Ilha Gipola

ratCATcher
Andre and Alison Stroebel
Wed 30 Mar 2011 20:51

23:02.25S  044:22.19W

30th March 2011

Praia do Vitorino on Ilha Gipola

Thanks for the chirps about the lack of blogs, it’s nice to know people are actually reading them. The reason for the lack of blog is basically nothing was happening. We went across to “our” yacht club in Angra last Thursday evening. We had a few things to do in town and the Raymarine technician was supposed to come and re-install out chart plotter on Saturday morning. You will notice I said “supposed to”. J Well of course he didn’t pitch.

Our days were extremely blog boring J J . We woke went for a morning swim along the beach walked back and swam back to boat. Cycled into town and explored the roads south of the yacht club. I have really taken to Angra, it is so pretty and so close to the islands.  The seas here are incredible. Although it is not a “world spot” for scuba the sea is generally clean, the viability the last week has been fantastic. Just near to the boat while motoring to the club on the rubber duck we saw a huge stingray, blue spotted  just quietly swimming along. A couple of turtles popped their head out to see what we were, and pipe fish hide in the shade of the boat or the jetty. Every morning on our swim the resident turtle ducked out of the way as we went past!

Eventually we had to go to Marina Verolme to the Raymarine agent for them to put in the plotter. That happened yesterday and the plan was to set off exploring the islands heading for Parati. But by the time we left Verolme it was pouring and we decided against exploring in the rain. Not good for photos. J So we headed back to the yacht club and spent the night on the mooring there.

This morning we woke to a glorious day and set off early (just after 08h00 is early in Brazil) Just a short sail south of Angra between it and Ilha Grande is the Island of Gipola. WE decided to sail clockwise around her visiting all the “hot spots”.

Igreja da Piedade(church of Piety)  is a right on the rocks, we viewed it as we sailed past as anchoring didn’t look too good. We continued around until we got to Praia do Dentista a stunning anchorage. There we stopped to snorkel. As with most bays and beaches there is a floating restaurant a short way from the shore. You can either call up your order on VHF or tell him to come and fetch you to eat there. As it was early we passed on the restaurant. This was the prettiest snorkel area we have done so far. The visibility was great. As we entered the water a shoal of large fish about 30cm each surrounded us and seemed to herd us to the shallows. We saw turtles and a pipe fish about a meter long, a big fat puffer fish and huge schools of small brightly colour fish playing in the bubbles made by the surf on the rocks.

From there we followed the coast until we were close to the Islands Buzios, Laje and Cobras. We anchored off of Ilha dos Cobras for a snorkel. The visibility was not good. We would not have been in water like that in Cape Town. We would definitely have been hearing the theme to Jaws following us there. There were nice big fish and André was cursing not having a spear gun with him. We saw our first Brazilian Morey Eel.

We had no sooner lifted the anchor and we could see the weather racing towards us. So we ducked into the mooring we are on now at Praia do Vitorino. Sitting here watching the rain. Will post pics of this anchorage tomorrow if the rain eases!

Hold thumbs it is better tomorrow when we will continue towards Parati.

View of the yacht club when we cycled.

Church of Piety (Directly translated with dictionary J)

 

 

 

 

 

On route around Island

Floating restaurant at Praia do Dentista

Every little cove seems to have its own beach it is simply beautiful.

Easy to see how one can get stuck here.

Ilha do Cobras

 

 

 

Puffer fish

Taken from in the water pardon the splashes!