Sao Tome Squeeze!

Do not be mislead by Mary's picture of me chatting this brassy young blond !! The squeeze to which I am referring is an altogether more nautical one, as opposed to my wishful thinking!

When we anchored in Guarapari bay at 4.00pm on Tuesday, we had without any shadow of doubt, completed by far the most harrowing and stressful 36 hours and 180 miles of sailing we have ever experienced! But before going into detail, another anatomical analogy is called for, to describe the coastline around the Sao Tome cape. Sao Tome would be the elbow on your half bent left arm, with your knuckles being Cabo Frio, and wrist, Buzios. The port of Victoria would be up near your shoulder. Lying 50 miles offshore from this elbow, is Brasil's largest offshore oilfield, comprising any number of oilrigs and platforms, in a rectangle 70miles long, by 20 wide. These rigs are serviced by the port of Macae,somewhere on you forearm! There is a constant stream of tugs, supply and service vessels, running backwards and forwards between Macae and the oilfield.The area between Sao Tome and the oilfield is also very shallow, with the first 15 miles off the point being never more than 25metres deep, and the remaining 30miles between 40 and 60metres deep. The shallow Sao Tome banks, are a very rich fishing area, and are alive with fishing boats, day and night. All of the very considerable South American coastal shipping , has to pass through this narrow 30 mile gap, between the Oilfields, and the Sao Tome banks.

To compound the problems facing yachts, is the fact that the prevailing wind is a 20-25knot North Easterly, which is right on the nose, and is accompanied by the 1 knot Brazilian current! Clearly one does not want to spend too much time tacking backwards and forwards in this area, making slow progress.Our Strataegy was to wait for a cold front to come through, bringing the Southerly winds, and get the hell through this piece of water ASAP! This stategy makes sense, but brings with it, additional problems.... like 25knot winds against the current, over shallow waters, which makes for a pretty horrid sea state! Cold fronts also bring clouds, rain, pitch black nights and poor visibility at times! With our Radar being U/S, we decided to leave Buzios at dawn, to get far enough offshore to be outside most of the smaller fishing boats in daylight, and through the Macae/Oilfield traffic as well, as most of them do not have AIS transmitters( less than 200 tons). By night , we reasoned, we would be in the shipping routes, where we could expect proper navigation lights, and, AIS positioning.

The first 12 hours were uneventful, and plain sailing. By evening, the wind freshened, and we had put in two reefs, and shortened the headsaildown to about a no.3 or 4. But all too soon, we were barrelling along like a bat out of hell, in a wind against current, wild sea, an ink black night, on a marine highway, feeling like tenpins in a bowling alley! Normally, Mary and I do 3 hour night watches, but knowing it was likely to be challenging, and for one night only, we had planned on 2 hour watches for the passage. Fat Bloody Chance!! The sea conditions, and the sheer volume of shipping and traffic, required that both of us had to be on watch, right through the night! I plotted and logged the tracks of about 20 vessels which at some time had appeared to be on a collision course with us. Thanks to AIS, I was able to call up 4 by name, when they got to within 2 -4 miles of us, doing on average 14knots, and alert them to our position and course. In those conditions, our echo would have been lost in the sea clutter on their radars! In each case, they acknowledged my call, and took appropriate course changing action, for which they received my grateful thanks! At times, the AIS screen looked like a shotgun pattern ! All in all, we must have "seen", 40 to 50 tankers (or freighters), a similar number of fishing vessels, as well as an array of exploration rigs, platforms, and flashing bouys , in just 10, very dark hours! And every so often, the rain would block out all nav lights, and leave us drenched, not to mention the electrical storm that tormented our already frayed nerves!!

Never has a dawn been more welcome!! By 5.00am, we had both been awake for 24 hours, and were physically and emotionally knackered ! Then the fish decided to hit our lures! After landing three nice fish, we pulled in the lines, and set a course for Guarapari Bay, some 25 miles short of Victoria, as we did not feel up to entering a difficult new port entrance,at night, in our exhaused state! We dropped the hook at 4pm, in a surprisingly pretty , and sheltered bay ; had a couple of Scotches, a bite to eat, and hit the sack at 6pm, and slept for 12 straight hours! We had squeezed through the Gap!

Beautiful Buzios!

