Punta del Rest

We had a full-on chill day in punta.  Full story to follow.

Rio Grande to Punta del Este

We have arrived safely in Punta del Este.  Full story to follow.

Rio Grande

We have been slack at blogging. Terrible actually.  We'll fill in the gaps asap!

Rio Grande - A Diamond in the Rough

By Daniel Goldstuck (aka Goldilocks/Goldy)

We arrived in Rio Grande, barely clinging to our lives in the teeth of a storm that had drowned out the moon and boiled the ocean. It wasn't as bad as that, but still a decent adventure making our way through the low pressure shstem.

Some tricky sailing got us through the mouth of the breakwater into Rio Grande, where we had a further 14 mile journey alongside the bulking constructs of the shipyards and fishing terminals peering through the post-storm mist. We were guided safely to our berth at the Oceanographic Museum by Navigator Dave,  or NaviDave (or even Davigator) popping out of the coachroof with directions and guidance. 

Wet, cold, miserable,  and having the time of our lives we beconversation n boat for the night, only to explode onto the dock the next day. Our sails, mattresses,  foul weather gear and a whole country's worth of odds and ends were sprawled out to fry from the three days' hammering. Within the space of several hours we had transformed the dock into our own mini-refugee camp. It was crazy to think that all that AND seven people could fit onto that 35ft boat. The guys from the other boat there were so blown away that they were taking photo's and videos of this feat.

Our first impression of Rio Grande was swak. A lot of buildings were boarded up and falling into disrepair,  every thing was quiet commpared to the bustle in some of the previous cities we'd been to. But that was ok. We're on a boat! Even though the weather cleared up into beautiful sunrises and sunsets over the river, we could not leave until the southerly wind changed. And so we set about taking the boat apart and repairing all the odds and ends that had suffered over the journey south. Johnny Cash,  sunscreen and cuppa-hyheeeeenas saw us through all our chores (not to be mistaken for the homophone, choz).

In the town we had made the acquaintance of Lauro,  a long-time friend of Ernesto (future Brennan) and director of the Oceanographic Museum,  who made us feel welcome at his institute, and opened up the town for us. He even allowed us to use his WC facilities,  in stead of the... questionable.... public ablutions.  That was actually a really big thing. Lauro is a fascinating man. In his 40 years of working with the museum,  he had established a vocational training school, nautical museum, and Antarctic institute. He gave us personal tours of all of these, accompanied by the most exotic and exciting tales of his exploits. This guy has whale vertebrae in his garden, so you know he's the real deal. 

The ship-building department of Lauro's school

Part ii, by Ricardo de Carvalho (aka Allan from the Hangover)

Being invited to a tea party is not something many people get excited about, so when we got such an invite from our new host we were a little sceptical as to what was in store for us. The little green boat house we were invited to didnt look like much, possibly a dusty table and a few benches. As we opened thedoor to Lauro's Kitchen (the formal name of the little green boat house) we were taken into a micro cosm of the sailing world. Well over a thousand flags, all of which had arrived by boat, lined the walls and rafters and there were trinkets and memorobilia to match. Our friend Ernesto (future Bren) and his crew from New Life were there to join us, Lauro treated us to Twinnings Earl Grey and snacks. There was a bunch of great conversation however Im still not quite sure if we were speaking english, spanish or portuguese...The best parts of the evening though were the butter and the conch shell. The butter(Aviacion) was by far the nicest butter any of us have ever had, we were literally putting spoonfulls of butter on the biscuits and breads. Although the video evidence doesn't prove it, I blew a conch shell and it rang out loud and clear almost as if to announce the arrival of Higor Vitor Jose Maia Junior Ernesto Lauro Juan Felipe Obi-Wan de Carvalho the previous evening. We then also went out for a celebration at a local which had some great platters and cold beers on offer.

The next day we took up an offer to visit the school, the boat yard and the museum, its a really impressive assorment of successful projects that have kept Lauro busy over the last 40 years, especially the kitchen at the school where the students served up a tasty lunch. We took the long way back to the boat, visiting the local cathedral and high street. While Bren and I were looking for team stretchy pants the shop assistant lady was asking some serious questions about our fashion sense, which is great especially when it comes to team stretchy pants. 

