On July 19th, just before sundown, we left Jacare for an overnighter to Natal. At sunrise Diesel Duck looked for the entrance to the river in Natal and once we were moving upriver, we discovered that the anchorage was extremely deep with a very strong current running. We managed to pick up a mooring from a small yacht club and settled down to have a good breakfast before going on shore. Actually, the surroundings didn't look too inviting and it would have been better to move further on to find another anchoring spot closer to town. But we gave up on that idea altogether and at 10 a.m. sailed on to Fortaleza, our last Brazilian port. The following evening at 23:00 hrs, on July 21st, we eased Diesel Duck carefully in the dark into the harbor to anchor in the protection of the huge seawall by the windmills. Next morning the Coast Guard chased us away to the only marina in town, the Marina Park Hotel. A fancy place with swimming pools and all amenities of a 5 star hotel, but the floating steel dock for the visiting boats was not worth the money they charged. It had buckled in several places and hooking up the electricity to Diesel Duck was a challenging task. The ground wire was missing and you were in danger of being electricuted while hooking up your shore power cable. The distribution boxes were wide open exposed to rain or boat washing, no cover plates and live wires were sticking out. DD is an aluminum boat, the docks were out of steel and the shore power hook-up was an electricians nightmare. This all gave my captain the creeps, when thinking about stray currents. We filled up our tanks here before leaving with water from the tap at the dock only to discover a few days later, while underway, that the water came from a rain water cisterne. It would only be good for watering the lawn, but not for drinking. Days later, at Ile Diablo, French Guyana, we had to totally empty out all of our tanks and wipe them clean before making new water and refilling them.
In all we stayed 6 days, stocked up on some items, cleared out with the officials and got a zarpe for French Guyana. On July 27th we left for Devil Island.
The above pics of native boats cought our interest as they were sailing into and around Fortaleza.