Position: 14:54.80N 23:30.20W

Date: Wednesday 26^th December 2012

Time: 11:16am

We’ve just arrived in the port of Praia, on the island of Santiago, Cape Verdes. 

In the last log I explained the difficulties of getting off the boat to undertake the shore side formalities before we could leave.  Phil noticed that a rib with a group of local lads was shuttling back and forth to a charter boat, filling it’s tanks with water from jerry cans.  We managed to attract their attention and they came over and gave me a lift ashore.  I got there soaked through from the sea spray and slopped my way through the town to the maritime police office, only to find it closed.  After some hunting around I found the national police office, which was open, and with their help got a maritime man to come down to his office (in his football clothes) and do the paperwork for me.  Then back to the quayside to await the next rib trip and back to the boat. 

We upped anchor and left at about 15:00 in some quite strong winds, gusting well over 30 knots.  A few miles offshore the winds moderated slightly to around 25 knots and we had a quite fast overnight sail down to Praia, a distance of about 126 miles, averaging over 7 knots for most of the way. 

Because conditions in the galley were not really conducive to anything you could call cooking, Christmas dinner was a small bowl of chicken noodles. We did however manage to tuck into a few more of the mince pies I’d brought out from the UK.

We had one very small and rather pathetic flying fish land on deck overnight, hopefully we’ll collect something more eatable in later days.

Most of the reports of Praia are not encouraging, so we probably won’t stay long.  But we need to come here to undertake immigration and other formalities, if we are to stop off at the island of Brava on our way out of the country.