Las Palmas to Mindelo, Cape Verde

Chris Monk

After 2-1/2 weeks staying in Las Palmas, working through a long job list, we were finally ready to go! We had been getting to know the crews of a number of other boats and the Rally organisers had a daily programme of seminars and social events to get involved with. Come the 9th November 86 yachts paraded out of the Las Palmas marina to the start line, cheered on by hundreds of friends and family, along with a brass band playing on the Marina breakwater. Crew Mike, Ian & Dave even had their own personal fan clubs there to wave them off. The start was in a fresh breeze but overnight this eased as we moved out of the wind acceleration zone around Gran Canaria. My on watch crew called me up in the middle of the first night as the steering was so stiff the boat could barely hold a course. All things pointed to the autopilot; confirmed when I disconnected the drive arm from the steering, leaving us to hand steer for the following 7 days. This clearly wasn’t part of the plan and whilst, with 4 on board it was very manageable, it was still tiring given the additional level of concentration needed to hold a course. The trade winds weren’t present consistently, so we had a mix of calm weather that we had to motor through and wind from various directions, the NE trades only filling in during our last 24 hrs at sea. The other major drama occurred when part of the swivel at the top of our biggest downwind sail chafed through and I had to recover half of the sail from the water before it dragged under our hull. Despite this, morale remained high, the crew enjoyed themselves (I think!) and we gradually settled into a 4 hrs on 4 off watch routine in pairs. We marvelled at the night sky, saw whales, dolphins & turtles and caught 2 mahi mahi which fed us well, watched spellbound at the night time bioluminescence, particularly when it was dolphins streaking through the water and we even stopped for a swim in 3500m of water! Amazing! We arrived into a breezy Mindelo, Cape Verde, more than ready for some undisturbed sleep and a hopeful repair of the autopilot.