We walked the commercial harbour perimeter to reach the entrance road, lined with different businesses, shipping agents -not the authorities

Due to the light breeze, our SOW had dropped drastically to just 4.5 knots, whilst the SOG remained at 7 knots, sometimes more!

When going to the village for our daily internet fix we really needed to wait for the high tide to avoid sinking in the soft mud and sand.

With the flop of our previous day with the anchorage in Alcântara and now in São Luis with waves breaking violently on our stern

Our SOG getting lower and lower, as we were just past the middle of the bay we were doing only 2 knots and shortly after our speed was betwe

We were inside but noticed the jet ski looked like it had Coast Guard signs, so I came to the cockpit to see what it was all about.

the view was incredible, we could see the mangrove forest and river extending to our right and several dunes with fresh water pools

A very nervous 1h as we made our way through the narrow passage, but we did cross it without any hiccups.

But no, they had not mentioned this small detail of the use period matching our original visas, and now we had 3 days to avoid having to pay

We powered up the radar that was on standby since morning and saw it, the big pink stain indicating that we were right, a Pirajá

For hours that day, the wind would blow nearly nothing (up to 4 knots) or it would be 15-18 knots whenever we got hit by squalls

They called the supervisor that came in and gave us a big lecture that Camamu was part of the Salvador harbourmaster territory…

Between the suitcase and the new autopilot, I was already close to my weight allowance leaving only room for some clothes I could use to pad

After having our spirits crushed again when the autopilot blew the fuse after a couple of hours of use, we decided, we had nothing to loose

There were a few narrow passages where we would be way closer to shore than comfortable, at the lowest point of our navigation we found 3.4m

big Araras (Macaws) visit the boats on the mooring field looking for snacks and are quite friendly, resting on people’s heads, on the boats

The dark cloud had rolled back over our heads, and we knew we had an urgent problem to be solved before we could start exploring the country

We were just doing a huge circle around the boat when we saw a day tripper boat approach our boat a bit without care grabbing the stanchions

Despite being back at steering with the Hydrovane quite successfully, the failure of the autopilot presented a huge problem.

Distractedly we followed Google directions, and all of a sudden, we found ourselves in a favela (slum).

The officers look at John slightly disapproving, and immediately I said I had a pair of trousers for him in the backpack, it was so hot...

I explained we couldn’t go much more to the shallows and that we were just waiting for the night tide to come in although we were having tro

When we set about on this passage we knew that this was not just yet another long passage. This was a challenging route driven by three mome

Everyone already knew we had arrived before we dropped anchor, not because of our AIS or some fancy monitoring system.

It’s quite an interesting experience to hand steer a 50ft through a mooring field of 30+ft boats after spending more than 10 days at sea

We look at our beast! It is gorgeous and will keep us fed for really long time, nothing will go to waste.

A lot of discussion of our track and decisions and we still think our planning was the best bet that involved minimal time in the doldrums

After a near sleepless night going through what it felt like the deluge of a lifetime we needed to complete the installation of the tiller

After a few hours rest we start working on John’s plan to sort out a structure to mount the tiller Pilot we bought specifically for this

We did a quick test of the autopilot now that it had cooled off but it seems it’s dead. It was just too much pressure from the sea weed

No matter how we trim the sails we seem to be doing less speed than before, can only imagine how much of this seaweed we are trailing

Since we lost the 240v on the first day the menu consisted of room temperature seafood paella twice, room temperature

For some reason I’m not being able to settle the hydrovane on an angle of 110AWA but I can 120-130 and even 80-90AWA but not what we need. (

We spent the entire first half of the day trying to catch up on our sleep but not very effectively, too many things going through our minds.

More discussion, after all there was no fat chance to get it fixed in the Cape Verdes so we decided to proceed and shut the raw water intake

With all that done it was time to relax in the cockpit. My mind however had different plans and was constantly going through lists

He explains he will keep our boat registration documents and that before moving on to another island we need to come here to get a clearance

That’s when we came to full realisation of our mistake. We should have made landfall on the most Eastern island of the archipelago, Sal.

Logbook extract for the sailing trip from Canary Islands, Spain to Mindelo, São Vicente, Cape Verde  849 nautical miles in 152 hours

We kept the two sails poled for a short while and until after sunset when the wind decided to pick up more than we felt comfortable with

A total of 600Ah capacity would give us up to 480Ah of usable power (at 80% discharge) of usable capacity with a total weight of 60kg

Since the beginning of our boat travels we did not like the idea of LPG on the boat.

This was it we were going to sail upwind to the Canaries when most people sail downwid to get there!

This stage of the preparation of the hull was not only backbreaking but also psychologically challenging.

Logbook extract for the sailing trip from Madeira, Portugal to La Graciosa, Canary Islands, Spain 272 nautical miles in 46 hours

A pure cost analysis not factoring inflation over a period of 10 years puts normal antifoul paint at 4500€ against the 4200€ of Coppercoat

To our surprise the weight difference between the old set-up with the original Bimini and the new hardtop was negligible.

We start getting closer to Madeira, the winds start pressing blowing close to 20 knots true wind, and we pick up a bit more speed 7/8 knots

Extract of the Logbook for the sailing trip from Cascais, Portugal to Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal 486 nautical miles in 79 hours

The PredictWind routing weather forecast did tell us the previous days that we should have tracked north to try and keep with the winds