Mindelo Ilha de São Vicente (Part 1)

BV anchored in the harbour at Mindelo    

Having anchored in the harbour at Mindelo our first priority was to complete the arrival paperwork with the authorities. We inflated our dinghy and took it ashore, leaving it tied to the floating bar at the marina. The marina charges €4 a day for the privilege of leaving your dinghy there but it is much safer there than on the beach. After getting some directions from the marina office, followed by a 10-minute walk, we arrived at the Immigration and Port Police offices. The Port Police took our details, checked our passports and held onto our ship’s papers as is the norm. All was done efficiently, with a smile and in under 15 minutes [Ed: ! after our experience at Porto Palmeira!]. The Port Police also confirmed that with stamps already in our passports from Ilha do Sal we didn’t need to visit immigration until departure.

The municipal market hall   

We then went for a wander around the town to try to get a feel for the place. The architecture is a mixture of old buildings from the Portuguese colonial day and more modern concrete ones. Lots of them are painted in bright colours giving a lively feeling to the town. We found the municipal market hall which was a good start point for getting fruit and veg [Ed: although actually we found the other fruit and veg markets even better] and took a look in various ‘supermarkets’. This confirmed the reports that we had read stating that variety can be a bit limited and that the prices are generally quite high. We had done very well in stocking up whilst we were in Las Palmas and so were only really interested in fruit, vegetables and bread. The first 2 we had no problems with but Cape Verde bread, we discovered, isn’t really much to write home about.

Removing the generator exhaust separator ultimately
 exposed 4 areas on it that we needed to get re-welded    

Initial recce of the town and it’s old Portuguese buildings completed, we returned to the marina to track down Kai Brossmann. He is the OCC Port Officer Representative and we had e-mailed him about the welding we needed to get done in the hope that he could point us in the right direction to find a stainless-steel welding workshop. It turns out that Kai runs BoatCV, a company that seems to provide 90% of the technical and chandlery support to visiting yachtsmen, as well as running a small charter fleet. My concerns were that once the water separator was removed from BV we wouldn’t be able to run the generator and, with Christmas just a few days away, it might be difficult to get a quick turnaround. Kai was excellent, promising that he could get the welding done in the next 24 hours. That prompted a zip back to BV to remove the box and a return to see Kai who dropped it off at the workshop that evening.

So, our first day in Mindelo was quite a success and well-deserving of a beer at the marina’s floating bar. Right beside the dinghy mooring area it’s the main meeting place for crews as well as being the nearest Wi-Fi access point to the anchorage. We met Philip and Claudia Allsop from Bruno’s Girl and their crew Lynn Riley, and Rhys from Quadrilla and the conversation turned to our plans to visit Ilha de São Antão as well as discussion about this year’s ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers). Philip and Rhys told us that about 12 yachts had retired from the event and, of those, 3 (we think we remember the stats correctly) were dismasted! A sobering thought for all of us with the ocean passage still to come.

On Wednesday 20 December we explored the town a little more and enjoyed the ‘delights’ of Cape Verdean banking again. Getting money from the ATM was easy and relatively quick but the denominations it issued were too large for shopping in local markets and so, inevitably, we had to wait our turn in the long queues inside the bank to swap the notes for smaller ones. The local currency (the Cape Verde Escudo, CVE) is only available for exchange in the islands and so we also had to do some careful sums to make sure that we had enough to cover us for our stay in the islands but not too much.

The marina’s floating bar proved to be the perfect place to bump into people again and we hatched a plan for the crews of Blue Velvet and Bruno’s Girl to take the 0800 ferry across to visit Ilha de São Antão the following morning. We were going that way anyway and so we got the ferry tickets for all 5 of us before returning to see Kai at BoatCV to pick up the newly welded generator water separator. Removed, welded, pressure tested and refitted all in under 24 hours; a job well done!

Mindelo, Ilha de Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Islands