We hauled anchor at 3.00am on Monday, and worked our way out of Guanabara Bay , and up the coast towards Cabo Frio. We had hoped to benefit from the cold front SW winds, but in reality, they were too gentle, and we had to motor sail almost the entire leg to Cabo Frio. Without Radar, and the enormous number of unlit fishing craft, we wanted to do as much daylight sailing whilst close to the coast. We had therefore planned to stop overnight in a little bolt hole anchorage between Cabo Frio island ( Light House Point) and the mainland. It has a narrow (50mtr) head entrance on the West, which can get quite boisterous, with strong currents, before opening up into a very pleasant safe haven. As seems to be our usual habit, the wind started honking just 4 miles before we reached this target, and we had to run the gauntlet! Once inside, we did a right turn to get behing the cliff shelter, and dropped the hook. Despite the rather rolly anchorage, we slept like babes, as neither of us had got much sleep the night before, getting the boat and ourselves set for the early start.

Although the anchorage opens up into a lagoon facing east, which is theoretically navigable via a shallow channel, the charts show chart datum of 1.2mt at the deepest, and as we were leaving at 7.00am, and it would be Spring Low, we elected not to explores the moving sand banks, and go back out the way we entered , through the heads. This added about 4- 5 miles to our leg up to Buzios, but we enjoyed the trip around this Cape that always seems to be the change over point in the weather systems. The wind dropped down to about 8 knots, dead downwind, so we were forced to motor the whole way again, in a rather lumpy sea against the 0.8 to 1knot current that runs down the coast.

We arrived in Buzios at about 1.00pm, and checked out the anchorage options, before chosing a spot outside the Yacht club, with good SW protection, and some NE protection behind a point and reef. We were surprised to find ourselves anchored near "Basta", the yellow steel French boat owned by Francis and Silvia, last seen in Abrooa nearly 2 months earlier. They were heading off to the Carribean in search of work there. Instead, they found Buzios, and have entered into a long term lease and project, to renovate, and then run a Pousada restuarant & Bar on the waterfront here. Francis is working like a dog to have it up and running in October, to coincide with the arrival of the cruise liners. His long term plan is to build up a successful business in 5 years, and then sell ti for a big profit, with 5 years of his lease option remaining! Quite a project, and we wish them luck!

The wind has now swung NE, and the sun is out again, which always brings out the best of a place, and Buzios looks quite special. It started out as a quaint fishing village, with numerous small protected beaches around the rocky peninsula of Cabo Buzios. It is now a major tourist driven, and holiday home resort, being only a couple of hours by road from Rio. Bridgitte Bardot spent many of her early years here with a Brazilian boyfriend, and she is depicted in bronze, in one of the three very good sculptures, along the waterfront. The most striking one is of the "three fishermen", lifesize figures hauling in nets , from rocks set in the sea. Very realistic ! The other, is of President "DK", whose full name escpaes me ! Brigitte is depicted sitting on her suitcase looking out over the sea from the side walk. Her lap , head and lips, are polished shiny bright by all the tourists wanting to strike a pose with her!

With the sun out, it is time to explore again, and to find a wifi spot to check out the weather pattern again,and to see how long we have got here before continuing North!

The Amazing Suzie of Samba!

We had originally planned to spend our time in Rio at either Gloria , or the Royal Rio Iate Club, which is where we stayed when we took African Rennaisance back to SA....But , that was before we learned about Suzie! Every cruiser we met in Ilha Grande, who had sailed down from Rio, told us about this little blond dynamo at Club Naval Charitas, who was so wonderful to the cruising fraternity. And they were so right!

Suzie and her husband, Ronato, circumnavigated about twenty years back, in their bright yellow, Bruce Roberts designed steel ketch, "Samba",taking 6 years instead of their planned three. They came through the Red sea, instead of the Cape route, and changed the boat from a ketch to a sloop thanks to a sudden unplanned meeting with a tanker! Suzie and Ronato still live aboard Samba, moored right next to the visitors embarkation jetty. Quite apart from being the Official Ombudsman for the Club Naval Charitas, and speaking English and French fluently, she has made it her mission to be the best friend and service provider a cruiser could ever wish for!

She had been away the week Mary and I arrived, so we missed out on the normal welcome, but she made up for it in double quick time! Need your gas bottles filled? Sure, SA French, US..no problem ! Meet me at the Aquarium at 8.00am with the empty, and I'll get it back to you the following day! Want to go up to the top of our mountain and overlook the best views of Rio, Corcavada, Sugar Loaf, watch all the hang gliders taking off, and have some really good Brazilian coffee?