Floripa to Rio Grande

This is  our first collaborative blog entry as a team. It describes our journey from Florianopolis to Rio Grande.

At 04:00 Brennan woke everyone up. It was time to go. We snuck out of the marina under the cover of darkness, with the moon as our only witness there to see us off. We were like pirates stealing away in the night. Except we didn't have our Pirate Dog shirts on.

We had wasted a bit of northerly wind while we had been sleeping, but there was more than enough to see us off. The sun showed face just as we got out of Baia do Sul.

Dave's blog entry for the day goes something like: "we have still not caught a f@#king fish. The end."

Goldy, Dave, Travie and Ric D coasting in style

We had our forecasts pretty well lined up,  but the littke local weather systems had a mind of their own. We had just about every wind speed from every direction. Throw in a bit of drizzle,  and you have the picture.

Brennan managed to cook 2kg of meat on a quarter of a bag of charcoal,  then spent the next hour complaining about having 3rd degree burns on his fingertips. Not a minute after the meat left the braai grid, the breeze and rain hit. The timing couldn't have been much better.

All through the night we were tacking, gybing, hoisting and dropping sails, motor on, motor off. Almost one of these each hour. But we had heard that there was some heavy weather on the way, so we wasted no time making way south. It was all good practice for the crossing anyway.

Cooking food while the boat is heeling becomes an interesting task

Tuesday was day 2 of our Floripa-RG trip. As this is being written we are beating into 18 knots of SSE, hating that we wasted that early bit of northerly.  Our friend Ernesto from Argentina warned us of possible bad conditions off Cabo Santa Marta. But the only adverse thing to come out of it though were some bad plays on words. Such as: "at Santa Marta we can foot-off = add some tomato to my foot long"

Some bottlenose dolphins came to entertain us a few miles short of Cabo Some Tomato. These guys were putting on a main show, and loved the attention. Ciao Bella's cockpit was like a grandstand, with all of us cheering rapturously for every jump the dolphins did. And the more we cheered, the higher they jumped. Dolphins hey. Yus.

We also saw a turtles,  but turtles were voted as being slow and mundane by Brennan,  and cool and fast by everyone else. They were also voted as being most vulnerable animals to sexual assault by dolphins.  Don't ask.

Here we have Goldy, Dave, Raf and Gina all kitted out for their night-watches in the rain

It is now Wednesday,  and day 3 of our passage.  To cut a long story short,  the breeze would remain on ur port side for the remainder of the passage. We did 30 hours of beating before the breeze eased off onto a beam reach for the last 50 miles. At its most, the breeze hit 28 knots. Maybe 30. This is usually not bad, but on a reach with a decent cross-swell it becomes a bit roly-poly. Throw in some non stop rain and the picture becomes less than perfect.

Then again, it is only a bit of wind and water, and we are adventuring down the coast of South America,  so who are we to complain?

Goldy and Raf demonstrating that life is, in fact, not so shit.

We came surfing into Rio Grande with great pace, just after sunset, 6 hours before our ETA from the morning. Dave, Ric and Bren had been fighting for turns to helm it was so exciting.  With the onshore swell and building 30 knot breeze, the entry to the port was going to be dark, wet and wavy - much like Goldy's hair. So add hairy to that description, too.

We put the second slab in the main, and changed the #3 in favour of the storm jib, just to make sure that we'd be in total control of the boat for our entry. It worked out well, we slipped into the port of Rio Grande like a ferret in a drainpipe. There was a MASSIVE seal at the entrance, who we can only assume was the bouncer for the port. This oke was huge.

The lights of Rio Grande in the background

We thought we had made it when we entered the port. What we didn't realise was that the yacht club was 14 miles up the river. Fortunately,  we had 30 knots behind us, so this last part didn't take too long. Just over an hour,  in fact. Ernest and his crew were there to see us in. They moved their boat forward to give us space to tie on to the dock, and helped us moor. Legends.

So safe and sound in RG then, we had done well. We made really good time in the last 24 hours, missed the worst of the weather (yes, apparently it got worse), sailed safely and conservatively,  everyone on the boat played their part and came out smiling.

Downtown Floripa

We had a good amount of work to do on shore, so after breakfast and showers we had a little delegation meeting. Goldy and the girls were tasked with shopping (victualling) for the next  6 days. Raf and I went to make sure that we had all of our paperwork in order with the port captain. Ric and Dave were on boatwork duty.

