Plan A worked and we are now back in Itaparica. We came down the Paraguacu river on the morning ebb tide managing six knots without really trying. We had a little fright when the auto-pilot said it didn’t want to play. I cleaned some contacts and gave other bits a good dose of looking at, switched the chart plotter off and on again and it worked. No idea why other than we gave Neptune and the Protectress of the sea some very good and generous libations. If we carry on like this we’ll need to wean Neptune et al back on to T-bags and vegetable peelings!

 

Liz and Michaela took the last opportunity to wash clothes since water will be much more precious after tomorrow. I haven’t tested the water maker – the water in the bay is too silty – so it is something of an unknown quantity. Anyway, if it doesn’t work there wouldn’t be much I can do about it here. We’d just have to be very careful. We will leave with in excess of 500 litres of water so for a seven day trip to Fernando do Noronha we’ll have 125 litres of water each should the water maker decide not to play. More than adequate.

 

The afternoon saw us making more preparations – fitting the Hydrovane rudder (much easier by dinghy); fitting the log impellors and the sail lazy jacks. Then we went ashore to top up our fresh water at the fountain and get our fruit and veg. The boat smells like a fruit market now. We have 4 pineapples, 40 oranges, 4 mangoes, 15 apples, a dozen guavas, a dozen bananas (and a dozen we left behind in the fruit shop!) plus sweet potatoes, ordinary potatoes, cabbages, onions, garlic tomatoes and heaven knows what else. And if we run out of fresh stuff we have tins of fruit and veg, dried fruit and veg plus more dried food and sachet sauces than we can count. And that doesn’t include toasts, biscuits, cereals, pulses, pastas and rice. I don’t think hunger is likely to be a problem on this trip!

 

We had hoped to have a final Skype with the family but the wifi connection out here in the anchorage is too tenuous and won’t hold the signal for more than a minute or two at the most. Sorry everyone. We’ll try again when we next get a decent signal wherever that might be.

 

P, L, M & M