Rio de Janeiro to Road Town Tortola
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Martin Tate
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Martin, our captain for the next leg, arrived on March 28 and we sailed across to Ihle Grande one final time. Martin put us through our paces sailing over to the island. It was a good chance to stretch Calypso's sailing legs before our trek north.
We then picked up a mooring ball at Enseada do Sitio Forte where fresh spring water spouted from a hose attached to one of the mooring balls. The mooring balls were free. A boat nearby was from Rio and I notice immediately how good their English was. Surprise, the young woman was a Brazilian who received her masters degree from Stanford. No wonder!
The cruising guide mentioned an open air restaurant called Quiosqo de Lele. It was a very short dinghy ride to the dinghy dock. As we approached it appeared to be someone's home rather than a typical restaurant. Maite, as our resident Spanish/Portuguese linguist went up and knocked on the back door. Cleusinha came to the door and told Maite yes this was the place.
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Departing the Anga area
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Cleusinha and her husband Lele, (the current owners) mobilized and within about an hour served us a tremendous Red Snapper dinner as the sun set overlooking the boats in the mooring field, their dog kicking and digging at our feet while we ate. What a great experience and extremely friendly folks.
The next morning we motored back to Pirates Marina for some last minute shopping for vegetables, milk and a few perishables, then set out to the east, leaving leaving Angra on March 29 about 2 pm. As we left the comfort of the bay east of Angra into the open ocean we hit the chop and as often happened we were really not prepared. Things slid to the floor, water sloshed into the hatches and we all went scurrying to get things battened down. Will we ever learn? A bit of wind left us by nightfall and we were again left motoring east.
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Turning the corner at Cabo Frio at the
lighthouse. Up the coast of Brazil
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About midnight March 30 we approached Rio. Using AIS and radar we picked our way between all the anchored tankers and islands, matching anchor and deck lights to AIS targets. By 3 am were were through and back to open water. Again Christ the Redeemer was easily seen illuminated by the flood lights. AIS is an awesome tool. All commercial traffic worldwide are forced by law to have AIS on board. Although voluntary for pleasure craft most larger vessels had AIS even in Brail. Only the fishing vessels reliably had no AIS and for those we had to be remain vigilant, particularly at night. Radar was our most useful tool with those, even though their all wood design did not provide a very distinct signal.
By 4pm we had sailed to the eastern edge of the Rio bank and turned the corner at Cabo Frio to head north. Cabo Frio was made famous by Bridget Bardot who maintained a summer home there for many years.
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Entering Vitoria Bay. No wind.
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Our passage came at a season where the winds were sporadic and largely from the northeast. Unhappily the Brazilian coast runs from Southwest to Northeast so it is a long slog up wind. To make matters worse the trade currents running from Africa split at the eastern most point of South America, some heading south down the coast of Brazil and some heading northwest toward the Caribbean. So the current was against us as well. Day after day, slog, slog, slog.
By April 1 we were running low on fuel and had to divert to Vitoria (although we still had over half tanks, running out was not an option). We arrived about 6:30 am and docked, waiting for the marina to open at 7:30 am. We then fueled up, emptied trash and were on our way. More slog, slog, slog, with our daughter's graduation on May 3 pushing us northward. Without adequate wind to sail, and the currents against us, our options were either to conserve fuel and make little to no progress, or push ahead, making fuel stops as required. We chose the later.
My preconception of the Brazilian coast was that it would be relatively jungle like...a la the Amazon, like the Jungle Cruise at Disneyworld. That could never have been further from the truth. As we moved north, mile after mile of coastline sported large high-rise apartment buildings, like Miami Beach for 400 miles. We took the video below while entering the harbor in Salvador. Incredible no?
We entered the Salvador marina on the morning of April 4th. We had calculated that we could make it to Tortola from Salvador without further refueling so we decided to clear Brazilian customs and immigration here. We believe that was a mistake as the authorities in Salvador had little experience performing this task with recreational boaters. They were well meaning, but a cruising tourist is about as common in Salvador as a penguin in the desert. We spent the better part of a day going between Immigration, Prefectura, Customs and back before finally being approved to leave Brazilian waters. It was unusual to be sent to the proper place the first time. Even our taxi driver shook his head in disbelief! We completed all the papelitos (paperwork) and departed April 5.
As we continued to fight the elements we began to see that we would have very little safety margin getting to the Caribbean if we did not stop for fuel one final time. We debated between Jacare and Natal, choosing Jacare as the approach was a bit safer and it had a reputation of catering to cruisers coming to South America. So up the river past the Cabedello industrial shipyard and toward Jacare we motored on April 8. Jacare is just north of Joao Pessoa the eastern most city in the Americas.
