After the incident with the spinnaker halyard and some exercise trying to pull the sail out of the water in a bobbly sea, here we are, in the city of Mindelo, in the Island of Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. (We now appreciate the ‘para’ bit of the parasail, pulling an upside down one out of the Atlantic gives us an appreciation of the volume or air it can hold.....)
The idea was to go straight from the Canaries to Brazil but we are actually very pleased we did stop here. Lovely place, great weather, friendly people, cold beer and live music bars! In many aspects it resembles the Marvellous City ( for those of you not familiar with the term, this is Rio de Janeiro’s nickname for obvious reasons...)! Not to mention they speak Portuguese in an accent very much like the Brazilian one! Tilson, the guy that fixed our spinnaker, actually told me they themselves like to call Cape Verde ‘’Brasilzinho’’, which means ‘’Little Brazil’’. Nice!
We were planning a very quick stop, enough to get the work done, but as we were marginal at best to make to Brazil by Christmas and this place is way too nice, we’re staying over the weekend and plan to slip off on Monday the 14th.
The marina is quite new and has a very different vibe to any of the marinas we stopped at previously. It’s not just the excellent facilities and very friendly and helpful staff, it’s also the fact that every boat here is, in effect, a transoceanic cruiser. Every boat that arrives here has already travelled hundreds of miles offshore. They all have stories to tell and are generally a quite friendly group. A for instance, whenever any of the yachts depart, they are seen off to a cacophony of fog horns and trumpets, not just from the yachts in the marina, but from the harbour master, commercial ships, fisherman, and even people on the beach as well.
This is the only marina in Cape Verde and the guys at BoatCV quickly replaced our Spinnaker halyard and all our other lines as well (it seemed the best form of insurance) and they finished in two hours a job that we’ve seen take a day and a half in the UK. Their motto seems to be if someone made it, we can fix it, and watching them work on the inevitable breakages that occur on ocean passages, we believe it.
Having visited here we wish we had a lot more time to spend around these islands. They will certainly be a stop in future trips.
I had seen reports that Cape Verde had some problems with security and that it was expensive. We have seen absolutely no evidence of either. Food and drink is the cheapest we have seen since the small island tavernas in Northern Greece, and the repairs we had done were better priced than either Cartagena or Santa Cruz. This is definitely the best stop we have made, and is even better for being an un-planned one.
Of an afternoon, local guys go from boat to boat offering their fresh catch of day and yesterday we got some lobster for a snack.
I must say I felt almost a second of compassion before throwing the poor thing alive in boiling water but what I kept telling myself is that it would do the same to us if it could!! ( Lame excuse, but there you have it, it helps me sleep at night! ) Well, it can’t! And humans don’t taste that nice anyway, so I heard...
We didn’t have a pot deep enough so we did a bit of a mess on the boiling process but it turned out perfect! We also didn’t have a lobster cracker to help and get those best bits out but a pair of pliers did the job.
There was a private party going on just across the marina, the inauguration of a new club, so we sat on our deck, cracking our lobster with our pliers, having a beer and watching the concert. Not bad, huh?
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It got a bit cold after a while though, around 25 C. Well, you can’t have everything I suppose...All in all, with the new marina, safe anchorages ( you can park your tender at the secure marina dock for around £2 per day), the new clube next to the marina with a huge swimming pool and poolside bar, many restaurants, all who seem to try and outdo each other with live music, and the charming people, this place has got to take off.
On our way....
