After our unsuccesful attempt to enter the Casamance river in Senegal, we left immediately for Brazil. It was our first ocean crossing…
Swimming in the Atlantic
The crossing went quite smoothly, we were stuck for one day only in the doldrums. We saw the rocks of St. Paul and St. Peter as two little dots on the horizon. Two days after crossing the equator we arrived at Fernando Da Noronha, only 12 days after leaving Senegal.
Our track across the Atlantic Ocean
Fernando Da Noronha is really beautiful, especially under water, where you see a lot of sea turtles, and huge schools of fish. Fantastic! The anchorage is on the north side of the island. The only downside is that the local port authorities ask a ridiculous amount of money (also tourist tax etcetera) for just staying there at anchor.
You can swim through these schools of fish, there's so much fish that it gets dark if you swim below them...
So we quickly left Fernando Da Noronha again, to get to our first port on Brazilian mainland: Natal. The marina is on the Rio Potengi, a brown river with quite some current. There were some mooring buoys in front of the marine, but they were private, so we had to anchor. It was great to arrive at this yacht club, because they serve gigantic food platters, which is exactly what you need after crossing the ocean! They also had a pool and a sauna, it was all very fancy…
Iate Clube Do Natal
Next on the list was the city of Recife. Here we anchored in front of the Pernambuco Iate Clube, behind the breakwater, over which the waves crashed. This Iate Clube is not much more than a restaurant with some mooring buoys. The other marinas, further inside of the harbour, were impossible to get to due to our draught of 2.2 m. The breakwater led to a suburb village which was said to be dangerous for thieves or worse, but we never got any trouble. There is a monument towards the other end of the breakwater, and there you get a rowboat service to the other side of the river, into the city center.
Adriaan - Klaas - Eduard
We were in Recife to pick up Eduard, and together we travelled on South (nearly hitting a whale along the way). Our next stop was Suape, which was described in the pilot as a nice anchorage. However, we found it to be an industrial port under construction, and the lagoon behind the reef was inaccessible for our 2.2 meters. Not so very nice after all.
Two fishermen in the industrial port of Suape
On to Salvador De Bahia, where Riet was waiting for us. Here we stayed in the Terminal Nautico Da Bahia, behind the breakwater with the old military fort. A lot of boats were anchored next to the fort, but this was said to be a dangerous spot for theft. The same goes for the whole of Salvador De Bahia, which everybody describes as dangerous. We were warned by some locals not to visit some areas, and indeed, our little stroll in one of the favelas (dressed as über-tourists in havaianas, flowery swimming shorts and sunglasses) was a bit a weird and uncomfortable experience.
But we quite liked Salvador, and never got any trouble except for a small kid who tried (unsuccesfully) to steal our camera. (This camera got stolen in South Africa later on the voyage.) The yacht club was right below the famous elevator taking us into the center where the reggaeton was booming. Returning to the marina late at night, the party continued at the gas station, with music provided by the tuned-up cars parked there.
View on the marina and the breakwater with the old fort, from the elevator
The next stop was the Abrolhos archipelago, a nature reserve/military base. To visit it you need to ask for a permit, which we didn’t have (our emails to the “Ibama” institute were unanswered) but nobody asked for it either. There are some mooring buoys (for sailboats and for the military provisioning boat). Apart from the soldiers there is also a very friendly park ranger living there, and he keeps a radio watch. We used Abrolhos to shelter for a storm, during which we fled to the army’s buoy on the north side of the island. That night our two ropes which we had tied around the buoy chafed and snapped! Luckily the fishing boat William which was anchored nearby had seen it and called us in warning…
It is not allowed to go ashore in Abrolhos, since it’s either military domain or nature reserve for bird nesting. that doesn’t matter because the real reason to pass by Abrolhos are the whales which come there to get their kids, and we saw plenty of them. Leaving Abrolhos towards Vitoria we saw more than 20 times whales close by or far away, jumping out of the water and other spectacles.
The front for which we sheltered at Abrolhos
We only stopped in Vitoria to pick up some food, but we left with an extra crewmember, Maarten. After Vitoria we passed Cabo Frio. During the calm, windstill night we could hear whales breathing in the distance (or nearby?)… And so we finally got to Rio De Janeiro, where we had to find a good spot to stay. So we tried them all:
- We could only stay at the super-fancy RJYC (Rio de Janeiro Yacht Club) if we were a member of an affiliated club (for example Yacht Club de Paris) which we were of course not.