Raf and I decided that we needed to stretch our legs, so we walked from the yacht club, over Florianopolis's iconic bridge to the Capitania do Port. It looked a lot closer than it turned out to be. Shoh. It was a long walk. When we got there we had everything in order: ship's papers, passports, skipper with his ticket and a slick translator. When we got there, the guy at the front told us that it was all unnecessary.  

So no news was good news. We would just have to sort out the paperwork in Rio Grande. On a Sunday,  the buses only operate every hour, so we made the groot trek back to the yacht club on foot.

We got back well after lunch time. Dave and Ricardo,  who had allegedly been slaving the day away on the boat were also pretty skraal, so we went to the upstairs restaurant in the yacht club to see what was on offer. It conveniently turned out that it was a Sunday lunch buffet. The shoppers were still not back, so we made an executive decision to have lunch without them.  We also felt bad having a massive lunch wihtout them, so when they eventually did arrive, we didn't give say a word about our lunch (if you guys are reading this now, we're sorry!).

We spent the evening at the yacht club, just appreciating the terra-firma before we would make tracks in the morning.

The next stop is Rio Grande do Sul, and the next blog post will be sent out via sat-phone!

Floripa - Baia Sul

When Dave stuck his head out of the fore-hatch in the morning, he was staring into the whites of the eyes of one of the fishermen. It turns out we had anchored right in the middle of one of their spots, and they were hauling nets all around us. We took this as our cue to leave. It was going to be an upwind sail to the top of Baia Sul, so we figured we'd get at it before the northerly wind got up too much.

We are hard-core, so we went out with ONE reef in the main. But no headsail. There's a narrow gap to get into Baia sul, with a really strategically placed fortress on the one side of it. Good on you porra's of old. When we turned the corner, the upwind part wasn't as arduous as we had expected. The only part was having to tack up the channel which was quite narrow in places. The depth alarm was set at 3m, so it was much akin to doing one of those tack-on-the-whistle exercises that you do when you're training.

At a point, the breeze dropped down, so we shook out the reef and put the #3 headsail up. The channel had become wider, and we could go a bit longer before slamming the alarm crash-tacks in. A cool thing that we saw was a military chopper and RIB practicing a search and rescue maneuvre. I will admit that I may have soiled myself when the chopper flew overhead and dropped a smoking package in the water near us, but no harm done.

We arrived at the yacht club and got ushered to the diesel jetty by a guy named Berto, who was the skipper of a little yellow cruising boat in the marina. The staff were friendly and helpful, and even told us about the 2 free days that we get without us having to ask/beg/negotiate in broken portuguese for it. Berto even talked the manager into giving us a walk-on mooring so we didn't have to moor outside. 

The three items of good news for the day were:

1. We have a free walk-on mooring for 2 days

2. Ricardo's arrival at 7pm

3. Goldy's arrival at 11pm

  3.1 The zoo biscuits that Goldy brought from home

  3.2 The 5 Roses tea that Goldy brought from home

  3.3 The Futurelife that Goldy brought from home

  3.4 The home-made biscuits that Goldy brought from Ricardo's mom

The evening brought a massive storm with plenty of cloud and wind and rain from the west (funny direction). We figured that Ric would probably have flown through it. It put spanners in our braai plans, let me tell you that. We weren't stoked to be cooking our meat on the gas stove inside the boat while it poured outside.

Ric arrived with a lot less beard than when he left us. It's taking some getting used to. I am still not convinced that this guy is Ricardo, but he talks the talk.

Goldy arrived close to midnight, and woke everyone when he arrived. Pretty inconsiderate if you ask me, but he did bring the Zoo Biscuits, so we'll overlook that. 

Floripa - Around the Island

The northerly arrived as ordered on Friday morning. We needed to get around to the other side of the island because we were starting to run out of chocolate milk. There are two ways of getting to the main yacht club from the north - either nip straight under the bridge, or sail all the way around the 30 mile long island. Sadly for us, the bridge is 17m, and our mast is 16.5m, which is a little close for comfort. Imagine Bren calling Dad to tell him that we got his boat stuck under a bridge. No, we decided to sail around. 