Unfortunately, there was no fuel in Jacare proper. A fuel barge was due to come at 11am, but sometimes it didn't come.
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12 feet south of the equator.
4.7 knots of wind! Ugh.
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The other option was walk to the four lane highway to Joao Pessoa and buy diesel at the corner gas station that did apparently cater to cruisers and would deliver the fuel. This appealed to us more so off we went. To our surprise the owner of the Jacare boat yard was a gentleman from the Netherlands named Peter Buldring. He was absolutely awesome, and gave Martin and me a ride to the gas station and set up the order in Portuguese before returning to his yard. Upon arrive back with the gas he assisted us in transporting it to the boat (100 liter portable tanks are not light) and filling up. If anyone needs emergency services in this part of the world, he is your guy. His boatyard was spotless, and he seemed very well educated. By about 10 AM we had loaded up with diesel and were on our way again.
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Right on the button!
Now we are real Shellbacks!
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The next leg was the longest slog of all. We had expected to run into the trades when we turned the corner 70 miles to the north, no such luck. We turned and made a rhumb line toward Tortola, but no wind. We turned north to try and gather the trades but no luck. Two days later we reached the Equator.
For those who are not so nautically inclined, latitude is measured in degrees (60 miles per degree), minutes (one mile per minute) and on the Furuno plotter in thousandths of minutes (6 feet per 1/1000 of a minute) away from the equator. There is north latitude and south latitude. It has been a tradition since the first navies of Britain, Holland, U.S. and others that seamen were indoctrinated the first time they made the crossing. The ceremony consisted of King Neptune's court passing judgement and issuing challenges, allowing for the transformation from Pollywogs (those who had never crossed the equator) to Shellbacks (those who had). So as you can see from the first plotter shot above we missed it by 12 feet. So we jiggled back and forth until we sat right on the equator and as per tradition (as seen in the plotter shot below), verified we were in the northern hemisphere and had truly crossed, then went for a swim to commemorate the occasion. King Neptune was on vacation that day so we got off easy.
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Maite and Ed preparing for a dip on the Equator. Pollywogs to Shellbacks!
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The Equator, and no wind. Hot, quiet, hazy...did I mention hot?
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Equator by moonlight.
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The Equator was surreal. The water was still and hot, 94.2 degrees. The air was still and hot and incredibly humid. It was as if all movement on Earth, all molecular motion was suspended in this place. Energy and movement from everything around felt like it was being smothered. It seemed hard to breathe! I could understand how sailors lost their minds and jumped overboard becalmed here. Luckily we had our two diesel engines and full tanks of diesel fuel, so on we went.
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We started getting so excited to see wind in our sails
we had to take pictures of the event! |
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Mainsail Clew of Calypso
showing damage
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Mainsail Clew of Calypso after repair
in Nanny Kay
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About 500 miles north of the Amazon Delta we got our first wind. It filled in from behind as was predicted and within half a day we had a steady 15-18 knots that took us the rest of the way. Finally wind. We also caught another Tuna, hurrah!
Then one evening about 9pm bang. Our main sail clue (that's the aft lower corner of the sail) ripped away from the stainless steel ring that held it against the boom and kept the foot of the sail tight through the outhaul. Luckily we had the traditional slab reef main configuration on Calypso, as all we had to do was put in a reef in the main and we were sailing again. We were slower but we were sailing. This clipped about 2 knots off of our sailing speed, but we were still moving much better than under motor.
We were 17 days at sea before reaching Tortola. On the morning we sited our first Caribbean Island Guadaloupe, we got a dolphin escort to welcome us officially into the Caribbean Sea. One of the greatest legacies of such a leg was that everything else from that point forward seemed short and easy, except perhaps the leg to the South Pacific and a transatlantic voyage. They now seem in reach.
Things we found helpful during our 17 days. Maite watched all four seasons of Downton Abbey. Audio books. If one is a but queazy, reading or TV can be out, but audio books were great. Chocolate, lots of chocolate. Water fights. Lots of naps. Turn off the feature that tells you how many more days at sea on your plotter. As this is continually calculated based upon current speed and distance to target, if the wind died down, one would get demoralized, then looking at the time to go could put you in a frank depression. So we turned it off and tried to live in the moment, and that helped. Lastly, lots of music, turned up.
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The boys came to escort us in!
Maybe a few girls too, hard for
me to tell the difference.
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British Virgin Islands
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By April 21 we slipped between Antigua and Montseratt, behind Guadalupe and St Kitts then on to the British Virgins and Road Town arriving about noon on April 23. Tortola custom spoke English! They were nice! The process was very easy! I think we've made it! We spent four busy days working on the boat and setting up warrantee repairs before catching a ferry to St. Thomas and flights to the States on April 28. Thank you Martin!
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