Santa Maria, Isla do Sal, Cape Verdes

Tuesday started with a few pages from Joshua Slocum (I am also on the reading scheme now!) and a quick final blog update before our morning expresso and heading ashore. Kevin was determined to clean up the weed that had grown on our waterline during our extended stays in marinas in the Canaries, so he dropped me off at the pier by tender. As we approached two locals were literally racing forwards to get the boat watching fees for the day, but were sorely disappointed when only I got off and Kevin departed again.


Town Square, Santa Maria

I made my way straight to the internet café to get us up to date with the world again. The first one I entered, as per our guided tour from Samba, was very clean and air conditioned and a very helpful guy in attendance who helped me to a seat. The connection was pretty quick and I enjoyed the backdrop of the tuneful African voices behind me on the international telephone lines to relatives elsewhere. Unfortunately the USB port was not working on these machines, so I just caught up on a few blogs of other sailing friends and checked our emails. Following a nice welcoming chat with the attendant and his friend (whose names I’m afraid I won’t attempt to spell), I made my way to the other café in town hoping to be able to upload the many pages of emails and blog we had prepared.


View from on anchor

As soon as I entered the second place I ask the girl behind the counter if it was ok to use a USB key, she looked at me blankly but the enterprising I assume owner, beside her, complete with a wadge of notes in his hand said yes, but it would cost more! I enquired why and he just said it was the additional cost of bandwidth for upload and download, he quote 300 Escudos (£2) for the hour, so I decided to go ahead. 40 minutes later there was another general powercut, but luckily they had a generator rigged too, so within 10minutes service was resumed. I got talking to two nice Irish ladies beside me who were on holiday here for a month and seemed to be enjoying it and like all the Irish I seem to meet were very well travelled and commented knowledgably on the places we are intending to visit.


Beach at Santa Maria

Internet jobs done I had just enough time to dash back to the pier in time to meet Kevin for my lift back to the boat including a tour of the one newly restored hull. We had a very traditional lunch of egg, chips (well potato wedges) and beans! Kevin now having his appetite back and craving some good home comforts. An idyllic afternoon was spent reading and when it got to hot cooling off with a swim in the beautiful clean waters off the boat. Our little weather station was reading 37.5 degrees when it swung round into the sun and amazingly our instruments were reading a water temperature of 27 degrees! It certainly was blissful to slip into as we did frequently through the afternoon. The swell had crept it’s way into the bay in the afternoon, which resulted in quite a nice gentle rocking on Invincible, however the two French monohull’s were less impressed, one left straight for Brazil and the other laid a second stern anchor to point them into the waves.
We had thought to go for a drink ashore in the evening, however, by the time we had had our dinner and a glass of wine it was dark already and the full moon was so spectacular it seemed a shame to go into artificial lighting. So we sat out in the cockpit lit only by the moon listening to music and planning our journey ahead.


View along the beach from the pier