Written at: Mindelo, Sao Vicente, Cabo Verde Jan. 26, 2006

Hi Folks,

We are still in the Cape Verdes, but have done our departure formalities, have our passports stamped out, and are just waiting for good weather before leaving for our three to four week Atlantic passage to Antigua. Once we depart, we can’t send anything until we reach Antigua. Incidentally, in response to an enquiry we got, we have safety harnesses and wear them clipped to a jackline whenever leaving the cockpit, especially at night and in heavy weather.

We are fine, and Veleda is in good shape with the only last repair to hopefully be done on our wind generator before we leave. We are refueled and watered, with an operational water maker and a fully stocked larder, and all other maintenance completed. We hope to be off in a day or two, and hopefully before Judy’s birthday which is on Feb. 1st. We don’t want to start on her birthday as we have had several problems in previous years when we were sailing on her birthday.

This log starts series #39 and gets us into a couple of the Cape Verde islands. I hope you enjoy it.

All the best,

Aubrey

Palmeira on the Cape Verde island of Sal (Salt) has good holding, and the anchorage is close to the small town, with locations where the dinghy can be left on the beach or at the foot of the steps at the town dock (on a long painter). The Cape Verdes are part of West Africa, a former Portuguese colony where Portuguese is still the official language. The country is an archipelago of 10 main islands (thus the circle of ten stars on the bottom half of their flag) and a few small uninhabited ones as well. To legally enter the boat must come to one of three entry ports: Palmeira here on Sal, Mindelo on Sao Vicente, or Praia on Santiago, and similarly can exit only from one of those three ports.

Palmeira is a small town with one main paved road ending at the port entrance, and most of the side streets dirt roads. The day after we arrived, we did our check-in with the local police and the maritime authority, then took an aluguer (a private minivan or open pickup truck that takes passengers on designated routes, much like the dolmus in Turkey) into Aspargos, the main town in the middle of the island, close to the airport. The road to Aspargos and the airport were paved, whereas most of the roads are cobblestone. In Aspargos we were able to use our Visa card to get Cape Verde Escudos; 100 escudos are worth about $1.25 Canadian or roughly equivalent to $1.00 US. We also got a chip for our mobile phone, and went out to the airport to have a frustrating experience of trying to use the Mac internet computers. I could not get the computer to recognize the memory wand I was using and so could not save any E-mail or send any of the E-mail logs I had on the wand. Aaaarrgghh!

In Palmeira and even in the larger town of Aspargos, running water was not commonly available, and most people took blue barrels or other plastic containers carted in wheelbarrows to a communal set of taps to fill them up for about 1 escudo a litre. I do not know what some of them do in their primitive cinder block houses for sewage disposal, as I doubt if there is a sewer system in many areas. We took a couple of plastic water bags on our dolly to the communal taps to fill them up and put into our water tanks on board. We have heard mixed messages as to the potability of the water, but we drink it, unfiltered, and have had no problems. In the larger town of Aspargos, we got all the supplies we needed at a couple of adequately stocked “supermarkets”, with little fresh meat but plenty of frozen meat. We picked up fish at the town docks in the morning for ridiculously low prices where two mackerel, a nice meal for the two of us, cost about the equivalent of 50 cents. There were several small “hole in the wall” stores selling miscellaneous groceries, and some vegetables, as well, there were several ladies sitting at the sides of the roads selling other vegetables, chewing gum, trinkets, bananas, coconuts, papayas, squash, onions and garlic. We found a “bakery” beside one of the stores in Palmeira to get some fresh baked buns. The Cape Verdes has the highest standard of living in West Africa (damning with faint praise?) and we have found no problems, and the people are friendly (90 percent are Black, the rest of Portuguese extraction, and Christianity is the major religion).

Another day we hired a taxi to take us out to the opposite side if the island to Pedra de Lume to see the salt ponds in the extinct caldera. The tiny town was a desolate place with a few buildings and several derelict structures from the defunct salt industry. In the crater there was one pond in which people could swim and enjoy the local salt-rimmed beach, not unlike swimming in the Dead Sea. Back in Aspargos we found an internet café that had good connections and sent out some E-mail. On our return to Palmeira we saw a large political rally for the PAICV party, the Marxist, and current governing, party. The rally was a large community affair with a flatbed truck in one of the town plazas with loudspeakers playing music and hectoring the people with their slogans and policies, barbecue stands around the fringes selling spiced meats and fish, and several stores open for beer and whatever else. We wandered through the crowds, and were deafened by the loudspeakers; but it was democracy in action, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. We could even hear it out at anchor, but it did not last beyond 2200.

We enjoyed meeting Zeferin, a New Zealand boat that is also heading for the Caribbean. It was an interesting hard chine ketch, made of plywood with a fibreglass overlay, and centerboard system, built by Sandy who was an architect in his earlier life. We were able to lend them some of our navigational information and Lonely Planet guide, and Judy was delighted to borrow a large industrial rivet gun as one of our spreader plates had sprung several of its rivets. We also went on board for coffee one morning to listen to their SSB net and to report in as several cruisers crossing over know us. We heard some sad news; halfway across, First Light lost its rudder, and several cruisers were headed towards their position to help them out. However we subsequently heard that towing attempts were unsuccessful, and the family had to abandon ship, taken off by a large power yacht that was trying to help. How sad!

After four days we took off (Jan. 12) to motor the 6 miles down to the next bay to anchor at Baia da Mordiera (16 41.82N, 022 58.03W), looking forward to a quiet anchorage and some beach combing. Hah!

