Mindelo, Cape Verde and Grenada here we come!
Walkabout has gone Sailing
Andrew and Traci Roantree
Fri 19 Nov 2021 11:21
A tour to Santo Antao and getting to know Mindelo has been fantastic as well as meeting the locals, a real honour.
We arrived in Mindelo after 6 days 2 hours 15 minutes and 50 seconds - not that anyone is counting!!
We were greeted by a small boat with two very friendly local chaps from the marina who lead us into the marina and helped moor Walkabout.
Once we had moored up we spent a very short time sorting things and chatting to ‘Favorita‘ who we were moored next to before we being greeted by a local official who confirmed our Covid vaccinations and passports before we were allowed to step ashore.
We headed over to the marina office to ‘check-in’ and meet up with the ARC Yellow-Shirts before we came back to Walkabout and made our way to the Floating Bar for the beginning of our arrival celebrations!!
OMG we made it! We sailed our beautiful ‘Walkabout’ across the Atlantic to the Cape Verde’s!!
It’s been incredible!!
Our achievement overwhelming!
We were so pleased and proud of ourselves and the simply fact that we did it, we really did it!!! Our long term dream was indeed becoming our reality!
That night was a bit of a blurry mess and it was brilliant!! A few celebration drinks with fellow ARC friends.
The Cape Verde’s are beautiful and an incredibly diverse archipelago!
Here are a few pictures of Santo Antão a neighbouring island we visited with an organised tour.
We stopped and enjoyed a local lunch with the most incredible passion fruit dessert before heading back to the ferry terminal and back to Mindelo.
There was a local half day tour round Sao Vincente which was equally jaw-dropping.
Mindelo itself is a very colourful and bright place with friendly smiling locals everywhere xx
Today is the day we sail across the Atlantic to Grenada. 2200 nautical miles and our longest ever passage!
Its Friday 19th November at 1130 local time and we cross with 70 other ARC boats taking between 12 and 19 days to cross.
It’s feels more relaxed this time round with crews walking the pontoons saying farewell and wishing all a safe passage.
A completely different mood than in Las Palmas.
We feel ready and eager to get started!
We only had one breakage and that was our generator. It’s never been 100% and so we had Demar and Freddie from BoatCV working on it for days and have come to the conclusion that it’s probably an electrical issue or the main circuit board!! Something we’ll have to sort out once in Grenada.
We now have an extra 100 ltrs of fuel which we weren’t originally planning on taking.
So, here we are, ready to go!!!
See you all on the other side xxxx