CAPE VERDE is calling

Preceding the departure of a passage, there is always a certain measure of healthy trepidation that swells up in a sailor's blood regardless of the amount of courage that runs through the veins. Prudent weather analysis helps to quell that uneasiness, however, the sailor with any amount of distant sailing under his keel has learned that the sea, and its accomplice the wind, can conspire to teach a lesson to those who pass through their domain with a lack of respect for their potential powers.

And so, once again, after a close watch on forecasts and to assuage the sea and wind with a tithing of respect in exchange for safe passage, we left Canary Islands in the early afternoon under sunny skies.

Next morning's sunrise

It was a comparatively short passage of 8 days that took us south, brushing the shoulder of west Africa past Dakar and the shores of west Sahara to the Cape Verde Islands.

Even though we were about 80 NM off the coast, the Sahara reminded us how close we were with a faint terrestrial scent that wafted over the waves and broke the monotony of the night watch. A mysterious foreign scent that conjured images of bygone years of a silhouette of a chain of camels in a ghostly caravan trekking along the ridges of those endless and great barren desert dunes of the Sahara.

And today, that same age-old broad band of dunes now lay as just one major obstacle for those desperately fleeing pitiable conditions of regions in the south on their attempted journey to asylum in the dreamland of the north.

More than once I have been alerted by an earthy scent that landfall, not yet within sight, was imminent. For the ancient sailor, this sense was just one of their "aids to navigation". Obviously today a full advantage should be taken of our modern advancements for marine safety, however as a result, I think to some degree, the modern day mariner allows the atrophy of his instincts and replaces intuition with tech dependency. And that is a shame.

Having said that, we have embraced yet another system. To those unfamiliar with the Garmin InReach system, it is a satellite communication allowing SOS, texting, and emails and is well worth considering. We had Adam Wanczura, an associate member of Bluewater Cruising Association back home act as our weather guru sifting through weather data over the internet and who kept us up to date through this new system with what to expect along the way. It worked great. Thank you Adam! (Link: https://www.bluewatercruising.org/)

For passages, it is just Judy and me aboard. There are only a few welcomed exceptions to that and one is our friend the moon. He showed up in a majestic profile with a radiance that was more than adequate to spread a carpet of diamond sparkles over the waves ahead ushering us to a new land.

Another was a pod of unusually small dolphins. What was usual though was their gay cavorting in Sea Turtle's bow waves.

And yet on another occasion, this time at night after the moon abandoned us to chase the sun over the horizon and left us in an inky darkness, they came like a naval attack in a bio-illuminate spectacle. I only took notice because while on my night watch and when I went up to do my regular groggy 360° visual, I had to do a second take at a bizarre sight that I couldn't at first comprehend.

It was as though there was a rapid fire of silver bullets streaking across our bow and out into a black starboard oblivion. Adding to that surreal display were curious trails of light from things zipping erratically through the water, occasionally breaking the surface and barely missing our bow.

Were we under attack? Was I hallucinating? Was I not awake yet or so tired I was seeing things? I've read stories of sailors so deprived of sleep that they enter another dimension of reality.

Well fortunately this weird sight had the effect of jarring me quickly and fully awake faster than the strongest triple shot of Moroccan espresso.

What I was truly seeing were not errant torpedoes but those small exuberant dolphins and they came to not only play in our bow waves of phosphorescence but for a midnight snack. The bullets were actually flying fish not having such a gay old time. Not only were they also jarred awake from their aquatic slumber but this behemoth was roaring at them. And to make a bad night worse, they were being hunted.

As they catapulted themselves into flight in that blacker than black night, light from our various running lights was being reflected back from their large eyes, made even larger because of their predicament, which led their frantic trajectory with a bio-luminescence trailing in their slipstream.

Chanty, our cat, knowing that out on deck was a fish left from the night's encounter, was meowing like an addict needing a fix in the waking hours of the morning wanting out to get it. Relenting, we leashed her up and took her out. Now normally when she sees one, she dashes at it like a toad's tongue to a tick, but this time, she just halted dumbstruck as though glued to the combing, and when we looked out to see what it was, we saw dozens of flying fish who had closed their final flight plan on Sea Turtle's deck. Our reconnaissance and cleanup yielded 91 fish and 1 squid and a whole lot of scales. Of those, Chanty had her pick of the litter.

Small sample of flying fleet

Now I didn't need to be hit on the head with a boom to deduce that just maybe we were finally in waters that could have some catchable fish of the humanly edible type (sampling flying fish is not an option given their smell that only another fish would find delectable), so I dragged a line and lure. Well it wasn't 10 minutes before the bell on the end of the rod was a dingin' and the line was spoolin' out faster than shite off a shiny shovel.

As I wrestled the rod, I could see the whopper jumping and fighting which eventually got positive results for him and the "big one got away" from me. I think it was a Wahoo. One for the fish, zero for the fisherman.

So right away, out went the line for another try. And again, in just a few short minutes I got another hit. With Chanty encouraging me with her excited meows, I landed the fish, a nice Mahi Mahi, successfully. One for the fish, one for the fisherman.

One for the fisherman

We had a variety of weather and sea conditions along the way. The first day we ran downwind in brisk 30-knot winds flying a poled-out staysail to port and a poled-out genoa furled to a third on starboard as steep short waves kicked us along. After that, the winds died down; we gradually unfurled the genoa and continued all the rest of the way downwind enduring a sloppy roll for much of it and in a sea that transformed from short waves to long swells.

Converging on Cape Verde

So after we left an almost straight track of 892 NM (1,652 km), we pulled into the large bay of Porto Grande on the morning of the 8th day. We anchored in front of Mindelo, the capitol of the Cape Verde Island of Sao Vicente.

Passage from Canary Islands to Cape Verde Dec 11 to Dec 19
N16°53.016' W024°59.595' Dec 19 Sao Vicente (Porto Grande, Mindelo)