Day 103 - Leg 5 Day 26 at Sea 'Arrival in Mindelo, Cape Verdes'

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Mon 5 Oct 2015 12:00
The last 5 days have been pretty much the same.  We have sailed as much as possible to conserve fuel and motored, where necessary, at reduced revs for the same reason.  We are carrying 6 jerry cans, 5 of which are empty and we also had siphoned off most of the fuel from a 200 litre drum that we picked up in Australia. We filtered the last of the fuel from the drum and put that into the tanks yesterday.  We had one full 20 litre jerry can remaining which we put into the tank just before going into the marina.
 
We saw the first sign of another boat 2 days ago.  The oceans are so vast that unless you are on a main route, you are very much on your own.  Once we depart Cape Verdes and get north of the Canaries, we expect to see more traffic, but the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic have been pretty much deserted.
 
We managed to sail yesterday for about 12 hours which meant that as long as we are careful, we should have enough fuel to reach Mindelo.  The winds had been forecast as we reached the islands and, ironically, they were so strong that we had to reef the sails.  We sailed as far as possible then, 25 miles from Mindelo, we turned towards our destination.  For this last leg we were head to wind with 2 knots of current against us, so we put the sails away and motored slowly.
 
I had been hoping to arrive before nightfall but it was 21.00 as we were coming into the bay, pitch black and a lot of light clutter from the sea shore making it even more difficult.  Once we found the marina, after one false attempt, a night watchman appeared and guided us towards a berth.  This was stern to mooring with lazylines for the bow.  What this means is that you reverse up to the dock (28 knots of wind at this point), get 2 stern lines ashore and cleated off.  You then pick up a lazy line which is fastened to the dock and also to a concrete weight 50 metres out.  Walk down the boat letting the line slip through your fingers (it is called the slime line or the shit line for a reason) until you get to the front of the boat.  Cleat this off at the front of the boat, then repeat on the other side. 
 
Your stern is now attached to the dock and your bow to the 2 concrete weights at the front, so you can't swing from side to side, or move forward or backwards.  All you need to do now is to ease or tighten the bow and stern lines so that you are close enough to step off at the stern, but not so close that the stern hits the dock if there is a swell or strong winds.
 
By 22.00 we we were all secure and by 22.01, the beers were on the deck.  I left the crew finishing off and rustled up dinner of fillet steak, spicy sausage, mashed potato and sweetcorn which went down very well with a couple or so bottles of red wine.
 
We were all knackered and were in bed by midnight.