The second day was non-eventful until at noon a rip was noticed in the main sail. Then it was necessary to pull out needles and thread and sail tape and spare sail clothe and drop the sail and put on the motor until a patch was fabricated and we could continue on as normal. We had spaghetti and pesto sauce for dinner. Then we prepared for our second night of watches. I watched ‘The Warriors’ on PSP.

The third day brought grey skies and silver water. The low black birds which darted above the waves like swallows began to appear, although I was told there could be no such thing and that they must be flying fish. I started calling them swallow fish. It turns out they were birds all along.

The fourth day brought clear skies and the recent swells that the boat was surfing on. We had the sail out in a broad reach, to which a whisker pole was attached to late morning to prevent the luffing of the fore sail we had been suffering from. In the night during my watch we had succumbed to one particularly intensive lurch from a passing wave, dumping a noisy pan off its shelf below the stove. This was at around 2 am and rudely awakened both parents in shock. But at this point I had realized 3 hours alone in the wee hours were an excellent opportunity to write, so I was too involved to be concerned, and gently picked up the chair which had tipped off the seat in the cockpit opposite me.

The fifth day brings us eerie calms after a night when the wind disappeared. The sea looks like the waves of desert sand dunes, with areas of little ripples over soft larger curves. The swells still roll from the North, but they are smooth and creamy. I had just wondered how I was going to wash my hair, and here was now a perfect opportunity – we put the boat into neutral, and in my bathing suit I eased into the cool water off the boat’s ladder to get wet and wash my hair.  How perfect. Then later, some dolphins dropped by. They were clear to see for a ways away because of the flat waters. But they were more interested in some fish than they were in us.

I’m sure I was visited by some more dolphins the night of my watch, but on the other hand not so sure… the phosphorescence at night is magical, leaving sparkles all around us through the water. The wind picked up again the next day, and it also became apparent that the swallow fish were, in fact, swallows, and probably the African variety, although there were no coconuts involved. A small tuna was caught, but unfortunately none of us knew how to properly clean and gut a tuna, and in the end there was a small plateful of bite-sized pieces to share between the three of us. Poor fish.

Today the wind picked up a little more, and after 24 hours of the wind veering 360 degrees, we were now back on the prevailing NNW wind at 20 knots, with some interestingly voluminous rollers coming through across the Atlantic from somewhere around Newfoundland . Or so I was told. At nap time, the captain decided he would attempt a wing-on-wing sail configuration, but it didn’t quite work out the way it was supposed to, and the end result was a genoa which had rudely wrapped itself around the furling and was flapping high up on the forestay with tremendous power. It took a bit of effort and maneuvering to correct the whole mess, but it all worked out in the end, just in time to realize that out wind speed monitor was simply reflecting our boat speed, and we had no idea what the actual wind speed was/is. But I figure this is all retribution for wasting the life of the little tuna.

The next day we finally saw the shape of an island through the distant haze of the horizon. It was very exciting, as we had made the decision that we should go into Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands to refuel our diesel tanks. It took a full day to sail along the North edge of the string of islands that make up part of the Cape Verde horseshoe-shaped Archipelago. In a gap between two of the islands we were visited by a small pod of bluenose dolphins, who were dark blue and quite large compared to the previous pods we’d seen. They didn’t stay long, but I had my camera and managed to capture a fin as it was swimming away in the sunset. One of the dolphins did a beautiful jump clear out of the water. We finally made it in to the Mindelo harbour after dark, and had to map our way into the anchorage via the chart plotter. When it became apparent that a lit flagpole on the shore was actually the mast of a sailboat in the water, we knew we were in the right spot. As we anchored we were approached by a guy rowing a dinghy, who introduced himself as 'Arlindo', one of the local boat guys. We made arrangements to have him meet us in the morning. Then we had a cocktail, and finally settled down to a full night’s sleep. Sort of.

In the morning two of us climbed into the dinghy and were rowed into shore by a Cape Verdian named ‘Orlando’, who worked for ‘Arlindo’. He guided us to where we checked in and out (simultaneously), and to where we needed to get our passports stamped. We next went to the internet café and then to a local grocery. The town was pretty, reminding me more of Caribbean colonial architecture (with it’s Regency and Georgian buildings, bright colours and wrought iron) than of the East African towns I’d seen. We were then shown a local indoor market that was very much in the style of Southern European indoor fish markets, within a pretty wooden-peaked roof building.  It wasn’t market day, so there were just a few stalls being used. We got what we needed, paid too much, and went back to the boat. We were then ready to go except for the diesel fuel, the reason we’d stopped in the first place. We had directions to the dock, but during lunch I watched five boats head over before us. We ended up spending the afternoon driving around in circles waiting for a spot at the fuel dock to open up, in line with the other boats. One of the hold-ups was a fishing boat that was being loaded with 6000 kg of ice. We had been in touch with one of the boats ahead of us on the morning net, and it relayed the situation at the fuel dock to us by VHF, as it unfolded. As the sun began to go down, the other boat had managed to get to the dock, and radioed us that the fuel station was about to close. There was another boat ahead of us, but there was room at the fuel dock for two sailboats. This of course ended up in a fiasco with tempers lost and a lot of swearing and extra stress, but we got our fuel, and left Mindelo pretty much 24 hours after we’d arrived, in the dark again.

