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Dear All -
I apologize for the lack of communication these last few days... Despite my best efforts at troubleshooting and endless phone calls, we continue to have very spotty internet connectivity.... We have been working closely with the tech people at the Sat phone company and I have had the self appointed "geek-squad" doing all sorts of troubleshooting and reloading of software.... Although there may, very weak may, be some compatibility issue with Windows XP and the Sat phone software, it is perhaps more likely to be a service area issue. Last night, late, the tech people in Rhode Island told me that we are almost at the limit of the service's internet capabilities and that as we go forward here - it will get even less. As he said - "there is hole where you are going."
As always we will continue our daily voice reporting, as apparently that should not be affected.
As such, however, I am not sure how much longer I will be able to send off reports and as we missed a few I'd like to bring everyone up to where we are and how we are faring.....
Had some of the best sailing and fishing days Amistad may have ever had. Every day on the trip down from the Canaries got better and better and better. I think our first day was 119, then 130 something, then 145, then 174, and the last day brought us into the Cape Verdes hours early - being a run of 202. I thin the two day combined total was 380 - covering in 2 days what we plan to cover in 4. As she literally danced down the backs of the waves - our gallant fishermen put out the fishing tackle and we landed: 2 Tuna, on Blue Fin, one perhaps Albacore, 1 Blue Marlin, and 1 Wahoo! We put the lines to bed the last day as we had landed two big fish by 10:30 AM. You can feel the humility of everyone before these incredibly majestic fish - not wanting to take too much, and not wanting to see the animals suffer. We have a more-gentle means of subduing them and we were quite willing to stop fishing once we had filled the freezer and complimented our Portuguese meat stores. Believe it or not - we have not found much fish to purchase and Heather did not take me up on my suggestion to go down to the docks and pantomime "will you please cut the heads and tails off for me." Apparently, she tried one such discussion at the Mercado and ended up with Ox Tails..... Lost in translation....
We had decided it was likely we would have to forego the Cape Verdes after our delay due to weather in the Canaries. But with the ride we had we had actually bought some time back and decided to see if we could do a quick stop in this incredibly unusual place. I will also admit - the endless rolling, and constant strain of 8-10 knots on the ship - made me think it wise to take a bit of the strain off everyone: ship, crew, heather, and captain. A night without the pull of the ship, racing forward in these seas
- was a most welcome opportunity.
The Cape Verdes have a funny system of clearing boats in and it is different in both the guides and reality. The sailing directions said you could only clear in or out on three islands, so I chose the first one, Ilha do Sal. And I was hoping they would give us permission to then proceed to the next island, Boavista, and depart from there. They gave dire warnings that if you did not follow the protocol, you were subject to a $55,000US fine, a fine I was not prepared to call Greg (my boss) up and try to explain. [I have already had a few close calls with laws we unsuspectingly came too close too. This was not one I wanted to mess with.] They also told me that the officia passportes was at the airport.... After a short cab ride to the airport from the port of Palmiera, I was told that no the policia back in Palmiera do the vessels. [Clearly the taxi drivers are in on this confusion.] So back Heather and I went to the port, where we were greeted by 30 fishermen, children and some rather hungry dogs. A very nice official who spoke English informed me that I would have to check in there (leaving our ship's papers - gulp), then do an official departure the next day (collecting our ship's papers), and then go through the exact same thing on the next island.... After paying him 100$CVE or $1US - we were legal - and not subject to the fine.
Palmiera is a very poor port, but the people were lovely. We did not take everyone ashore as the fishing pier was a bit slick and there was really no where to go in town. God only knows from where - but around 2 am they managed to have a band loud enough to reverberate through Amistad's hull quite a distance from the shore.
