Landfall : Arquipelago de Cabo Verde

Serendipity
David Caukill
Tue 18 Oct 2011 18:57

Tuesday October 18th  Blog by David 16 45.176N 22 58.783W

 

 

This morning we woke to grey skies and little wind having been motoring for most of the night.  Our morning deck tour showed that we had one more passenger this morning – flying fish.  Anthony befriended it and regressed to childhood, playing  Battle of Britain with his new best friend:-

 

 

whom he then contrived to eat.  Hmmm, lovely.

 

 

 

As we approached Sal, CV our instruments told us land was less than 10 miles away but we couldn’t see it for the grey that seemed to close down visibility in all directions. Then as we approached we could just make out the shape of a hill when the skies cleared momentarily:

 

 

….. accompanied as it was by the sound of thunder and the occasional flash of lightning.  We are able to track the progress of squalls using radar and so we stood off to let these pass by,  allowing us to witness some spectacular cloud formations – formations that we were glad to be nowhere near:

 

 

And then the wind piped up behind the squall to give a brisk 20+knots from the south and an unpleasant short chop for us to press into to get to port.

 

We arrived a few minutes short of five days from departing La Gomera, averaging 150 miles made good each day (having logged about 825 miles,  routing westward to make the best of the weather forecast).

 

Now ……. Palmeira, Sal can only be described as a most unprepossessing place at first encounter; a run-down port with freighters and fishing boats sunk in the anchorage – most reminiscent of Lagos harbour in the 1980s. Ashore appears to be a ramshackle agglomeration of half built breeze block buildings in and around which life goes on at a tropical snail’s pace.  However, as I said this is a first impression – the tourists  must go somewhere!

 

Bob chaperoned me ashore to embrace with officialdom (something I do well, as you might expect). We have managed to check into the Harbour Commission (being dealt with by a very nice, helpful guy as it happened)  but have so far failed with immigration. We returned to the boat having had to leave the ship’s registration documents with the Harbour Master (as security for the harbour dues)  but still grasping our passports which other yachties had warned us we might have to give up to await the visit of immigration offices from the airport  - about 2 miles away. It seems some crews have  waited for up to 60 hours!  Rather we returned with ours intact, instructed  to report to the maritime police at 09.00 tomorrow..

 

Watch this space – hope the weather is better tomorrow.