Tazacorte to Mindelo

This turned out to be quite an exciting trip though not the nicest one we have had. As followers will know, we had a frustrating time with light and contrary winds south of the Canaries for a good couple of weeks. Finally though the normal situation with a low over the Sahara and a high out in the Atlantic funnelling the winds from the north east. A lot of us looked at all the sources and eventually we all pushed off at nearly the same time.

Well, the winds did blow but with a vengeance and we got four days of actual gale strength wind and only about 24 hours with the wind less than the Beaufort force 7. We covered the 800 miles in seven days which is very quick for us though it might have been quicker had the wind been a bit less. The first night out was very much what we were used to with around 28 to 33 knots of wind which is a good strong force 7 but not too bad. Then in the following day things dropped away much as we had experienced in the past. It was that night that we really got a blow and from then on we had a minimum of 30 knots and usually more than 35 which is the official point at which force 8 starts.

We think that the trade winds, which are “supposed” to blow at between 15 and 25 knots, were being augmented by a Calima wind off the Sahara. On our third day the air turned very yellow and the sunset was this strange bleary thing while visibility was reduced to less than two miles. That was when we had the longest sustained period of gale force winds. The boat is also covered in yellow dust which will have to be cleaned off at some point.

All in all, the sailing was quite wearing and we were extremely relieved to get in on the afternoon of 21 December. On the Friday while still 130 miles away we did some calculations about whether we could make it in on Saturday before the sun went down as night entrances are not advisable in these islands. Navigational aids are generally poorly maintained and there are apparently numerous unmarked wrecks in the bay. As it turned out, the entrance was really quite easy though it took a long time to actually get in from our first sighting of land.

We did see a bit of wildlife while on passage with several pods of dolphins playing with us both in the day and at night. There were a different sort of dolphin from what we usually see though being much smaller at only around 2 to 3 meters long and in different sized pods of between twenty and five or so. Still, they were still great to see. In particular on one of my night watches, one of them did a huge jump right across our path just in front of the bow. Of course, getting pictures of fast moving animals from the unstable platform of the boat meant we didn't get any pictures worth looking at, particularly in the dull weather we were experiencing.