Getting ready

The marina at Mindelo is not a particularly comfortable place once the "Christmas winds " have set in. There is a lot of swell that finds its way in and sets the boats surging. Poor Hocus Pocus was on the end of a long floating pontoon which was acting like a bit of a whip and accentuating the surging effect to such an extent that we began to see the port aft clear moving under the strain Dave spoke to the marina staff and we moved to another berth alongside this time at the root of the pontoon. The motion was still apparent but not as violent. It also meant we could remove and rebed the lose cleat. 

Dave also invested in something we are very familiar with from our berth in Getxo, namely Spanish anti-snatch springs.

Dave and I started on our list of jobs, one of which was to investigate the boat scrapyard at the other side of the harbour for any useful bits. This turned out to be futile but interesting nonetheless.

The "scrapyard was really more of a graveyard, surrounded by a few 

shanties.

We had discovered that a local bar "Simpatico" was run by an Irishman Tom who turned out to be a mine of useful local information, unlike the only pilot to the area we had, written by Don Street. We began to refer to it as " the book of lies "

It is wrong in almost every respect. On its reccomendation we tried a local restaurant, it was difficult to believe from the description that we were in the same place. No fabulous colonial dining room packed with antiques from the past, just a quite nice but plain dining room overlooking the Main Street.

The office for the Policia maritimo and Immigration were also not where Mr Street thinks they are, this is pretty basic information and really should be accurate in a book that is only a few years old. 

We also had a beach day, taking advantage of our now extended stay to go for a swim in the clear azure ocean side of Grand Harbour.

The hard part was stopping your towel blowing away!

The plans were coming together for the Atlantic crossing.

Dave had plotted a route that dropped us down to the same latitude as Barbados and then ran down that latitude, this also avoided an area of light winds to the north forcast by the "GRIB" files for a sixteen day forcast.

Lynne and I had a night in Toms bar where he gave us a sample of some wine from the island of Fogo, this was really nice almost a port and tasted a bit like jam, lovely and rather tastier than the local firewater called grogue. Which is cane rum at about 100 degrees proof, it's also only a euro a shot.

Mindelo had proven to be quite surprising and is well worth a visit in its own right.

It now only remained to do the 2100 miles of Atlantic Ocean to Barbados and then on to the Caribean.