Fortaleza to Trinidad

Rather than giving you a day by day account of the trip from Fortaleza to Trinidad I will just write one long spiel on the trip. We set sail from Fortaleza mid-morning. 7 hours later, at dusk, we found ourselves surrounded by Oil rigs and little boats that supported the oil rigs. I counted 17 different vessels at one stage. And so we progressed into the night shift with the knowledge that we would have to be alert. About half way through my shift I saw 11 lights all pop up at the same time. They were ahead of us and we seemed to be heading straight for them. I turned on the radar and the screen was, well, clear. Apparently there were no vessels ahead of us. Turned out they where those little wooden fishing boats, and they where 30 miles out to sea, very strange. We missed hitting one, they would have come off second best, by about 3 meters. The lights on these little boats are very low down and not powerful, this means that although they seem to be 20 miles away they are in fact only 2-3 miles away.

So that was night one. The first four days we were rained on almost all day and hit by squalls quite regularly. Squalls are short bursts of high wind and rain. Not comfortable. So we were both tired, wet, and therefore a little bit fractious, however, the sense of humour stayed relatively high, considering.

DISASTER STRIKES! I was half way through my watch on about the fifth day when the Genoa started flapping for no apparent reason, there was enough wind to fill the sail. The fore stay had broken off! The fore stay is at the front of the boat and plays a major role in holding up the mast. We managed to get it
(the fore stay) lashed down to the deck and then started to head for French Guinea. A two and a half day detour. Once in French Guinea we anchored in a sheltered area and put a new pin in the fitting that holds down the fore stay, this was no easy task as when the fore stay is on it is tight and so to get it on we had to winch it down in a perfectly straight line to get the pin through the perfectly sized hole which happened to be bent.

We continued from French Guinea to Trinidad, a further three day sail. The rain stopped when we arrived in French Guinea. The rest of the sail was rather uneventful except for the Clew tearing off the Genoa a day out of Trinidad. The clew pulls the sail tight so that it isn't flapping and is therefore filled with wind and thus pushing the boat along.

At the end of the day it was an alright last 1600 miles but very tiring and rather expensive for Stuart.

I have enjoyed my Atlantic crossing and it has been a hell of an adventure.