The wind was great for it anyway. 18-20 knots from the north. We wasted no time in getting on our way, in no time we had the full main up with Tallulah hauling us along. Ciao Bella was wasting no time in getting to the south end of the island. We were actually going a bit too fast, and the beautiful side of the island was passing us in a blur. So we stopped and dropped anchor in the lee of an island called Ilha do Campeche, to stop and smell the roses.

Raf and I went for a snorkel and a mission to go for a hike around the little island. There were some really interesting reef fish around, as well as some crazy rock formations. The smallish rocks that you see on the are actually huge pillars which stick straight up from the sand 20 metres below. When we climbed up onto the rocks to begin our expedition, a lady who was leading a snorkelling tour told us that the rocks we were climbing on (and basically the whole of Ilha do Campeche) is a natural heritage site, and we weren't allowed to climb on the rocks. That kind of sucked. So we snorkelled our way back to the boat. Gina finished diving the bottom of the boat while we were out, so it was glistening when we got back.

Before we set off, I put some black beans (feijao) to cook on the ethanol stove. We've been using this thing extensively to economise on gas. The feijao is a staple food here that we have tried to cook a few times with limited success. This time we got it right. I would tell you how, but I am going to protect this recipe with my life. Ricardo's (infernally) hot sauce was a key ingredient.

The breeze had picked up to over 20 knots when we left Campeche, so in the spirit of cruising, we slammed 2 reefs in the main, and slid along at 7 knots down to the southern-most end of the island. There was shelter from the northerly in one of the bays, so we dropped pick there. Raf had scoped a little waterfall near to where we were, so I took our stand-up paddleboard (SUP), Wilhelm, to get a closer look. I also took my soap and shampoo for what turned out to be the best fresh-water shower. Ever. I knew there was a reason for all the rain of the past few days. The top of the waterfall also provided an excellent view-point of the bay, the boat and the sunset. I will post the photo right here when I have a chance. But for now, take my word for it: it's pretty good.

We had a butternut that we slapped on the braai so that we had something to have with the feijao. It was another culinary wonder. We're getting really nice and inventive in the galley of Ciao Bella. Boat-food will never be the same.

Florianopolis - Baia Norte

We made landfall on the north end of Florianopolis (Floripa to the locals) after a casual morning sail. This one was courtesy of the ladies,  with Gina and Travie doing most of the driving. With a building southerly breeze,  we were glad to arrive in the shelter of a nice bay where the annex of the Iate Clube do Santa Catarina (ICSC) can be found. Raf radioed in with his most eloquent portugues and a man came out on a ruber ducky to show us to a vacant mooring.

We were all shuttled to the club house ready for cold drinks and hot showers,  but not before checking in at the recepcião. Imagine our shock when the lady told us it would cost R$ 300 (three hundred dollars brazillian!) to moor there for the night. Apparently it would have cost a tenth of that to stay at the main club, and not the annex.  It does not compute. So we asked if we could leave the boat moored for the afternoon while we nipped to the shop for lunch.

The truth is that we went to the shop for lunch, but also to stock the boat up for the next two days that we were now going to spend at anchor in another bay.  We each did our own lunches that could only be called a binge. Dave and Raf shared a dozen hot dogs smothered in barbecue sauce, Gina polished a litre of yogi-sip and a slab of chocolate, and I ate a pear the size of my head and half a cake. But it was good! The looks from the old couples walking past us on the beach were priceless.

We took the taxi boat back out to Ciao Bella and  made wake around the corner to another bay on the north of the island. Anchoring was a dream because the whole bay is 7m deep and sandy. No worries of dragging anchor, no other boats making waves and far enough from the shore to be peaceful. When we dropped anchor,  we stoked up the braai (stoked being the operative word!). We had bought three MASSIVE cuts of pork, which we had to braai separately because the braai would only fit one at a time. Each one had a fat stuk of cracking along the side. We had this on rolls for dinner (another serious binge), and for the first time on the trip, we had left overs.

During the night the rain began. It didn't stop until the next afternoon. I had a late night skype call with dad about the engine water pump. I had the engine box open and my head stuck inside with a kop-torch speaking out loud and doing a GREAT job of waking the others while I was at it. By the time I woke up at 10 am it was still raining. And it was showing no signs of wanting to stop.

