Sailing to the Cape Verde Islands (Part1)

Leaving Las Palmas   

The morning of Saturday 9^th December was our last in Las Palmas. The 800nm passage to the Cape Verde Islands (CVI) would be our longest to date and it’s a major milestone – leaving Atlantic Europe for Atlantic Africa – so we were both excited and a little nervous. We got up early, hoping to be away by 9am, but as we got BV ready to go Nicky asked, “where’s our Cape Verde courtesy ensign?”. I realised with a shock that we didn’t have one. I’d bought the courtesy ensigns for this side of the Atlantic several years ago and, at the time, we hadn’t been thinking about visiting the CVI and so hadn’t bought one. In the intervening years, our plans changed but I had forgotten that the crucial flag had not been purchased…… and so a trip to the chandlers was added to the final list of jobs. Despite it being a bank holiday and most of the shops being shut, we did find one of the chandlers open at 9am and, happily, they sold a huge variety of courtesy ensigns. Problem solved! We met up with the crews of Sea Wind, Yin N Yang and Neva, said goodbye to them and then slipped our lines to move to the fuel pontoon for a final top up of the tanks. The refuel took a little longer than expected because there was a 35m yacht hogging the fuel berth but that gave Nicky a bit longer to try to return our marina security cards [Ed: the final time in that dreadful queue!]. That task took a good half an hour during which time I desperately avoided catching the eye of the refuel man who wanted us to move off as BV was blocking the final corner of his refuelling area. In the end, Sam from Neva, who was also in the office queue, gave Nicky the deposit money and agreed to return the cards on our behalf.

First sunset of the passage with Gran Canaria slipping away behind us   

We eventually got clear of the marina at 11am and it quickly became apparent that, despite there having been lots of wind during the previous few days [Ed: and forecast to be lots more in a couple of days’ time], there was now insufficient wind to sail. Rather surprisingly however, there was far less swell than the last time we had left Las Palmas, perhaps because the wind had recently been from the east rather than the north to northeast. We kept the engine on and motored and then motor-sailed until we were clear of the island. Here the wind filled in properly at about 15knots from the east and we were able to set BV up properly for the passage. Georgina, our Hydrovane, steered BV beautifully and we had good, fast sailing overnight, even with one reef in. It was a very satisfying way to start the passage and settle into our watch routine. Our cooking preparations whilst we had been in port also helped, with a beef stroganoff all ready to heat up and eat for dinner.

The weather window continued to work well for us into Sunday with more fast sailing in the morning resulting from the a 20 knots wind and a 2-3m swell. However, we knew that wouldn’t last and during the afternoon the wind eased off to 10-12 knots, which made for more sedate [Ed: boring!] sailing, but on the plus side the swell reduced a bit too. Nicky was much more productive than me during her watches and checked through all the fresh food to make sure that none had started to spoil. She also began a record of what we ate and drank to help with future victualling for long passages. My conclusion is that for my watches I need more Maddalena cakes (mini sponge cakes) to go with my mugs of tea; I think that Nicky’s conclusions will be a bit more scientific. With a clear horizon, we actually saw the fabled green flash of light just after the sun dropped below the horizon.

Blue water cruising   

Taking sunsights 

We had set off with our eye more on the weather forecast, notably the wind strength, than on the moon phase. As it happened, we set off in the last phase of the moon, with a half-moon which appeared after midnight on first night, rapidly reducing in size and appearing later as the nights progressed. Consequently, the first watches of the nights were very dark with no moon and on nights 4 and 5 the whole night was pretty black as what moon there was was extremely small. However, being so far away from any man-made light meant that we had a spectacular canopy of stars above us. Being so far south many of the stars we are familiar with in the UK were below the horizon, so we had to get out our star book to identify what we were looking at. Overnight into Monday 11 Dec the wind reduced to 10 knots and stayed that way all day. As a result, our speed dropped off to around 5 knots or below. Fortunately, the Canaries to CVI route benefits from a bit of help from the south-going Canaries Current; it all helps the miles tick down. So, Monday was easy cruising with deep blue sea around us, bright blue skies above and no other yachts in sight, just the odd ship or 2 to keep an eye on as they passed us by, though we rarely actually saw any ships; most passed us out of visual range and we only knew they were there thanks to the AIS. As we sailed south the temperature gradually increased, though the nights were still a little cool. Not as cool as it was in the UK though. We had word from family in Shropshire that they had 6” of snow and down to minus 13 deg C whilst we were basking in temperature in the mid-20s by day and mid-teens by night (and a sea temperature of around 23). During the day, Nicky took some sun sights and from them plotted our position as just 2 miles from where the GPS said we were. That’s amazingly accurate for astro-navigation and so she was very chuffed [Ed: accuracy greatly helped by calm seas and moderate winds. Two days later in 3-4m seas and 20-25kts of wind my accuracy was down to within 10nm of the GPS position but that’ll do nicely for what is really an area nav system!]. My astronav work was somewhat scuppered by cloud covering the sun at critical times on ‘my’ navigation days so I didn’t manage to get a sextant fix. So, Nicky retains the crown for making the best sunsights so far……..but I’m sure I’ll get some fixes done during the leg to Barbados.

Stronger wind sailing    

Monday night into Tuesday brought better sailing conditions compared to the day but come dawn on Tue 12 Dec the wind dropped again, so much so that in the late morning we switched the engine on for an hour and a bit to keep us moving through the water and reduce the noise of the slatting sails caused by BV’s wallowing in the swell. Happily, we didn’t need to run the engine for long and during the afternoon the wind built nicely, and we had a couple of ‘interesting’ rain squalls too. The increase in the wind meant we needed to reduce sail and as I was off watch asleep Nicky spent the best part of 2 hours rolling the genoa away, putting a reef in the main, gybing and re-rigging the spinnaker pole on the other side. Once I came on watch we worked together to put in a second [Ed: and then third!] reef and unfurl some genoa to balance the sail plan.