We woke the next morning with the islands on our stern, disappearing into the haze. I’d been hoping dolphins would come to see us off, as they will do. But I got my wish a little later in the day when a large pod of spotted dolphins showed up to play in the bow surf. They stayed and played for quite awhile. It was a nice break as we were all tired again from lack of sleep the night before, having subjected ourselves to the rigourous night watch schedule once again.

Today, we successfully put up the whisker pole on the Genoa sail, and are sailing downwind much better, which gives us more of a straight line to where we want to end up. We are all much happier about that, and me more so as it is calm enough today that I am finally able to do a laundry.

Another day much like the others. I have to admit I’ve started to lose track. Today may have been two days. Or three.

The horse-tail clouds we’ve seen which rippled into a mackerel sky have formed a large wall of rain in front of us that we have no choice but to make our way through. There is a beautiful rainbow at the start, but it was all wet from thereon. We put on our raingear, shortened the sails and put up the canvas that shortly soaked through and dripped like an old tent. We sailed North or South, depending on which way the wind was deciding to blow. We wanted to go West. As the day grew to a close and the light dimmed, we gave in and turned on the motor to ‘sail’ out of it. Over night the sky cleared.

But today there is no wind. We’ve taken down the sails and are lolling badly in the wind as rollers are still passing through, and are coming from two directions. They are like small hills which lift the boat and drop it again gently, with a little thrill in the stomach sometimes thrown in. We are floating in a 1 knot current towards the West-South-West. We may be like this for two days or three, but we’ve decided to try and save some diesel for a change as there is a limited amount and we had motored all night. But it does give us an opportunity to swim and bathe off the boat in the middle of the Atlantic .

The calm didn’t last. In fact, it was the calm before the storm. We had just finished up lunch when the wind started picking up and we took sail again. By 4 o’clock we were running abreast a thick cloud formation that was so heavy I remember it as an island. We thought we might just outrun it – it was a full-on race, as we could see a blue sky in the distance under the black horizon. But, we didn’t outrun it. Instead we succumbed to a long double rip up the leech of the sail from the second all the way into the third reef. We dropped the main altogether and sailed out of there with just the small stay sail and the motor. By the evening it had cleared again – or at least for awhile. The barometer was still low, and the moon, although glowing through a thin layer of upper cloud, cast dark shadows through the still-present rain clouds all around.

The next day brought a mix of perfect Trade Wind sailing (during which the main sail was stitched up as far as the third reef, which gave us at least a limited main) and repeated rows of showering heavy rain clouds that we had to pass through like a gauntlet. This continued all day and into the night. The winds had picked up by night-watch time, and we were sailing again with just the third-reefed main and the small stay sail. And still doing over 5 knots of speed. We finally got a scheduled audience with Herb, the Canadian weather guru, who told us we were passing just South and West of the remains of Epsilon, and also suffering the waves of a gale off the coast of Antigua in the North West . But at least, finally, the winds are coming from the right direction.

The next several days passed without incident, with typical trade wind sailing of 15 knots/hour wind at NE or ENE direction. During this time there was some speculation as to whether Antigua might be a better destination than Guadeloupe , given the repairs required for the sail and the language barriers that would not be an issue. The next day a reply, 6 weeks overdue, came from a marina in Antigua , stating that they had a space available for us in December. So after debating over the course of two days, and finding ourselves further North than we wanted to be anyway, we decided to head to Antigua instead of Guadeloupe .

We were greeted by Dolphins again this morning, now that we are just a day and a half from landfall. It was exciting to see them again after 2 weeks dolphin-free. The preparations for landfall have become the focus of our days, including trying to get rid of any food we don’t want left over by eating it now. We expect landfall by late afternoon tomorrow.                                         

We started our day Tuesday with a last rainstorm at sunrise, and spent most of the morning outracing a second one. Over breakfast we had a visit by an oddly tame immature seagull, who not only landed on the dodger to stare at us intently through the little plastic skylight for a length of time, but fluttered down to the deck and wandered on foot from the stern to the bow and back again like an old sailor, pecking off tidbits from the portholes, and even trying to snack on my finger. It only seemed startled when I pulled my finger away the second time to say, “Oh no you don’t”. 

By mid-morning we could see the faint shape of Guadeloupe on the horizon, and eventually that of the smaller, lower profile of Antigua straight ahead of us. The faint grey gave way to blocks of colour on visible hillsides by noon , and even individual buildings by early afternoon. There were other sailboats around us on the water now, out for day sails from English Harbour . Kite birds flew overhead, fishermen collected crab traps along the edges of the reefs that peppered the shoreline. A rainbow appeared behind us in a low horizontal shape against the island as we traveled around the South-West corner to Jolly Harbour . It was followed quickly by a last, brief, downpour. In the distance now we could see the island of Montserrat , topped by a pillow of clouds.  We had to find a specific channel entrance to gain access to the Marina , and had to solely use the chart plotter on the boat to do so. Eventually we spotted the green buoys by binocular, but not before realizing we’d missed the entrance marker and were grazing over 3.5m of water with a 3m draft. All turned out ok though, and we managed to pull into the customs dock just as they locked the door behind them at the end of their day, 15 minutes early. We had arrived in the Caribbean !