Refusing to see a day go to waste, we all took it in turns to dive the bottom of the boat with scrapers. It was pretty fouled. I reckon a couple months more and we could have started an oyster farm. Floripa is littered with oyster farms, we would have fit right in. We almost got the whole underside done today. Who would have thought that spending a day scratching your bottom could be so productive?

In the later afternoon we dug out all of the food that was hidden all over the boat to get an idea of what we needed for the impending sail to Uruguay. It wasn't much. We had a lot of food stashed away, including 5 bottles of olive oil and a kilogram of oregano courtesy of Ric D. We sorted it all into 6 days worth of food, double bagged it and labelled it. Boom! Food for the passage south - sorted. This incessant rain was turning out to be good for productivity and team building.

At sunset the rain had faded to a light drizzle. Another braai was thus in order. Our fresh meat was done,  but we had some fresh mielies, cheese-and-onion stuffed peppers, and some varsgebakte Karoo roostebrood courtesy of Dave.

Die lewe is nou weer lekker.

Itajaí. Kwaai.

With Gina and I on the midnight watch, we arrived it the bay of Itajaí, following the chart that was gifted to us by our friend, Maia. We had to wake the tired crew to drop the mainsail and anchor. It was difficult to make out what the city was like at night. There was not too much light going around in the city.

When we woke up in the morning, it was raining. Pretty solidly at that. But in the gaps in the rain we could make out lines of skyscraper hotels all along the beach front. I somehow feel that not much happens in this place in low-season. We didn't have a chance to go ashore because of the rain, and the fact that there was no taxi boat in sight.

So we had a lazy day relaxing on the boat. NAAAAAAAAAT! We set about getting rid of that diesely smell permeating from beneath the floorboards. We took all the boards out, and scrubbed them in the rain. The guys inside spent the morning on hands and knees inside the boat sponging siff bilge water and mopping up diesel. We got out the deck soap and jeyes fluid and made those bilges sparkle. Dave (bless his soul) volunteered to clean the heads. Im not sure if he'll be doing that again soon.

In the later afternoon the rain stopped. We made an executive decision to move this train down the line to find Florianopolis. Dave's fishing rod had stripped a gear in the reel so he packed that away for good. We hadn't actually caught anything decent on the rod anyway, so we would keep on trying with our trusty hand-lines.

It was a short sail around the corner to a very protected bay lined with oyster farms. It had just got dark, so we dropped a pick there and not too far away we could see the lights of the north end of Florianopolis flicker on...

Paranaguá to Itajaí

When we woke up in the anchorage, the breeze was starting to fill in slowly. It was light, and the tide was high, so conditions were perfect for us to get out of the potentially treacherous and long channel at Paranagua. We wanted to possibly see what the hippy island of Ilha do Mel had to offer, but that would now have to wait indefinitely. We motored out of the channel, and started making our way south. The wind took the whole morning to finally fill in, so we weaved our way through the anchored ships and bird islands under motor and down the coast.

While things were quiet and the boat was flat, Raf and I decided to get our hands dirty and service the starboard primary winch in the cockpit. Our diesel filter leak even provided us with some solvent to de-grease the winch gears. Just as well we did a thorough job because Raf noticed that one of the clip springs had corroded to nothing.  We sent a quick email to Goldy asking him to make a last minute Pit stop at the Harken shop in Cape Town before he jets out to join us this weekend. Sorted.

Next problem was the diesel leak. Although it provided us with ample diesel for cleaning winch parts,  the diesel splashing around in the bilges made everything slippery and smell a little bit funny. I got at the leaking screw with a generous amount of thread tape, which seemed to curb the problem.

A sea-breeze filled in at around lunch time, so we put up our trusty Norwegian Blue kite and that with our full main tugged us nicely to where we wanted to go. Later in the afternoon it swung around to the north, so we got our big white kite,  Tallulah, out to stretch her legs. It was blowing about 12 knots from the north when the sun left us, so we kept the kite up going into the night.

