We had a great start out of Mindelo Harbor at 12:30 on the 21 November. Everything turned quite blustery as we entered the channel between the islands of Sao Vincente and Santo Antao. There is usually an acceleration zone between islands where the breeze can go from 15 knots to 25 knots with gusts to 30+ knots. That�'s what happened here. So we continued downwind as the breeze decreased once we passed the islands. There is also a wind shadow on the downwind side of the island for up to 100 miles. As night fell on the fleet so did the breeze. Everyone was struggling through the night trying to find sufficient wind.
Friday evening I tried fishing again. I had my hook and line in the water about 5 minutes when I got a bite. It took off and when it jumped I saw that it was a mahi-mahi. Unfortunately in my excitement I tightened the drag too soon and too much and broke my line. The fish took off with my lure, teaser bird and about ¼ of my line. Since then we have figured out how to slow the boat if we ever get another bite. That�'s life.
Yesterday a pod of dolphins paid a visit. These are much larger than the ones we saw in the Med. The didn�'t jump like the smaller ones either. They seemed to be the size of the bottlenose porpoise we are familiar with in the SE USA like Flipper but brownish instead of gray.
By Sunday we had really settled into trade winds sailing. We are heading basically due west at 5 to 6 knots with the wind coming over our right shoulder. Today the wind is 10-15 knots from the ENE and the boat was only doing 5 knots. We set the mizzen stay sail and picked up a half to ¾ knot boat speed so we are very happy. This difference translates to 3-4 day earlier arrival. Faster passages mean less time at sea and more time in port at the end.
Only 1620 miles to go.