As expected the Easterlies blew, and the side swell made it very uncomfortable as we left Salvador. The girls were both feeling terrible for the first 6 hours and just lay in the cockpit with teddies and blankets. For the first 15 miles we had to keep a lookout as there were so many Humpback whales. Leon and I were picking straws as to who would do the 2m dash inside to get some crackers/fruit/yoghurt anything to make us feel a bit better. Neither of us suffer from sea sickness, we can just feel a bit off. After the girls had recovered they were bouncing around as usual – playing, reading, drawing, wanting to eat, and just acting as if the conditions had not affected them at all! It’s unbelievable how resilient they are – such little sailors.
After 2 days of miserable motor sailing we decided to duck in at Maceio. We arrived in Maceio at 8pm on Friday night and were directed to a mooring ball by some local fisherman – they were all smiles when we thanked them with 3 Skol beers. Later that night we were awakened by what I can only described as an army of mosquitos!! They were everywhere, when I put the light on they were all over us and on the ceiling. Zoe came through crying saying that Nina was covered in them too. So at 2am we had a bit of a mozzie massacre! We swotted them, we burned citronella, we brought out the mozzie coils, we oiled ourselves in mozzie spray and fell asleep again at about 4am – an hour before the girls woke up. That morning we were able to make out where we were – it was a very dirty harbour with fishing boats of every size and a filthy “beach” which was littered with rubbish, dead fish, and sewerage. Leon and Andre (S/V RatCatcher) had to get ashore to find some diesel and Luiz who had directed us to the mooring the night before was happy to row them ashore to get diesel. The filth was not what they were expecting – their slops were getting caught in the sludge and litter on the beach. There were horse carts going up and down the beach transporting fish and the horse manure added to the sludge. They found a guy with a push wagon who took them to a fuel station – about 2km away where they filled the jerry cans. Then it was a row back to the boat with Luiz. We gave Luiz some money, old clothes and some more beers! We had R$ 7.88 left as we never thought we would be stopping, so had spent the last of the cash – luckily the petrol station took card.
So, Sunday morning we were off, again, for Tobago well so we thought……..