At about 10pm, I was off watch when my spider-sense started tingling. The wind had dropped to nothing,  and Dave and his watch had dropped the kite. The second I stuck my head out of the cabin I had to duck for the boom swinging across. A wind of about 20 odd knots was sucking into a thunderstorm ahead of us.In the blink of an eye we a had a reef in the main, and the ghost-jib trimmed. We got jackets for Raf and Dave,  who still had an hour of watch,  but I didn't go back to sleep. The electrical storm that we sailed through was incredible.  No cheddars, it was like being in a highveld thunderstorm. Although it was night time,  the sky was more light than it was dark. I've never sailed through so much lightning in my life. When the time came for the watches to change, the rain had just stopped, and the last of the storm was passing over us. As Gina and I watched the clouds disappear to the north,  the unrelenting lightning could still be seen. Madness I tell you. Raf and Dave had their tails wagging for days.

A few hours to Itajaí...

Paranaguá - up the creek

On a quiet March morning we motored the rest of the way up the river to the Iate Clube do Paranaguá (eeyatchee cloob). When we got there, there were some friendly chaps who helped us dock. There were 2 striking things about this: 1. Friendly chaps,  2. A walk on mooring that didn't involve abseiling. Now at this stage,  Rafael and Ricardo were not with us, sk of the 3 of us I had the most Portuguese in the bank. I am also the skipper, it's my job so I had no excuse,  I had to go and sign in and discuss mooring fees with the reception. It went something like (pardon the spelling):

"Ola. Onde esta recepcião?"

"Ola. Eu es um comandante em meu barco. quanta costa.... eeeeerrrrr...... ummmm... mooring?"

"Ah shit bru, I dont know what youre saying anymore and I'm all out of porra"

"Okay. Meu amigo fallar portugues. Meu amigo chegando.... ummm... later today.."

Anyways, I think the message got across. And while we waited for Raf and Travie to arrive, we treated ourselves to cold cokes and showers all round! That feeling of appreciation of an ice cold drink after a long sail will never get old. We all noticed that our wounds from the barrachudas had finally had a chance to do some healing.

When Raf and Traveena arrived we had a little catch up, sharing stories from our respective carnivals. We had some lunch on the boat - canned feijoada, which was surprisingly good. The rest of the day was laundry, and drying things from the sail. I spent a good part of the night in the empty security guard hut, because it was the only place that I could get wifi and power, and still stay dry from the rain.

The next morning the crew went to town to do some provisioning, while I got some more masters work in the bank. They got back, and between what they'd bought and what raf and trav had nicked from their backpackers, we had enough food to see us through to Florianopolis. After filling the water tanks,  folding and packing all the sails and having lunch we got on our way. We decided to stop in our trusty anchorage for the night and choose what to do with the next day when it came. Personally, I saw very little of the town - only what we could see from the river. But sometimes that is all you really want to see, and to see more would only ruin it for you. So I left it at that. I had work to do anyway.

 

Ilhabela to Paranaguá

This sail turned out to take much longer than we anticipated. We got becalmed in the night again, but in the wee hours of the morning Dave conjured up sime breeze from somewhere and had so much fun that he did an extra hour after his watch. I didn't complain - I got an extra hour of snooze time.

When we were all awake for brekkers, we decided that we had a good feeling about this day. Lo and behold, shortly after breakfast time, a tug on one of our hand-lines. I shouted for Dave to come take the helm while I pulled in the greedy queen mackerel that had taken a liking to our lure. A couple of photos later we went about preparing the fish for lunch. Not minutes after we had finished eating some of the fried fillets we had made, did we get ANOTHER bite. It was another queen mackerel, bigger than the first. We did, however, have enough to feed us for the day so this one got off lightly as we threw it back (not before taking another photo, though). There was a third bite, but the fish managed to get our lines tangled and then get away. At this point we decided that we'd had our fun, and pulled in the lines for the day.

I must mention that the sailing wasn't bad either.  Probably the most enjoyable upwind coastal sailing I've ever done (with the exception of Vasco, ey Kax ;) ). Later in the afternoon it freed off to a tight reach, so we cracked off the #1 heavy genoa and started shunting.  I knew there was a reason we packed that thing in the container. The scenery has changed completely. There is no more Atlantic rainforest garnishing mountainous shores, but more grassy, hilly kind if scenes. Its a little reminiscent of the Transkei coast, but not as ruggedly beautiful. The islands and bays become smaller and more scarce as you go down the coast, and I'm sure our onboard geologist could explain why if we asked him.

