Santa Maria, Ilha do Sal, Cape Verdes

The weather forecast is showing an anticyclone moving north up the east coast of Africa in the next couple of days, which although is far enough away not to affect us with its stronger winds the swell it generates will be coming into the anchorage by Wednesday evening. We have therefore decided to leave slightly early for Tarrafal on the island of Sao Nicolau which is about 85 miles sail from here on Wednesday afternoon to arrive Thursday morning.

We went to the internet café on Tuesday morning and only managed a few minutes of internet time before another problem occurred with the system. We again managed to resolve it, but by this time we needed to get to the supermarket before siesta closing and so we did not manage to get the blog updated and latest weather so we will be heading in on Wednesday morning before we depart to get the latest forecast. All indications are though that the hurricane season is coming to an end the water temperature here has dropped a full degree, the heat of which provides some of the energy required for the propagation of hurricanes. Additionally, the forecast is for consist 10-15 knot wind across to the Caribbean at the moment. There has been only one anticyclone in the last couple of weeks and it did not develop into strong winds and dispersed before it reached the coast. So it is looking like it is settling down for our passage.

We spent the afternoon doing a bit of cleaning, charging the batteries etc and beginning to store things away ready for our overnight passage. Sabina and Till joined us about 18:00 and we had a very pleasant evening with them, Kevin cooking one of his excellent paellas. Kevin again showed the forecast to Sabina, as the system moving up Africa is also affecting the tradewinds south of the Cape Verdes which they wish to use to get to Recife. The doldrums were also showing as being further North than usual for this time of year which will also affect their passage. Till has flights booked from Recife, so they need to leave soon but after discussion it looks like it will also be good for them to head further west to Sao Nicolau giving them a better start point to miss the doldrums and stronger winds in a couple of days more for their departure once the African weather system has passed.