Abrolhos to Vitória: Sailing the Brazilian Coast

Cami De Conto

Sadly, we only stayed one night in Abrolhos and we left. Abrolhos was amazing. It was far the best of what we have seen sailing in Brazil. Caribbean like waters, in both color and temperatures, rich Sea life (green turtles everywhere, all kind of fishes, corals..), and it is beautiful! We only left so quickly because we are kind of in a schedule.. my mother in law arrives in Rio in 9 days, which is 400miles from here. It should be fine, but there is a cold front coming, that might get us stuck somewhere on the way. On top of it, Jurriaan normally works online during weekdays, so we try to sail as much as possible during weekends. And there we were, leaving Abrolhos and heading Rio de Janeiro. The was absolutely no wind. The sea was flat and creamy. Our only alternative was to use the engine, but that implicates an issue. We haven’t really been able to buy diesel in Maraú, and we have used the engine for 30h from there to Abrolhos. We still have enough fuel to use the engine for more 30h, but we don’t want to run low and risk getting dirt or air into our lines. Our conclusion was to stop on the next big harbour after Abrolhos, and that is Vitória. We hoisted the 150% Genoa plus the main sail, and are doing avg of 7kts boat speed with the engine at 1800rpm. If we knew we would have such a trip, we would have left Abrolhos a little bit earlier. This whole trip was marked by the fact that we were running and rushing to get to Vitória before sunset. We really don’t like arriving somewhere new without daylight. Christopher was very sweet, as usual. We put the harness on him and went to the bawl of the boat. He was standing there, feeling the wind on his face, smiling and making whiiiiiiiiiii noises. This was the cutest moment ever ❤️ The Night Shift was good, lots of falling stars. The moon set was also beautiful. The second day was a long waiting for the arrival. There was absolutely no wind, the sea was like a honey, and we were annoyed by that engine noise. It was also very hot, but we don’t complain about the heat. We love hot weather. We set the little pool for Christopher at the cockpit and we played with water for most of the time. I think that was the highlight of the day! When we were almost approaching Vitoria, we saw a dead sea-turtle floating by. So so sad. We even turned around and took pictures of her, so the preservation entity can use for their statistics (the use AI to identify the turtles they monitor). We arrived in Vitória by the last daylight. Phiew! That was our two concerns for this frustrating zerowind-motoring trip, that we would have enough diesel to get here and that we would arrive before dark. We made it 😃 yeeee! Tomorrow we will by some fruits and veggies, fuel up Songster, and keep on our trip south. We would loooove to stay here for a couple of days, but we cannot miss the window to go to Rio. Will go and get a well deserved full night of sleep now 😃