Our motor broke down somewhere
along the way and so we sail all the way to Mindelo, Cape Verde Islands. I love
it. We are, literally, at the whim of the wind and the waves. An egret, looking
as bereft as we feel, lands on our boat and stays for hours. I feel a
connection to Columbus. His boats, even more so than ours, were not good at
going into the wind, and so he could effectively only go where the wind would
push him. He traveled across the ocean with winds pushing him west and to come
back he had to find a different latitude where the winds blew in the other
direction. As we get closer to our
destination we watch the time, the wind, and our speed more and more carefully.
We want to arrive in port during daylight. Boats, for hundreds of years,
arrived in port under sail and dropped anchor. But this is more and more a lost
art. As we get close we take our main sail down leaving just the jib up. Land
HO! HS and I study the harbour chart in great detail. We stress and plan. He
explains more than once what my responsibilities will be. There are likely to
be lots of boats in the harbour, winds will be light and fluky due to the
protection offered by the breakwaters and the island itself, he doesn’t want us
to lose control, drift into another boat and damage it, or worse. In the end
the wind is favourable and we sail into the harbour, past anchored oil tankers,
ferries and fishing boats heading out to sea, and a little island that looks
like Rapunzel lives there, we sail right up to where other boats are anchored,
and, just as we had planned, with beauty and perfection like a pair of
ballerinas, simultaneously drop anchor and sail, as if we did this all the
time, and then sit there like a pair of idiots grinning from ear to ear, very
pleased with ourselves.
Later, of course, HS has the boat
towed to the marina. He
is going to try and fix the transmission and wants to be on a dock, with power,
to do this, rather than out at the far end of the anchorage. I am happier, of
course, on a dock because of the greater freedom it gives me. At anchor I have
to get him to take me into land with the dingy, or hitchhike with another
sailor going by in theirs, but on dock I can come and go at my will. He thinks
it might take a week to fix the motor, and, fortunately, this is not really
something I can help him with, so I will be free to be a tourist, go out and
about and see whatever there is to see. Cape Verde, here I come!
