Stories From The Verdes

Out of respect for the skim reader, or those short, or have better use, of their time, I'll do the summary first. We're currently in Santiago, in Sotaventos, which is the southern island group of the Cape Verdes archipelago. Next stop is the big one – across the Atlantic to Brazil, a distance of about 1800 miles. Weather permitting, we will stop off at Fernando de Noronha, a group of islands 200 miles off the coast, though internet updates from there will be pretty unlikely. The crossing will take 2-3 weeks unless the doldrums really slow us down. We hope to set off in the next couple of days. Cape Verdes have, most importantly, provided us with the time and the facilities to stock the boat more than adequately, so we're as prepared as we'll ever be to get over to the other side. So in summary of the summary, next update will be in a month or so, we'll have done more sailing than we have in the last 2 months, and we'll still be in a portuguese speaking place. Right, here we go then, long, meandering, unedited story time. I'll skim over the sailing to the verdes as most of the interesting things that happened I mentioned in the last blog post. The going was slower than anticipated, due to the first 2 days or so we spent most of the time not moving. But on day 7 (we actually thought it was day 8 – not for the first time we've managed to lose days on a short trip; We'll arrive in Brazil and think it's Christmas time) we dropped anchor in Sao Vincente, the largest of the northern island group in Cape Verde. It was 2am when we arrived and, due to the general lacking of any clear navigational aids, John opted to drop anchor anywhere in the bay in the right depth. In the morning we did a “oh that's where the anchorage is”, pootled over and nestled amongst a dozen other sailing boats. From a sailors point-of-view, Sao Vincente is now an excellent stop off before a crossing. I think because of spending 2 weeks in Senegal, we found it comparatively much easier to deal with. The atmosphere was relaxing, there are less beggers, less offers offers “help”. Perhaps a sailor coming from the canaries would have had the similar culture shock as with us in Dakar. And the islands seem to be constantly improving; only recently has it had any popularity as a stopping point for Atlantic crossers, and since the publication of the books and guides we have, there have been further steps forward: there are now cash machines; an excellent yacht club with showers, bar and restaurant; and town offering some good facilities – various small supermarkets, internet cafes, and eateries. So all in all things were looking very good, and we spent 4 days looking around, getting jobs done on the boat. Unfortunately we hit one snag.

