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.