We leave at 10.00 tomorrow. You need an electronics man to check out your Radar problem, someone to fix you hyperlon dinghy, your outboard, your anyhting! Chances are Suzie will know someone and phone them to come and help you !

Want to go to "Horti Fruiti" this Thursday? Its an amazing really upmarket Fruit and Veg City in the middle of Nitaroi , and she takes any cruiser who want to stock up ,with her when she goes to do her own shopping each Thursday. Who wants to go to a free music concert in the old museum in Rio tomorrow , the film festival here, or the dinner dance there? Suzie will organise!

We went to a regular monthly Brazilian "Braai" a while back, and met a mixture of cruisers and club members. The food kept flowing all afternoon, food and drink included, for R$22 per head ( R80) ! This last Friday she organised a Potluck get together for all the cruisers, and everyone attended.

She organises talks ,slide shows and DVD presentations by cruisers, for cruisers and club members interested. I was seconded to give a talk, and show our DVD, in English, with Suzie doing the Poirtuguese translation.After our aborted Buzios departure last Saturday, we came back and attended Doug & Kyles presentation covering their six years circumnavigation in their Westsail 32, "Estrella", with their two daughters. We were shown the DVD of the talk, and rescue of the crew ,by the Brazillian Navy,of the traumatised SA couple, 2000 miles off the Brazilian coast, in Colin Minty's old boat, "Dikiri".We have since heard that it has been seen sailing around the Buzios area recently, so it seems that the boat survived abandonment.

It is no wonder that cruisers tend to grow roots here! Suzie and Renato... you are gems, Bless you both!

Marking time in Rio!

After our presentation talk and DVD show to the cruisers and club members of Charitas , we set about provisioning and preparing Sheer Tenacity for our trip North. We left last Saturday as planned, but had to abort after only 2 miles, as Fred, our B & G Autopilot went on strike again! On the same day, our Jabsco loo pump had also developed an unpleasant leak, which necessitated immediate attention, and to crown it all, the windlass started misbehaving as we hauled anchor!

So we turned around, and resigned ourselves to another week in Charitas, attending to our new collection of problems, while waiting for the next window. It was a good call, and we managed to sort out all the problems , with the exeption of the Radar, which will have to wait until we reach the Carribean to be repaired. We were also able to attend the next cruisers talk, given by Doug and Kyle, with daughters Lisa (14), and Abergail (11) on "Estrella", about their 6 year circumnavigation. They have only to reach the Bahamas to complete this voyage, and will be moving up the coast during the same period as ourselves.

Fred's problem turned out to be a dead "memory backup battery", a little coin sized CR2032 affair, soldered onto the circuit board. Fortunately I had a spare on board, (for my watch!), but the real challenge was removing and replacing it, as it is soldered in place. Eventually, with a Brazillian assistance, I succeeded, and Fred was up and running again. We had also decided not to sail again, without our backup Autohelm 3000 (Fredlet), working perfectly as well, and he too, is now working well.One of the strange spares I stowed before we left Cape Town, was the pump section from the second marine toilet on the scrapped old Gumbula.I whipped it out , and installed it.... yes, another shitty job, only to find it leaked as badly as the cracked Jabsco unit. After two further removals, and refits, the last with every gasket and joint set, and given time to cure, with sikaflex! We finally had a pure and sweet smelling loo again! What a joy!! But,... we had to endure a day of" bucket and chuck it" first! When one considers that this is effectively no different from what a few million other people in Rio and Nitaroi are doing every day, one should'nt feel too bad! One only has to look at he colour of the water here to know that !

However, the marine heads do a fine job of mascerating the nasties, and pumping it under the boat, and out of sight. Real "Bucket and Chuck it" is a liitle more cold blooded and premeditated , and not quite so easy! We were fortunate to have our Porta Potty on board too, ( our version of a holding tank for USA waters), but we decided to use it only as a comfortable seat, rather than commission it fully for one day. Layers of toilet paper were layed in the bowl,and a fine firm offering placed thereon .This was then picked up, carefully, like a delicate parcel, and dropped overboard, while nobody was looking! In theory, it should have quickly sunk out of sight, with nobody any the wiser. Theories however, dont always work! One such offering, ( exactly whose shall remain anonymous!), refused to sink, and set sail across the anchorage, with the upturned toilet paper acting like a spinnaker! We desperately tried to bomb it with the high pressure deck hose, but it gybed, and sailed out of reach, and we had to stop trying too hard for fear of drawing attention to ourselves! Now there was a fair amount of activity going on in the bay.... waterskiers, an Oppie race, windsurfers, and a couple of jetskies. No prizes for guessing which type of craft we were hoping would finally collide with and sink our newly launched craft! We just ducked below, refusing to acknowledge or watch, but our imagination ran riot with the possibilities!

