sailing - Mindelo, Cape Verde

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Sailing to Cape Verde

We left the Canaries on Dec 15, 2011, and sailed to Sao Vicente in Cape Verde, and anchored at Mindelo on Dec 21. It took 6 days and for the first 5 days, the sail was very rough and nobody felt like eating much. I was very surprised that I was able to read my plant book, which has very small print, and felt fine during rough seas. We were going 10-14 knots with just the jib a bit rolled up, wind was around 35 knots and we had to roll in the jib a bit more for the autopilot to work. The boat made a record speed of 19.8 knots for a brief moment.

I was on watch one night and it was all dark except for a light in the distance. After 10 minutes, the light was nearer but at the exact same angle to us as before. I didn’t like the look of it so I woke up the skipper. We waited another 10 minutes and sure enough, the light was much closer but still at the same angle which meant that this boat was heading straight toward us. The skipper veered a bit to our right and waited, it was still heading straight for us so the skipper veered a bit more. The boat came really close to us and we could see various people standing on board looking at us but they made no move to avoid us. The skipper made an emergency sharp turn to avoid colliding into them. We just skimmed by their boat and all they did was stare at us. It was really weird.

It was Tony from Vancouver who said, “sailing is just long periods of boredom interspersed with sudden periods of sheer terror.”

Mindelo, Sao Vicente

There were only 4 or 5 bank machines in Mindelo and they were all out of cash so we couldn’t get local money. One had cash but it wouldn’t take my card (I was told later that I could have gone into the bank and gotten money from the teller). We went to take showers at Club Nautico (no hot water) and they only take Euro bills not coins because you can’t exchange coins, so I gave the guy a €20 bill and got 1900 escudos back which was a better exchange rate than the bank. (The exchange rate then was €1 to 100 escudos, and the shower cost 100 escudos so basically, I was not charged commission for the exchange.) Laundry is on Av Marginal, just a bit further down from the Mercado de Vegetais.

I met up with a couchsurfer and he took us to the vernissage of an art gallery of a childhood friend. All the artwork related to life in Cape Verde. I liked the fact that even though all the paintings were abstract, you can tell that the person(s) in the paintings were black. Then he took us to a jazz bar called Jazzy Bird and then to a bar called NHO Galeria which was in a house. We sat at a rooftop table just over the street. Then the CSer took us to the beach and the clubs there were packed and the streets were full of people. One place was playing traditional Cape Verdian music. On another day, he took me to Archot, a restaurant with live traditional music and authentic local dishes. The food was really good. I had grilled Amberjack and a traditional side which consisted of manioc, sweet potatoes and fried bananas.

<strong id="docs-internal-guid-6ae1d2ad-f1a5-ca12-5a8e-370037617d85" style="font-weight: normal;">There were tons of Chinese discount stores in Mindelo, many more than necessary, I thought. I met up with another CSer and asked him about the Chinese stores. He said that the Chinese government bring in a lot of money to the country as well as incentives for business and development including free education (with free room & board) for anyone who wants to go study in China. In exchange, they send people here to open up shop and import Chinese goods. I asked him if there’s any resentment like in the Canaries and he said, personally, it’s a good thing because 10 years ago, most people didn’t have shoes and now everybody has at least flip flops.

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