Fortunately this bay has good holding, as for the next six days the winds howled off the low-lying shoreline at force 7 (Near Gale, 28 to 33 knots), force 8 (Gale, 33 to 44 knots), force 9 (Severe Gale, 41 to 47 knots) and even to force 10 (Storm 48 to 55 knots), so severe that we couldn’t launch the dinghy to go ashore. Our wind generator did a good job for the first four days, giving us extra power for the batteries so we didn’t have to use the engine to charge them. However, the fifth day in 55 knot winds the wind generator just stopped, as if we had thrown the switch to turn it off. No power, and so we had to flash the engine up for an hour each of the next two days to charge the batteries. Even when the generator was working, I would turn it off at night, as the howling at 50 knots was excessive, caused Judy to whimper with concern, and kept us awake. However, with the extra power we used both our laptop computers for long periods of time. I was able to catch up on several logs, and Judy used hers to read several science fiction books which she has on CD. She wanted to save the paperbacks for our voyage across the pond when we will not be using the computers because of the rolling and power drain on passage.

We had no weather information as NAVTEX does not cover this area of the Atlantic. We tried to call a local chandlery in Mindelo, but could not get through to it or any other Cape Verde number. We subsequently found out that the numbers in our pilot book had been augmented with a prefix 2 which had to be used for local calls, but we were not told of this until much later. So in order to find out what was happening weather-wise, we called Leni Gelblum in Nottingham, England, and gave him the US Navy weather site we use, and asked him to call us back when he had it on line. He did a good job and was able to identify that the winds should settle down in the next 48 hours. Thanks Leni.

There were no great changes in our barometer, and no fronts seemed to come through. It was just heavy constant winds for over six days, stranding us at anchor. However, these winds, called “harmattan”, blowing across from the Sahara desert, carried sand from there and the dry island, coating all the forward facing structures on Veleda with a layer of salt spray and brownish red sand, on our shrouds, sail cover, mast, dorade vents, genoa sheets, dodger, and all our stanchions. When we weighed anchor on Jan. 19, the winds had eased to “only” force 7 (30 knots) and so we set off with a triple reefed main and double reefed genoa to sail at hull speed the 35 miles down to the next island of Boa Vista. When we raised anchor, we found the shaft of our 35 pound CQR anchor was bent 10 degrees from the excessive strain of gale and storm force winds over the last six days! At least it held and that is the value of good ground tackle.

We anchored off Porto de Sal Rei (16 09.90N, 022 55.11W) on Boa Vista as the winds eased to force 5 (17 to 21 knots) across the sand dunes of this barren island. The town is larger than Palmeira, with several town squares, some good restaurants, and a motor scooter rental agency. We tried to check in with the maritime authority and police to no avail. The maritime agency was never open and the police did not know why we were checking in. We had purchased some notebooks, pens and pencils in the Canaries to give to a school here in Cape Verdes, but found it was a national holiday. However as we wandered around the stark ground level school buildings, we saw a black gentleman carrying a laptop computer, and we asked if he was a teacher. Yes, he was. So we gave him our bag of books, happy to do so and to get that space available on board Veleda for other supplies. We wished we had thought of such a donation earlier in Madeira as the manager at Quinta do Lorde Marina had many textbooks which could have been delivered as they were in Portuguese, but we were unable to get them before we left.

We rented a scooter for a half day to go out to Deserto Viana, a large tract of desert in the middle of the island. All the roads on the island, except for a few kilometres near the airport and a tourist resort, were rough cobblestone, making a scooter ride a vibrating bouncy experience. After a wrong turn took us to a luxurious beachside resort, we found the road to the desert. All the terrain on Boa Vista is magnificently desolate, few trees or shrubs, copious rock- and gravel-strewn fields, and barren ochre red hills, leading into stark volcanic mountains. However the desert had its own beauty, with dunes of rippled fine white sand undulating into deep canyons, one with black basalt cliffs on one side, exposed in a spectacular ravine leading down to a verdant oasis of palm trees, shrubs, and grassland surrounding a local cinderblock farmstead, apparently inhabited only by dozens of goats. Above the ravine, the dunes stretched toward the distant craggy mountains, the sandy panorama to our left broken by vales of black and rusty brown stones and gravel hillocks stretching over to the dusty forlorn adjacent town.
 

The sand was not quite as floury fine as that we saw and felt in the Sahara a few years ago when we were in Tunisia. However when we were at the summit of a pale sandy dune, and stepped on the wind-carved crest, we launched a waterfall of fine translucent sand cascading down the slope in white rivulets trickling several feet downwards until a new granular stasis was established in this fluid terrain. I took off my shoes and socks to delight in the warmth and caress of the sands, sometimes walking arrogantly on the surface, but other times sinking several inches into the tepid surfaces, and when going down the dunes sinking up to my calves, as if I were in a snow drift. A few times when I scratched deeper, the sand was cooler, thickened by moisture; shielded by the upper layers absorbing the rays of the sun and the dryness of the winds. The desert has its own beauty!

After leaving this desert area we continued on the scooter across the large plain towards the mountain pass. The long black cobblestone road stretching through this barren wasteland reminded me of the “Roadrunner” cartoons racing across the empty tracts. As we headed towards the pass, we were heading into the wind keeping our speed down to only 40 km per hour as we struggled to reach the distant mountains. Finally we reached the pass; winding up the rough black cobblestone surface, wondering if the scooter had the power to take us through to the other side. I remember once on a Greek Aegean island the scooter with both of us on board slowed to a stall. Judy had to walk the rest of the way to that summit! This time we made it, and faced another large plain on the far side extending to the east coast of the island, and the black cobblestone road degraded to a rougher stone trail that we did not wish to endure. At the base on the far side we stopped by a single forlorn palm tree warped to one side by the dry predominant winds to let our numb behinds regain circulation before heading back.

More about Boa Vista in my next log.