Fast Passage - heww! The Guinea Current crosses the Atlantic from West Africa & comes roaring up the N coast of South America at 1 to 2 knots. Harmonica was recording 180 mile days as she rounded Cabo De Sao Roque (that means nose not rocks) and headed past the Amazon for French Guiana. The English Moody 41 "Patronne" left Cabedelo a few hours after us & caught us up too. We spent a few great days sailing within sight of each other and coming close for photos. Patronne was sporting twin headsails hoisted on the same luff foil, and a day later Harmonica's second headsail was also hoisted side by side with the first. With this configuration , you can pull one out on either side and lower the main for running downwind, or sheet them both together for reeching. It works well.
On board Patronne, Brian & Lucia hold an anniversary each week since they have only been together for 9 weeks. They also threw in an extra anniversary for 2 months which gave them 2 in one week. They made wonderful company for looking round the French Islands of Isles De Salut. By this time, we had told our brains to forget all Portuguese and try to drag up distant memories of the French language. Since Lucia's only fluent language is Portuguese, our brains collapsed in a tangle of failed back-flips and we probably talked gibberish to everybody.
France used the 3 tiny Islands of Isle De Salut as a prison colony for mostly political prisoners from Napoleonic times until 1953. The most well known being Alfred Dreyfus of the "Dreyfus Affair" and Papillon who wrote a popular novel of his stay there. The cells are now rusting away in the jungle foliage as cockrels and agouti (little weasel-like animals with no tail and spectacular orange rumps) gorge themselves's on the fallen fruit. Tiny spetacle faced monkeys were hopping around the mango trees throwing down any fruit which was not ripe to perfection. Several tripper boats arrive each morning from the mainland. The mainland population has changed dramatically with the building of the Arienne space launch centre. Apparently the anchorage at Isle De Salut is cleared whenever a rocket is launched, but any nearby cruisers get a dramatic view of it. However, it must be noted that the few officials living on the islands seemed brusque and unfriendly after the spontaneous enthusiasm which one grows used to in Brazil.
We had read that the waters were clear and we would see the sharks patrolling, looking for remaining prisoners. However, either because of rivers flowing at this time of year or because of false advertising, we saw no more than a foot or so through the water.
After 2 days, Patronne & Harmonica left together and took a few more photographs sailing with the islands in the background. Harmonica had used 2 anchors in tandem to grip in the soft mud bottom and nearly lost both anchors and a length of chain rode while trying to wash the mud off. Patronne sailed for a couple of hours and then announced problems with the autopilot. A brief discussion & search found that some bolts had come loose on her rudder quadrant. Harmonica, in return, announced that her SSB radio antenna connection was intermittent but after more discussion that was ameliorated by squeezing some thin copper wire inside the coax connector. So the "show got on the road", Harmonica hoisted her spinnaker and Patronne took some more pictures. We have seldom sailed in company but this was fun. We also enjoyed swapping ideas on sail handling and seeing the results of different sail configurations.
The coastal shelf of the Guianas extends a long way off shore and we stayed in less than 50 metres of water for 30 hours. We stopped once to check what looked like a big plastic bag caught on the skeg or propeller. Once we had stopped and Dave was standing, boat-hook in hand, on the bottom step of the boarding ladder bent in the middle to get his mask & snorkel in the water, the plastic bag broke formation and became 3 small sharks swimming idly around waiting for the boat to start up again so that they could return to their formation. We saw large dolphins on many occasions, and twice we heard & saw splashes which could only have come from larger hunting mammals.
2 days into our passage, the spinnaker caught on the bow anchor and tore the skirt of the bottom panel. We have wanted to shorten this panel anyway, but organising 50ft X 35ft of sail into a 7ft X 7ft cockpit so that we could cut a fair curve and restitch the hem took all day.
We are now back in the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone - ITCZ. The "doldrums" where the SE trades in the S Atlantic meet the NE trades of the N Atlantic and air rises to head back away from the equator at higher elevations. Sometimes it rises in spectacular convection storms. Unlike a front, the ITCZ can dissipate and reappear somewhere else. Right now, it is a long way north over Tobago and we are still in SE trade winds. However, we had ENE winds 2 days ago. We sometimes see big cumulus clouds around, and these show well on the radar. The forecasts for the ITCZ are not very accurate. Just north of the ITCZ, the Tropical Waves are marching across from East to West and the forecasters occasional warn that these could turn into tropical storms. We see long swells rolling in from the ENE showing that something has been happening up there, but we plan to keep south of the storm tracks. We listen each day to a forecast on the HAM radio which tells us the longitude of the next wave.
With clear, blue sky; light - moderate breeze from ESE; occasional flecks of white on the azure ocean we send you all our best wishes
Dave Jan & Harmonica