We left from Lisbon to the Canary Islands, a trip which took us 5 days. We arrived at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which is the capital of Tenerife. Here Gwendoline joined the crew. Although we didn’t really leave the EU, we were still lectured by the local customs that we had to come and inform them of our arrival.
To the Canary Islands
We used RCC’s pilot book of the Atlantic Islands to find our next anchorage, which was at Bahia de Abona. It’s a bay formed by lava-rocks. The swimming was nice, but the anchorage was very rolly, causing all our dirty dishes to fall on the ground, and giving us a sleepless night.
Aura on anchor in Bahia de Abona
After spending one night here we left Tenerife, and sailed to the island El Hierro, to the southern harbor La Restinga. This is a small village in a barren landscape of brown lava-rocks. We made a day trip, anchoring in a bay at the east of the island, where we went for some scuba-diving. A lot of the coast of El Hierro is nature reserve, so fishing and diving are restricted to certain areas.
Finally, we were ready to leave Europe, to Africa…! Sailing south to Cape Verde was easy, the last four day and nights of this trip we had the spinnaker up almost continuously.
We arrived at Sao Vicente during the night. The lights of Mindelo were nowhere to be seen. It was only until we rounded part of the island and were at the final approach that we saw the city lighting up. The arrival was quite tricky in the night, because of unmarked, unlit wrecks and anchored boats without anchor-lights. We stayed in the new and very nice marina, but there are also a lot of sailboats on mooring buoys/at anchor in the bay.
At the Mindelo Marina
The customs are handled in the industrial harbor, where we waited many hours until the bored customs officer showed up. He threw us a blank piece of paper, on which we had to write our boat’s details and whatever we felt necessary, and stamped our passports.
There is a ferry service from the island of San Vicente to the neighboring island of Santo Antao. However, since the ferry was so close near the marina, we missed it each morning by five minutes. After this we decided to sail to Santo Antao, which was much easier. We anchored in the harbor and a local guy picked us up with a small sloop (tying up against the quay-wall didn’t look too attractive, due to the huge rusty chains holding the ‘fenders’ there). Going back in the evening we could offer a free trip back to Mindelo to some unfortunate souls who had missed the ferry back.
Santo Antao
Another place we went to on Sao Vicente was the small fishing town of San Pedro, in the south of the island. There is a strong, ever present landwind, but anchoring close to the fishing boats was perfect. On the beach, the whole village comes to help push the fishing sloops ashore. The water was blue, swimming was nice, and we enjoyed a delicious fish barbecue with the cool people from the village.
San Pedro
From Sao Vicente we sailed onwards to Senegal. We passed close to the flat island of Sal, where we saw some boats at anchor, but we didn’t stop there.
We arrived (as usual) during the night in Dakar. It was a magical arrival, motoring quietly into the bay behind the horn of Dakar. On the coast we saw the lights of the city. Flashes of music, and the smell of spices, roasted lamb and rotten fish, came drifting towards the Aura. We didn’t really know where to go to, so we dropped anchor when the depth was about 8 meters. This was already past the commercial harbor.
In the morning, we saw that we had anchored at about 500 meter from where we had to be! We had been quite lucky as well, because the bay has a lot of unmarked wrecks.
Wreck before the CVD
There was a marina, protected with a small quay and with berths, but it was impossible for us to enter (with a depth of 2 meters). So we went to anchor where all the other sailboats were. This was the CVD (Club de Voile de Dakar) at the Plage de Hann. There is a free ‘passeur’-service, who brings you to and from your ship. In the club there is a bar, laundry, showers, and free wireless internet. There are a lot of Frenchmen in this club, staying here more or less permanently.
The anchorage in this bay was quite good, however one night a sudden storm caused our anchor to drag, and two other boats were blown on the shore. There are apparently also some mooring buoys (marked by a plastic bottle) but we didn’t use those. One bad thing about the bay is the filth. The water is brown and smelly, due to the sewer outlet not far away, and a fish factory near this sewer provides a constant stream of dead and rotting fish next to your boat. The sand blown from the desert makes your ship dusty and brown, and the birds love to sit on your mast and spray your deck white. Apart from this Dakar was a great experience!
The customs were a complicated story (luckily the people of the CVD help you with this). We had to pass first by the police/customs. They kept our Flag Registry document, to ensure that we would certainly come by for an exit-stamp when we wanted to leave the country. Then we had to pass by another customs administration, who insisted on seeing the original Flag Registry. So, back to the police, who of course refused to give the document back, and so on… Administrative chaos!
After staying some time in Dakar, and making a trip (with our own boat) to the Ile de Goree, we decided it was time to leave, for our very first ocean crossing! In the club they spoke quite highly about the river Casamance, in the south of Senegal. So before crossing the ocean, we wanted to sail up this river. Going south to Casamance we passed Gambia and the Gambia river in the night. There were some unlit fishing boats who were curious about us and came nearby to check us out. The next morning we were at the rivermouth of Casamance. However, the depth quickly lessened, and while we were still about 2 miles of the coast, it was already but 2 meters deep and we touched the seabed. To enter this river, you clearly need a lifting keel, or a local guide and accurate maps. In retrospect, it would have been perhaps more interesting to stop in Gambia…
Our track in Cabo Verde and Senegal
So we quickly decided to turn west and set sail for Brazil!
