days at sea is no problem, we are carrying enough food and provisions for at least 5 weeks. Catherine says that she thinks she has cured herself of her love of shopping, we have spent about €800 on groceries since Monday. Amazingly, Aragorn's lockers and bilges have absorbed it all, I am looking schemingly at still available nooks and crannies that I am sure would hold another few cases of wine. I hasten to add, the wine is for when we reach land, we don't go in for much booze under way, a single 33cl beer at sundown is each crew's daily ration of grog. However we've been told that wine and beer are more expensive and lower quality in the Caribbean, so we are bringing a small supply.
My nephew Neil, who is crewing with us has been a real bonus, he has already serviced all the winches and the life jackets, and done several other jobs around the boat..
I hope to write a bit for the blog while under way although I won't be able to post it until we reach the Cape Verdes. If you haven't already done so, click on the "follow" button on the Blogsite & you will get automatic notification of updates that we make.
Wishing you all fair winds and safe anchorages.
The crew of Aragorn
Pat, Catherine and Neil.
A final note to my old school pals meeting for a reunion on the 9th April, regrettably I won't be able to join you this time, but enjoy the bash, and maybe next time...
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