The breeze held out for the rest of the day as we approached our waypoint. Paranagua is the third busiest port in Brazil,  and the offshore anchorage shows it. There were ships as far as they eye could see. Dave and I independently counted about 55 ships in the offshore anchorage alone. Entering the estuary was a bit hairy. There is a dredged channel about 30m wide and 3 miles long. The banks on either side sit about 2m below the water on average, so there's not much room for error, and you can see the waves breaking on these banks far out to sea. Luckily we were heading downwind so it was fairly easy.

The port is in a massive estuary, with the town and the yacht club being up one if the many rivers that empty into the estuary. The narrow channels are lined with mangroves, which really gives you a feeling that you're sailing up a river.

We didn't go all the way to the yacht club as it was getting late and the wind was dying. We found a calm anchorage, set the anchor alarms, and made dinner out of the remaining fish fillets.

The sun set over a new landscape now - another pleasant change.

Ciao Ilhabela!

As I write this,  I am sitting in Kax's old blogging pozzie on the port quarterberth behind the nav station. We are well on our way from Ilhabela to Paranagua,  and about 20 hours from our destination. There is no signal here, so we'll have to wait until we're closer to land for this post to go out.

We left Ilhabela yesterday (Wednesday 05/03) afternoon after an unforgettable 5 days of Carnaval. We only managed 3 of the 5 nights, but we made the most of the experience, as the photo's will eventually show. Ric jumped ship to go visit his cousin in Brasilia,  so we dropped him off on the mainland at a marine refuelling station in São Sebastião. This left us with a crew of 3: myself, Dave and Gina.

We departed in the rain and into a light headwind, but we didn't mind. We were just happy to be hitting the open water again, and were teetering on overstaying our welcome. The wind swung around to the north and we were gunning it down the coast. We gybed inshore at around 2am to avoid some lightning storms that were brewing further offshore. Dave and Gina took one watch, and I took the other, calling them up if anything needed to be done.  Sailing short-handed is tougher than it seems.

In the morning the breeze died to nothing. Dead calm. Gina held the helm for a good few hours while we motor-sailed through it. A very light southerly began to fill in while we were having our lunchtime sandwiches,  and by the later afternoon it had slowly developed into a pleasant ESE tight reach. Dave and I saw two of the biggest turtles we had seen in our lives. At first Dave thought the first one was a truck tyre. No cheddars, these things were ENORMOUS. That thing's head was as big as mine. Ryan might have to verify, but I think the common name for it is a Blastoise. And we saw two of them! In one day! Right next to the boat!

That was exciting to see, but it got better. We accidentally dropped a fender off the transom, and as we spun around to get it, we were joined by a pod of a gazillion dolphins. And they were too stoked to have a gander at this curious looking boat. Some of them were even doing full flips out of the water! Quick as a flash, the go pro and camera were out, taking selfies on the bow with the dolphins,  and videos of these awe-inspiring beasts. I even managed to get a touch of one off the bow. After picking uo the offending fender, we continued to sail with the dolphins for a good 20 minutes - totally oblivious to the fact that we were heading in the wrong direction.

I'm sure that the sight of dolphins frolicking about your boat can cheer any person up no matter what mood they're in.

To cap it all off,  the South Atlantic put on a marvellous sunset for us. One of the best we have seen so far. I told Gina not to bother getting her camera, because the memory that would be captured in a photo has nothing on the imprint that a great sunset makes on your soul.

Today has been nothing short of spectacular,  and the rest of the trip has a lot to live up to...

Carnaval

So as it turns out, Carnival is not only celebrated in big cities like Rio and Salvador. Its everywhere in Brazil - even the sleepy island of Ilhabela. Ric,  Dave and I went out to see what festivities were on offer. It was great fun, the shore front promenade was blocked off and grandstands were erected on the one side, creating a little sambadrome for the parades to pass through. Brightly coloured ribbons were run above the street to add a lot of colour to an already bright and vibrant affair.

We made some friends with some of the locals including the waiter from our new local in Ilhabela!  Another guy, Higor was fascinated by the fact that we were South African and white. We were fascinated by the fact that he was brazillian and could speak English. the legends organised us some vests from one of the samba schools, which we exchanged for the shirts we were wearing.

Anyways,  this jol goes on until Tuesday,  but I think we'll be out of here by then. not for lack of stamina, but for our itchy feet and hunger for fresh fish.