Beyond Parati

ratCATcher
Andre and Alison Stroebel
Fri 29 Apr 2011 13:48

23:04.20S  044:38.74W

27th April 2011

Beyond Parati.

We had an interesting weekend in Parati. It seems half of Brazil was here for the long weekend. It didn’t bother us much being on the boat but it was very interesting to see the locals making probably their highest income for the season on the weekend. Some of the locals selling jewellery and hand crafted goods, we had become friendly with said they were all very excited and geared up to make some income. We have always seen the quay pretty quiet with one or two of the day cruise boats going out less than half full. From Good Friday the queues were all the way down the quay and into town. By 1200 there was not one day sailor left there and most went out packed to the brim. At about 17h30 they all started pouring people back onto shore to invade the town for the night. We didn’t get to town at night as it is not safe to leave the rubber duck after dark .Engines and even rubber ducks grow wings, or should I say fins. J

We left Parati on Sunday morning and set sail for Angra, on route we spotted an anchorage that had been recommended in the cruising guide and decided to stop. Ilha da Cedro. A very pretty beach with restaurants. We motored across in the rubber duck to have lunch, we had no sooner finished when the heavens opened up. An welcome downpour that cleaned the boat and filled our water tanks.

Monday we continued our slow sail back to “our” yacht club in Angra.

Tuesday was admin day and we bussed into town to check the boat in and extend our visa’s for another 3 months. L Sadly then we have to leave Brazil for at least a year before they will allow us another visa.

At the visa office we met another cruising couple, Russel and Karin and their beautiful ten month old daughter Briza. Their catamaran is called Moonwalker. You can follow their travels at http://catamaranmoonwalker.blogspot.com.

They are from New Zealand and have been cruising for 5 years. They had a “forced” stop for a year in South Africa when they took a break to produce Briza. J Karin is Brazilian born and met Russel in New Zealand. Briza means breeze in Portuguese. We met them again the next day to go and find a place to refill our gas cylinder. It was great having Karin helping in fluent Portuguese, made life a whole lot simpler.

Yesterday we motored to Marina Piratus to fill up with diesel and afterwards anchored just outside the marina next to Moonwalker. We had bumped into Leon and Nicci from Iza on our way to Piratus, they were also on their way there, so they anchored with us. We had a great evening on rat catcher last night. Today; back to Angra yacht club and then probably to Ilha Grande for the weekend. We discovered yesterday our radio will not arrive from Sao Paulo before next week. L

 

 

Parati busy weekend:

 

Washing mud off the anchor as we pull it up.