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.