Sailing to Ilha de São Vicente

We had a lovely plan for our last day on Ilha de São Vicente. We’d visit the office of the Polícia de Ordem Publica as soon as it opened at 0830 to get our departure clearance paperwork and then we’d then slip away from the Porto da Palmeira and have a look at 2 lovely beaches. The first in the Baia da Mordeira with ‘beautifully clear water’, around 4 miles south of the port, and the second, Baia de Santa Maria, 6 miles further on at the southern tip of the island, described as outstanding in our pilot book. We’d then sail 80 miles overnight to the next island of São Nicolau. This wonderful plan to spend the day anchored off 2 beautiful beaches did not, however, come to fruition. Firstly, despite having checked that it should be open, the Polícia de Ordem Publica port police office was closed and locked when we turned up. The best advice was ‘revisit in 2½ hours’, which we did, sadly to find the office still closed. Phone calls were made and all indications were that an official would arrive any moment. Finally, at 1500, 5½ hours after we had wanted to set off, the office was opened and we had our ship’s papers returned and received our departure clearance paperwork. All the indications were that someone had lost the key to the office but we were never told why it was closed.

Leaving Ilha do Sal   

It took a little time to get back to BV and get her ready to go to sea and so we finally lifted anchor at 1620hrs, far too late to visit the beautiful beaches. Additionally, the forecast NW swell direction would have made the Tarrafal anchorage on Ilha de São Nicolau suspect and getting ashore there very difficult. We took stock and decided to cut our losses and sail further west to Mindelo on Ilha São Vincent.

Ilha São Vincent appearing on our nose at dawn   

At 123nm, this was a good deal further than the 80 miles passage to São Nicolau but we had a great 18-20 knot wind on our beam and BV romped along 7-8knots. The miles ticked down quickly and Ilha São Vincent appeared on our nose at dawn.

Entering Mindelo port where we were welcomed by a pod of Atlantic dolphins   

As a precaution, we put in an extra reef before we turned south into the acceleration zone between Ilha de São Vincent and Ilha de Santo Antão. That proved to be a wise move because although we didn’t experience the 35-40knot gusts our pilot book warned about, we did see a significant increase in wind speed.

Anchored just to the southeast of Mindelo’s marina   

Tucked away at the eastern side of the port area, between several wrecks, is the yacht anchorage. Shelter here is generally good but some swell can get in and ships and yachts at anchor, and even the yachts in the small marina, all set up a bit of a roll at times. We dropped our anchor at 10am averaging 7 knots for the 123nm passage from anchor up to anchor down.

Our dawn haul of 15 flying fish being fried up for brunch (bottom)   

Dawn during the passage had highlighted 2 things; BV was filthy from several days exposure to red African dust in the air, and secondly overnight 15 flying fish had landed on the deck, just as we had read that they might. Reported to taste good, I had scooped them up and put them in the fridge, ready for an arrival brunch. So, once the anchor was down I descaled and cleaned up the fish and fried them with butter and garlic. Although they look like sardines they are not oily and have a much lighter flavour; tasty but a bit of a faff to prepare and eat because of lots of large scales and small bones.   

Whilst we ate the flying fish we decided that whilst here we would visit the neighbouring Ilha de Santo Antão as well as getting the stainless-steel welding done on the generator exhaust water separator. Then, of course, we’d need to decide what to do about Christmas.

Mindelo, Ilha de Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Islands