Carlosal Waste

Enter Carlos the boat-boy. We had already knew of Carlos – in fact warned against him – by a group of germans we were alongside to in Las Palmas. They needed to leave their boat in Sao Vincente for 5 months, and took out a watch contract with Carlos. When they returned their boat had been ransacked. He and his side kick (we called Pinky, as he clearly wasn't The Brain in the duo's operation) didn't take long to come along and offer their assistance in the usual boatboyery services – get gas, water, diesel, look after the dingy when we left it on the beach, etc. When John went ashore to sign in (which was rather a wasted trip as it was Sunday, which we didn't realise due to the aforementioned problem with day counting), Carlos went in toe. From our experience with Alpha in Dakar, we thought we were more experienced and prep'ed with dealing with boat boys. However the Cape Verdian version is somewhat different: rather than the overly helpful, sometimes quite useless but nevertheless friendly guys in Senegal, Carlos et al run more of a protection racket. The main risk to the dingies certainly seemed to be with the boat boys themselves, if you don't hire their services. Still, John tipped a small and fair amount on Sunday, and when we went ashore that evening for a few beers in the yacht club, Carlos even refused our tip, saying he didn't need the money and said to pay Pinky for the dingy watch instead. So Far, So Good. We got to know Carlos much better a couple of nights later in the yacht club. We joined us for a beer. And wow, weren't we his best friends ever! I was clearly his kindred spirit as a fellow rastaman, and John was just such a top captain, and we just sat and chewed that fat as three guys drinking beer. He told us in no uncertain terms (literally speaking they were in fact very uncertain terms, as his English was poor, but it was a mantra repeated over the course of 3 beers so we didn't miss the point) that as long as he enough money for food and enough ganja so he can sit around on the beach all day and get stoned, he was a happy cookie. No need for us to give him any money – a small tip for pinky was just fine – we were his pals and a beer here and there would be just fine. To prove the point, he got out a few scraps of paper – what seemed to be boat contracts. “Look!” he said, “I have all these contracts and look they last months – and I haven't once stolen anything from them!”. What a guy! He introduced us to a friend of his, Michael from Liberia. It's sad but true that nearly everyone I've spoken in Dakar and Cape Verdes has wanted one of 3 things: money for nothing; a trip on the boat to wherever [in Senegal, one guy I chatted to on the beach came straight out with “You going to Canaries? I'd love to help you sail there, I've always wanted to go and I have all the documents...”. When I stopped him and said sadly we were going to Brazil, he countered, “ahh Brazil that's what I said, that's where I want to go...”]; or to take me somewhere to meet someone I really wouldn't want to meet. This matey turned out to be a number 2, with a healthy dose of 1. Of course Michael had all his documents – he had been stranded here 5 months ago on a commercial contract and didn't have the money to get a flight home. Still, on the safe side Carlos told us it was best to drop him off on the beach in Brazil, not at the port, to save trouble. So when we left to grab some good, Michael was now our chaperone. But we were in high spirits from our exploring of the town, and we were happy with his company. He took us to a rather swanky French restaurant where clearly the whiteman hangs out. Good food, excellent and extravagant violin player, red wine, that kind of joint. Not really our thing but it was a very enjoyable. On our return, Carlos had a chat to Michael. We were clearly now rich folk who had money to burn and spent all their time in the hated rich whiteman joints. He turned entirely from the ganja-smoking, peace-and-loving friend we had left a couple of hours ago. He demanded a large amount of money because (if I remember his reasoning correctly) he wanted it. Rather caught unawares, we handed over the money (2000 escudos, roughly 20 euros, but a week's wage to many Cape Verdians). In retrospect, I think this was our one major mistake. The next day we left the dingy without a hitch and went to scout out some supplies and pick up our laundry. One result we had was jerry cans – the kind lady at the laundry gave us one they had which their laundry detergent came in, and gave us an address to get more. Handed to the taxi man, we were taken out of town to the detergent factory where we purchased another 4. Our water smells a little flowery but as emergency supplies it'll do just fine. As evening came, we split up: John returned to the boat to do some sorting, and I was going to hobnob at the Yacht Club to find out where to get various bits we needed. The plan failed at the start as the Yacht Club was shut (they seemed to be in the process of relining the floor with hay, a scenario I admit I hadn't considered), so I went for a stroll around town. After a couple of quick beer stops I settled in a cafe we'd been in before and got chatting to some of the locals. The violinist came in and we chatted for a while. I met Roger, a very friendly Cape Verdian lawyer who spoke excellent English (my Spanish is crap, portoguese none existent). Pleased with my find of someone who didn't fit in categories 1-3, I settled in there and sampled some of their local grog. Roger then introduced me to his friend who was, drum roll, a boat boy who really really wanted to help me out and show me some really neat stuff. Roger left me, more people started hanging around and trying to help me out, I had attention of the beggers outside as I gave one of them a cigarrette, and it was definitely time to go. And that grog was starting to kick in. Still with time to kill until John was scheduled to pick me up, I crossed the street to another cafe. But John met me on the way across. Three others from the previous cafe followed to sit on a table next to us and carry on offering help. Michael turned up. John told me that Carlos had demanded more cash, and John had slipped off when Carlos was arguing with Pinky how much they wanted. And even more worrying, Carlos had told John exactly where I could be found even though I hadn't seem him all evening and had been to a variety of establishment. Definitely time to get back to Rebel. Pinky and the Brain were waiting for us at the Dingy. They wanted another 2000. Pinky sat on our dingy to cut any escape. Carlos was really rather fired up and, oddly, his English was now nearly non-existent. We haggled to-and-fro for a good while. Their side of the argument was that they couldn't guarantee the safety of our vessel or dingy if we didn't pay them. Ours was pretty much based on a three-prong retort: you've done nothing for us thus far; we've already given you a lot of money; we pay pinky every day to watch the dingy. A deadlock. There was a general worry that things could escalate. We finally managed to get away on the premise that we had no money on us now and we would speak more the next day. Wrong! The next morning, we were faced with a bit of a dilemma. We couldn't leave the boat unattended any more, unless we paid extortionate amounts of money. Nor could we leave the dingy unattended. Which made the process of doing anything, such as the major provisioning required, rather tricky. So we hatched a rather devious plan: we'd scarper. All we needed was our boat documents at the police station and we could sail off to another cape verde island for the restock. I'd like to say the final chapter was done under moonlight, us ducking and crouching through back alleys, perhaps with false moustaches and/or body doubles, but in reality the escape was quite simple. I ferried John on the dingy to the commercial peer, I watched him through the binoculars going in and our of the police station without being spotted, then I picked him up, we picked up the anchor and we buggered off. John thinks he saw two rather startled figures standing agape on the beach as we motored off, and I'm going to believe him.

