Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

Cape Verde to (somewhere in) South America

Day 2

Saturday, July 26

Noon Position: 12 18.19N 24 58.43W

Course/Speed: SSE 5.6

Wind: NE 6

Sail: Motorsailing, close reach with full sail

Noon Miles: 143

Total Miles: 281

We departed Mindelo at noon on the 24^th to pale, open skies and a honking trade in the slot between Sao Vicente and Santo Antao Islands. This diminished as we cleared the land but stayed strong enough overnight that, though sails occasionally gasped and barked on the back side of a sea, we were not tempted to start the engine.

Next day our course took us in between that big cone, Fogo Island and its smaller neighbor, Brava, 130 miles S of Mindelo. These are the last we will see of the Cape Verde group. Again, the wind picked up nicely in the slot; soon we were scooting along on a 20-knot breeze that even felt cool. Sadly, I got snookered by the wind direction and allowed us to swing into the lee of Fogo, where we wallowed for a couple hours on a light wind from the W (!) never quite strong enough to move us beyond the island, this when the trades were NNE. Only the engine got us back into clean air.

Wind tailed off as per forecast yesterday, and when it reached single digits, we fired up the Bukh. We anticipate motoring SSE through the doldrums and until about noon on Monday, when we should begin to pick up the southern trades. Our SSE course, as opposed to due S or even SW, is because these anticipated trades are right on the nose, and a little easting will buy us some runway against that longish lee shore known as S America.

Luckily it’s been a fast day. A small breeze on the port beam, where none was expected, has allowed us to fly sail, whose small push keeps us at 7 knots with the engine at 2200rpms.

Water temperature has been climbing steadily, from 77 at Mindelo* to, as I type at 8pm some 300 miles south, 84 degrees. That means daytime temps can be 100 degrees (on deck and in the cabin) when the sun’s strength is not cut by cloud, and overnight lows cannot be anything less than 84. This is not in any sense to be confused with a dry heat at all but is a clammy, sticky, constantly close heat only slightly diminished by the breeze. Humidity must be near its apogee short of all out rain (sadly, I don’t have a way of measuring this). A cooling rain would be welcome and may appear tomorrow.

First there is the heat, and then there is the sky, which today has reminded me of the beginnings of a hurricane sky. Moderately low, total and ragged. This is, after all, the Cape Verde hurricane corridor, the nursery of some of the most powerful storms to hit the US. Happily, those don’t usually form until August and September and, for us, would be in their infancy in any case. None are anticipated out seven days, at which point we will be well into the southern trades.

*Compare 38 degrees off St John’s, Newfoundland and 72 degrees at Horta in the Azores.