En-route to the Cape Verde Islands

Yesterday we did a mega shop at the fruit market and then picked up the meat that had been vacuum packed and frozen for us at the butcher’s. The galley was just smothered in food. We are certainly not going to starve on our passage south to the Cape Verde Islands! [Ed: and a fair amount of it should last a lot longer than that too!] Other than topping up with fuel and water, that really completed our preparations for setting off.

This morning we left our mooring and went via the fuel station so that we had brimming tanks and then it was off and out of the marina to set sail for the Cape Verdes. As you read this we will be somewhere on the red dotted line on the map below. The 800 nautical mile passage should take us about 5 days during which time we will have a mixed bag of weather. Brisk easterly winds initially will then back to become more northerly and much lighter. If the forecast is accurate we’ll need to keep our speed up as best we can because there is then a band of much stronger northerly winds which will gradually catch us up during our passage. Hopefully we’ll be arriving at our destination just before they really start to blow in earnest.

The next proper blog entry covering the passage will be posted when we get down to the Cape Verdes. I might even finish and publish the ‘Hiking in La Gomera’ posts from November!

Somewhere on the red dotted line en-route to the Cape Verde Islands