17:15 N 24:41 W Land ho ….. well 27nm away …..
S/V Blue Argolis
Greg and Sue Hill
Wed 23 Nov 2022 10:56
Latitude 17 15’N ; longitude 24 41’ W
Wednesday 23rd November, day 8 at sea and ‘Alpha Whiskey’
Sunrise, sunset, sun rise sun set, swiftly flow the days….. etc etc etc.Can you believe we set of from Santa Cruz de Tenerife 7 whole days ago….. and we are now in our 8th day? We can’t….. it is the longest passage that I have done none stop, our longest together and BA’s longest :) we’re very pleased to say boat and crew holding up well, no injuries or breakages, and as I write only 27 nm to go before we enter the Porto Grande bay on Ilya de Soa Vicente and head for Mindelo marina. We have sailed 829 nm so far and the harbour is right on the bow…. Just the last few hours to go. I have our courtesy flag out ready and our ‘Q’ or customs flag as we checked out of the EU in Tenerife.
We have had a good night, we dropped our main sail soon after I wrote the blog yesterday as we were just powering through the seas and it was a bit hairy, so compromised and put the mizzen sail up, so have done a comfortable, for us, 5 to 6 knots in about 22 knots of apparent wind all night.
We are now looking out for land, always very exciting :) Ilya de Santo Antao the bigger island to the north west of Sao Vicente has some higher mountains at 1811m so we might see the neighbouring island first? We’ll be happy with that to start with…. Greg and I have a sweep stake on who will see land first, however he’s off watch sleeping, so I might have an unfair advantage!
This will be our last blog from sea. When we get in we need to firstly make sure the boat is safe, then check in at marina/ customs and wherever else they might like to see papers etc… before we tidy up and put the boat back to its non sailing state. We will get a local SIM card and I will update back on Facebook whilst ashore.
Greg and Sue xx
Sent from my iPad