Later that afternoon, the wind piped up again, and we were soon back to normal, as yet another French Cruiser came dragging past us, while he was enjoying a late lunch ashore. Fortunately, his anchor hooked and re-set after 100mts, and I was able to Tinker ashore, and fetch him. He let out another 30 mts, said "Senk ewe", and went back to lunch!

Next blog ,the Amazing Suzie of Samba!

The Brazilian Paradox!

There is apparantly no nudity in Brazil. Certainly we have not been aware of any, total nudity , that is! There is however a great appreciation for the body beautiful, and a great willingness to show as much of it as possible, within the confines of their legal limits. The National costume for women, is of course the "Boude floss " bikini.. (there just is no other description, in any other language, which describes the item quite as well!) For those of you not familiar with this very descriptive Afrikaans term, I will do my best! One has to start off with the kind of "Itsy Bitsy, Teeny Weeny" bikini that made Frank Sinatra go "AAAAHHHHH", when he sang about the "Girls on Ipanema!"

Then one removes the little triangle on the back that tries to cover the derier, and replace it with a single strand of Dental Floss, which connects the bottom of the front itsy triangle, with the waistband , such that the ladies neat little butt becomes an extension of her lovely long legs! Well, thats the theory, at any rate! And to be sure, there are loads of beautiful bodies on display, offering healthy old men of my inclination, opportunities to drool over their particular pre-delictions! I am un- ashamably a legs man! Others , I know ,are boobs and bum men, not I hasten to add, that there is anything wrong with that! Its just that I can still remember watching the most Beautiful Legs in the World, ( Steffi Graf), playing Chrissy Evert , in the Wimbledon Final, and perpetually losing track of the score!

Now, keen observer that I am, it does not escape me, that the Golden, the Bronze, the Coffee, and the Ebony, beat the hell out of the transparant cutworm White, no matter how well put together they are! It should also be pointed out, that these thousands of girls displaying the body beautiful, are nevertheless, a very, very small minority in the scheme of things!! The only onepiece bathing costume I have seen in Brazil, was being worn by a very serious competitive swimmer in full training, in the Club Naval Olympic pool! She would have looked great in a Boude Floss ! But the point is, that the vast majority of women wearing these bikini's, simply dont give a fig!

There they are, any number of orange peel butts, of all shapes and sizes, soaking up the sun, with their equally miniscule tops, totally at peace with the world, and with themselves!

The beaches are a focal point of Brazilian life, and all boast beach soccer fields, Volley ball courts, Foot Volley courts, parallel bars, and all manner of playgrounds for their men, to strut their stuff, and impress the female audience. The seriously wealthy, of course use different tricks, such as the enormous "Lanchero's" and Luxury Power craft , to attract their women. It certainly seems to work, because it would appear that these luxury boats cannot start, without at least one or two elegant pieces of "Deck Jewelry" adorning their foredecks in the national costume. But , whether they use their finely chisled bodies, their athletic prowess, or their mighty cheque books and charm, the men too, adhere to their own style of swimming attire.

The young dudes, 14-17yrs, stick to their "Boardies", and Surf shorts. Thats because they rarely seem to partake in any serious sport, apart from tongue wrestling,or face sucking, which is something of a fad here. Not that it is a male dominated sport... on the contrary, the most active participants seem to be their girlfriends, and this could have something to do with their need to wear Baggies at all times! Once the men hit twenty, they graduate to the tight, skin fitting, lycra swim shorts, that my son Steve calls "Budgie Smugglers", or if he's in a generous mood, "Hamster Hammocks"! In the same way that the Boude Floss Bikini leaves little to the imagination, much the same can be said about the Budgie Smuggler! They present the goods, as it were, like merchandise on a supermarket display rack, with only the price tag missing!

So there we have it ! A nation who have perfected the art of wearing nothing, whilst avoiding nudity at all costs ! Methinks this false modesty is just a giant con! I mean , how could this much loved and world famous landmark be called a Sugarloaf?