Taking a break
18 October 2011
I sighted the island of Fernando de Noronha exactly fourteen and half days after leaving the Cape Verdes - not a bad time given it inculded the doldrums. A larger yacht told me they took nearly three weeks to cover the same distance. You can't really miss FdeN. It sticks out of the ocean like a sore thumb and is, in fact, the remnants of a volcanic pug. It's got sea turtles and dolphins and all the stuff you'd expect of a National Park, but go and read it up for yourself if you're interested. It's a handy place for clearing customs and immigration into Brazil, which can be quite testing. Here, it all took place in hut above the beach with a few jokes, a little coffee and generally good humour. However, it was a lengthy process with many showers of paperwork flying around and hadn't been completed by the time the supermarket closed at noon - it was a Sunday. It is a sheltered anchorage; the pilot books warn of the swell but I found it comfortable enough. As far as the island is concerned, you never get a really flavour of a place when you visit by yacht because part of you is always on the water; but I found this an amiable, relaxed, undeveloped kind of place and the lushness had to be seen to be believed. I am feeling a complete prat for not having brought a bird identification book - by the time Darwin has got this far on the Beagle he'd probably fathomed most of evolution and I've yet to get my head round something a basic as ggulls. Talking of things which were forgotten, it is amazing how many basic items were left off the list, like spare batteries for the handheld GPS, a spare lighter for the gas stove, and most importantly no ibuprofen. I mention this because I was standing on the foredeck, at anchor, when the boat took a lurch and I swung hard into the forestay. I cracked a rib. It bloody well hurts and a lively boat is the last place you need to be. I've got other painkillers but the old ibuprofen always works best for me. Never mind, I have made the boat comfortable and am doing a lot of lying down. I left F de N at lunctime yesterday. Six hundred miles to Salvador and the end of the first leg. Fair wind now and easy sailing.