Oardeal

We set course for Santiago. We had good charts for the area but it was a little off the normal route, not mentioned in our cruising guides, so we weren't sure quite what to expect. We picked Santiago as it was home to the island's capital, had an international airport, and was the second most populous of the islands. And as it was southward, we were also making some progress towards Brazil. The distance was roughly 150 miles, and setting off at 11am we had a speedy passage and dropped anchor in the early evening the next day. When the sun came up in the morning, it was clear this wasn't a regular stopping point for boats. One other boat at anchor, and that has been deserted since we arrived. There's still a boat boy, of course. Tanyaka. However we have 2 main advantages here; firstly, boatboying clearly isn't his main occupation, so he seems much less concerned with following us 24/7 and getting his moneys worth for us being here. Secondly, he speaks no English. So thus far, our relationship has been very cordial. And ironically, it is here for the first time we've found a boat boy useful – he's already helped us get tank water we otherwise would have had trouble with, we have to leave our dingy at a busy fishing port where someone keeping watch is a job we need and are happy to pay for. Our experience here so far as been excellent. Along with good boat-boy relations, the town seems to have everything we need. We have five main stop points at each location – diesel, water, supermarket, internet, cash machine – and we ticked all boxes on our first outing. The supermarket deserves special mention, being by far the best we've had since the Canaries. On this first day's reche we decided, for a reason that now escapes me, to perform our first beach landing in the dingy. I think the main thing learnt from that was not to jump out so early. Both soking and caked in sand, next stop was naturally to sample the local beer a couple of times (strangely, the same as the last 4 stops, but one must still sample just in case), and some local food. As these eateries lack menus, our usual tactic of waiting till someone else gets good, and then doing a point and nod and thank you to get the same. After the successful look around town, all that was left was the beach departure. The first attempt we didn't get past waves or get the outboard started. Second attempt was little better, and the outboard, now as drenched as we were, was tenaciously refusing to go anywhere. By this point we had quite a crowd on the beach cheering us on (I like to think cheering us on). On the third attempt we pulled the dingy out past the breaking waves – a tiptoe situation, wallet in mouth – and gave the outboard a final chance. No luck. Time to set in for the rather lengthy row back. No sooner than John was on his second stroke, and muttering “these oars are too long”, did one snap in half. The resultant paddle back over – I'm not very good at the distance but let's say 10 miles, took – I'm not good at time either so let's say 6 hours – and taught us either to give the outboard some much needed TLC, or perhaps not to attempt such beach stop-offs for a while. Which brings me up to date – it's Sunday evening, we've spent the day doing pretty much nothing other than recovering from our 20 mile, 14 hour paddle back to Rebel. Tomorrow is definitely Get Stuff Done day. If all goes to plan I'm posting this on t'internet on Monday morning, and next we'll be getting supplies which may be a multiple taxi situation. Wednesday looks like the earliest departure time. So there we have it. Very soon we'll be finally setting out on the major goal of the trip – to cross the Atlantic. And if all goes to plan, in less than a month I could be writing here (or maybe even John, you never know) in an internet cafe in Recife. We're just on the 4 month mark getting here – a little longer than expected, but only a couple of weeks. I think I speak for both us saying Leg One has been, overall, better than we could have ever imagined. It seems so distant the Biscay crossing, the Steinlager and Ibiza, even our late nights at Match Bar on Las Palmas, but each hold brilliant and lasting memories. That the boat is still in excellent condition after 5000 miles of sailing (we hit that mark just outside Cape Verde), and that John and I, not only have we not inflicted physical injury on each other, but are in fact on speaking and generally quite amicable terms, must mean we're doing something right. And Leg 2 – the Atlantic, the dolrums round the Equator, and South America, I'm sure will hold more of the same. I'm just looking forward to finally drawing a really big line on my Peter's World Map I keep in my personal locker and update at each stop. Right I'll leave it there, thanks for sticking through. On the plus side, you can be confident there won't be anything more for a good few weeks. Please do keep emails and comments coming for Brazilian consumption, they are really appreciated. Nick out.