The next day the students were given the challenge of getting the ship to our next island... And they managed to get the anchor up, set sail and navigate us to Boavista. All very well done. We did not get in early enough to clear in that night - but after trying, I was convinced this was the place where we should get everyone ashore. The town, although poor too, has a lovely square surrounded by the import places - bank, Mercado, post, registration offices, hair salon. Trying again this morning, it took several hours to find the official - by which time I was pushing the edge of the law, having started to bring everyone ashore. Having given up and returned to the ship myself, I got a call at 11 saying he was there - supposedly he arrives at 8 - but I think I understood he might have been up in the port area where there was a ship of some sort. Upon explaining that we only had a few hours to walk around, the official asked to come out to Amistad, and after a mile and a half ride in the rescue boat - he really enjoyed a short visit with us and said he thought Amistad was beautiful, very beautiful. In our limited language exchange he told me he is from Praia, one of the larger more developed islands where I expect we will be headed after leaving Sierra Leone.
I will leave everyone's impressions of Boavista up to their blogs - but I suspect this was a good intermediary taste - sort of a pre-Africa experience. The people reminded me of the out island Bahamas, in the sixties, or of Samana, Domican Republic in the eighties. As I sat waiting for the "delagacao maritime" this morning, several women came down to the pier with plastic bathing buckets, and children draped around them. A group of fishermen joined tyhem and started handing out fish form the hold of a very colorful craft, that looked like a rescued 18' hull, fiberglassed over with a small house glued on top, with nets and tarps and tires and fish and oil cans tied on precariously here and there. One by one the fishermen handed up fish from the hold - ice? Not a chance - and the women haggled over them, until each had a basin full. As all this was happening some men ambled up and started relieving the women of the children - so that by the time the women had filled the buckets, they were free to load about 100-150 pounds of fish onto their heads. And just like that - the men folk carried or tended the children, walking along side of these colorfully dressed, laughing women - as they went down the road to the fish market - a cement wall under a tree a few hundred feet away. Curiosity got the best of me, as I sat waiting for two hours, so I walked own past the market, through a small residential area - only to find myself looking at one of the most amazing pieces of Cape Verdean history - a whaling acnoe over a hundred feet long, made of planks some 18 inches wide by 6 inches thick. The sweep of the hull was beautiful, the stern timbers huge - the size of such timbers in vessel three times her size. The oar locks, or more appropriately sweep spaces - about 8 inches in width made of thole pins - probably African mahogany or such. The canoe was painted white with numbers and eyes and symbols - all probably meaning something about the spirits and whales of its history. The size of the thing was simply awesome - and you could imagine the rugged survivalist people of these islands in their hey day - launching this canoe through the surf, a team synchronized in every movement to head for the whales - a history of great black seamanship, so often forgotten - so often ignored. The canoe - still in tact, lay silently on the rocks, sand beginning to settle into it's hull, a few beer bottles strewn amidst the wind swept thwarts. Is she stilled rowed out to sea? The paint did not look that old. Do they still push her out through the surf? Or is this her final resting place - soon to become wood for burning in a fire, or to chop into some other use?
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of these and the eastern Canary islands - is their barren volcanic lands. From slowly eroding craters that stick up a few thousand feet in the air, down wind swept red, brown baked sand, to the black lava rocks along the shore - these islands are like moonscapes to those of us from green, tree lines coasts. A small bush like tree clings to the rocks here or there, a telephone poles leans precariously at 45 degrees
- down wind. Trash accumulates in every down wind corner - but little else. The houses are largely cinderblock - one attached to another in town - with abandoned hovels alternating with newly painted orange or blue painted houses with shutters, swept patios, satellite dishes. Then crumbling walls, trash blown around in the lot next door. Dogs and cats living out their lives side by side with humans. All set against this almost improbable landscape of endless sand. The cruising guide calls Boavista - a little Sahara.
We left Boavista after a small Portuguese lunch Heather had pulled together
- and now we are sailing on a course of 165 T - next stop Sierra Leone. The orange sand and dark craters disappearing behind us in the late afternoon sun. 4 lowers and topsail set - one reef in the main - making 7.9 knots. It is good to be back at sea.
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