- The next club is the Marina da Gloria, located next to the airport. We arrived at night there, so stayed anchored below outside the club, and enjoyed the spectacular landings of the planes just above our heads. In the Marina da Gloria they accepted anyone who could pay a lot of cash, which we could not.
- So on we went to Niteroi, the city on the other side of the bay of Rio The Janeiro. And this proved to be the place to be. In this bay there are about 4 clubs which we could choose from, and a lot cheaper. Ferries and buses took us into Rio, where we could at last visit the huge statue of Jesus, Copacabana beach, and Rapa on thursday night.
In Niteroi, on the other side of the bay of Rio De Janeiro
We left Rio De Janeiro much too soon, but with the promise to return. We had a good reason to leave so soon, though: Ilha Grande. This island and its neighbouring bays and islands seem to be an area where you could enjoy sailing and discovering for years. We didn’t have years, so we only anchored in four spots on the island: Enseada das Palmas (from where we could walk to a surfer’s beach on the other side of the island), at Abraão (the main village on the island), behind Ilha Dos Macacos (aka “the blue lagoon”), and in Enseada De Sitio Forte (where we did scuba diving on the wreck of the “Penguino”, very cool). There are no cars on Ilha Grande, and the vegetation is like rainforest.
Anchoring in Enseada Das Palmas
It was beautiful, but we needed to move on South! We passed Ilha Bella, where we couldn’t stop unfortunately (the name sounds attractive though). We did get a visit from a lot of bugs flying of the island and landing on board. This happened in the night, and we only noted their presence after some crunchy sounds under our feet.
Santos
We sailed on to Santos, the industrial port of São Paolo. São Paolo is the biggest city of Brazil, and a huge economic centre. There are a lot of shipyards etcetera, but we just stayed in a small marina in a creek at the entrance of the river. As everywhere in Brazil it seems, the iate clube where we stayed needed to be a real “club” where you can meet with your friends to smoke big cigars and tell hunting stories over 12 year old whiskey. We tied up between the poles at the pontoon, and tried to get to São Paolo, but there was no easy public transport. Fortunately we could get a ride with a friendly helicopter pilot (in his car), and that way we got in the city. We met up with Mieke from Flanders Investment and Trade (FIT), and whose hospitality we enjoyed to sleep in a real bed at her home!
São Paolo
In São Paolo we welcomed Cecile on board, and we said goodbye to Eduard, who was going to travel to Rio Grande by bus. This turned out to be a wise idea… The trip south from Santos was not a pleasant one for Cecile and Riet, because we were fighting against stormy weather all the time. We even stopped at the town Laguna to let a storm pass. The arrival in Laguna was rough, and dangerous. There is a shallow at the breakwater entrance of the river. Luckily a fishing boat arrived a few minutes before us, so we could follow him. It turns out you have to approach the entrance from the north and stay well to the right during entry. Laguna was a nice break from the sea. We stayed on board, because the little quay was unreachable (yep, 2.2 meters draught), and we saw some fresh water dolphins swimming around.
Laguna
We left Laguna and sailed into another storm. So we got to Rio Grande, where we arrived at night. The arrival in Rio Grande is dangerous, because the whole Lago Dos Patos lake gets poured out through the channel during northerly winds, this causes huge currents. Also the channel was under construction as we approached, so our charts were incorrect. But we made it safely into the channel, and while we were dropping our sails we nearly got run over by a dredger.
Taking a left through a small channel we sailed all the way behind the town of Rio Grande. The yacht club is located at the very end, but… we got stuck again. It was impossible to enter, and this turned out to be great! About twenty meters before the yacht club, there is the pontoon of the Museo Nautico Rio Grande. Here we were allowed to stay for free, with water and shore power, all thanks to the hospitality of Prof. Lauro, the boss of the museum. It was much better than the yacht club could ever be. We saw our first penguins and elephant seal, and sailed with Lauro in his antique sailboat.
The antique fishing boat
Rio Grande was the last town in Brazil for us. We met up with Eduard again, and this time Cecile and Riet left us to continue their voyage on land (they had tasted the worst of all weathers). And so the three of us left Brazil, to Buenos Aires, with Antarctica just behind the horizon…
Going further South...
There is a very good pilot for Brazil: “Cruising the coast of Brazil”, by Marçal Ceccon (www.veleiro.net/rapunzel). Also all the paper charts of the Brazilian coast are free for download on one or another official Brazilian site.
