16°53N 25º00W Mindelo Harbour, Cape Verde Islands
Oriole
Sun 24 Nov 2002 16:38
Oriole is now at anchor in this very fascinating mixture of Europe and
Africa.
We arrived here yesterday after an excellent and uneventful passage of 7
days with following winds of usually 15-20 knots making for good fast
comfortable sailing. The weather has been fine and sunny apart from a
couple of rain squalls early on and we are now well and truely in the NE
trades. We have seen pilot whales, lots of dolphins, flying fish in
profusion and a couple of tropic birds. The SSB radio has been great for
keeping in touch with other boats on passage and has enabled free exchange
of weather information and general chat. With three people sharing the
watches it has been very relaxed and have all had plenty of sleep. The
cooking has been evenly shared and we are vying for culinary supremacy.
Our fresh food is holding up well so have not had the fishing lines out yet,
but we did manage to catch a pot marker on the end of the tow generator,
well over 100 miles from the West African coast and in 3000mtrs of water!!!
A quick visit ashore yesterday promises better provisions than were
available 3 years ago when Chris was here on Troubadour. We found the
excellent bread shop selling brioche, cinnamon bread as specialities, what
luxury.
We are certainly not going to be alone when we cross the Atlantic in a few
days time as over 200 boats left Gran Canaria yesterday with the ARC and
this anchorage alone, has 35 yachts at anchor which all appear to be heading
west, although on the way here we saw none until we had sighted land.