Apologies for the lack of blogs from at sea. What with watches, cooking, boat maintenance, trying to get enough sleep, looking after the boys during the day, doing a bit of home school, downloading and analysing weather forecasts, gybing for unexpected windshifts etc etc, we didn't have much time for blogging!
We had a good trip down from Las Palmas to Mindelo. After a light start we had three days of good breeze and made better speed then expected, then the wind threatened to die out, but we managed to keep sailing to finish on Friday afternoon.
We ended up trading places with some of the same boats throughout the passage, including a boat called "Stargazing" which sailed half a mile behind us at about half way, then was close by a few other times, and eventually we crossed the line about 5 minuted ahead of them. Unfortunately we were pipped on the line by a catamaran that finished about 200m ahead of us after 900 miles!
Everyone did really well on passage, the one disappointment being that we didn't catch any fish - and in fact something stole our lure and line!
It was great to get in on Friday as it meant that by the time most of our friends arrived on Saturday we'd had a good night sleep and a nice dinner ashore.
Cape Verde has been fun, meeting up with other boats, the ARC have laid on a couple of parties, and we had a tour of the island, which included a trip to the highest point for some great views of Mindelo, Sao Vicente and the adjacent islands.
We went to some huge sand dunes, and then to a beach with big waves and people surfing. The kids loved racing the waves!
Other than that we have been mostly near the boat in Mindelo while we do a combination of boat prep, home school, provisioning and exploring locally - beach visits, paddle boarding, playground and a couple of group Ice Cream Shop visits!
It's a shame not to have had time to see more of the Caope Verdes, but also, knowing that Friday is departure day, we're all quite keen to stop preparing and get going!
