Ille de Salut, French Guyana
Lynn & Mike ..around the world
Mike Drinkrow & Lynn v/d Hoven
Mon 14 Apr 2008 18:10
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05:16.89N 52:35.15W - 13 April '08
We are currently "resting" off Ille de Salut, French Guyana, after an 8 day sail from Forteleza. It has been an eventful leg with currents and winds not always behaving as expected. The last 3 days we had winds of 35 to 55kms an hour with fairly rough sea - hence us taking a breather here. It was very interesting to cross over the equator and then also to cross the line where the black water of the great rivers meets the blue water of the ocean - a clear line with unsettled water on the dark side and flatter water on the blue side. This was about 450 kms off the coast! However, the biggest excitement of the trip was Coenie reeling in a MASSIVE tuna - about 60kgs and 1.7m tall, quite a fighter. It goes without saying that we are now eating tuna (sushi), tuna (braaied), tuna (fishcakes) and more tuna! Coenie even has sushi for breakfast! He is either going to get very smart or very sick... Ille de Salut is three small very tropical islands (think "thick forest and black rocks" not white sandy beaches.. which we will only find much further north), The three islands are St Joseph, Royalle and the infamous Diablo (remember Devil's Island from the movie Papillion?) I had a quick swim, although the guys thought I was crazy as there are sharks in the water here. Sadly we cannot go on shore as we do not have visa's, but we are enjoying just looking at them. We are also glad to have a short break from the wind, catch up on sleep, washing and odd bits of maintenance. Tomorrow morning we start our last long leg for a while, the 1100km stretch to Tobago. As we are now out of the ITCZ (doldrums), we expect consistent wind, which should get us into the Caribbean by Saturday. Some stats of our trip to date. We have been
away from SAfrica for 58 days, 40 of which have been at sea and have travelled
5370 nautical miles (just under 10 000km) at an average speed of 5.3
knots.
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