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...