Península de Maraú - Abrolhos: Sailing the Brazilian Coast

Cami De Conto

After one month in Peninsula do Maraú, we finally resumed our trip sailing south along the Brazilian coast! The next stop was Abrolhos, a small archipelago on the south of Bahia. It wasn’t the very best weather window, but we just had to leave, we were looking forward to be sailing again. To be honest, we have had so much rain the last days we were in the Peninsula, that our moral was down, everything was wet and there was no fun anymore. So, the southern wind stopped blowing and we saw an opportunity to go away! The sailing part quite didn’t happened, as we had so little wind that 30h of the whole trip was sailing under engine, buuuuut, we were very happy to leave the raining Maraú 😅 The first day of the trip was good. We had a killer sunset, just like those we were used to see in Curaçao. We missed those many colours in the sky, and the salmon color at the sea. First time that our little man got to see this kind of sunset too. The second day was a bit of a hell of a ride. I can’t recall we had such a 💩 trip with Songster. We were about 20nm from the shore, navigating at about 1000m depth, when we reached the ‘Royal Charlotte Bank’ , a very long sand bank that comes from the continent, and the depth is about 20 to 40m. This transition of 1000m to 20m gives a lot of short and irregular waves. For the first time in years, I got seasick! And together with that horrible nausea, I had a strong headache. I wanted to sleep, but Christopher was feeling great and ready to play! Jurri, who always gets seasick, was feeling horribly also. So we had to manage the boat and Chris 😅 what a day! We had some rain and beautiful rainbows, making the day a little better :) Luckily the sand back was not so big and about 6h of navigating in this area, we were out of the bank, back to 1000m of depth and back to regular waves. Instantly, I was feeling 100% again! Yeeeey! That evening was nice, jurri was sleeping with Christopher and I did a long Night Shift, under a starry night, with warm temperature. That Night Shift I also wrote all my SailTies logs that were pending from since we arrived in Brazil! It was a very productive shift. At the early morning of the third day we could already see Abrolhos. The navigation around the islands is very precise, as they have pinnacle corals that surface the water. So we need to make sure we follow the recomendes route to get there. We had a nice downwind sailing to the islands, and upon approach, we called the national park on vhf 16 to announce our arrival. They instructed us to get a mooring buoy and they came with their dinghy to welcome us! What a paradise! We are moored in and inhabited archipelago with cristal clear waters, and with beautiful views around us! It will be sad to leave the islands so soon, but we have to go to shore and find some shelter before a cold front hits us. So, 24h after our arrival, it’s time to set sails again 😃