Atlantic Island Voyage: Saba 1999

28 February 1999
Island of Saba (Netherlands Antilles)

When last heard from, we were thrashing our way upwind toward Dominica, pronounced Domin-ee-ka, accent on the 3rd syllable, as if it were the French name Dominique. This is a small island of about 70,000 mostly English-speaking people located just north of Martinique, and often confused with the much larger spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, to which much of their mail is mistakenly sent.

We anchored in front of the Anchorage Hotel just south of the capital of Roseau. Our friends Bill and Felicity from Maine arrived at the hotel the next day to spend a week exploring the island with us. The hotel dock was especially helpful for getting ashore by dinghy, as there is nothing like a marina or town dock, or even a harbor for that matter, and the steep rock beach gets pretty heavily pounded with surf despite being on the protected west side of the island. While there, we had a 2-day northerly blow, which brought a large swell to the anchorage, and 2 boats went ashore while their owners were off carousing at Carnival. One, a local fishing boat, we bailed out and hauled out to another mooring. The other, a swedish sailboat, we hauled off and then spent the afternoon diving to retrieve their anchors. No shortage of entertainment. Fortunately, our primary insurance policy did its job: we had out two big plow anchors with oversized chain, well dug-in to the sand; the harder it blew, the deeper they dug, although we did have a couple of rolly, noisy nights aboard.

Dominica bills itself as "The Nature Island", having more or less repeatedly failed in a series of economic development ventures. Aside from ecotourism, the carefully protected sale of bananas to England is currently their only major source of income, and even that trade is about to get crushed in the maw of the NAFTA/EEC banana wars.

So, it is a poor place, happy to have visitors come and dive its spectacular reefs and hike in its rain forest, and spend some money, especially US dollars. The high unemployment rate also leads to some aggressive entrepreneurial behavior on the part of many young men, who push their services as trail guides and "boat boys", unpleasant at times. We also had the good fortune to arrive during Carnival Week, which was crazy: my ears are still ringing. Hopefully Shifra or Joel will write more about that, especially the wild "Jump-up" with moving street bands. After two warm up hikes to Trafalgar Falls and Middleham Falls, we bit off a big all-day hike to the Valley of Desolation and the Boiling Lake. The way there was through rain forest, and the trail went at least as far vertically as it did horizontally, or so it seemed to our aching knees. Our destination was a very thermally active area, with bubbling hot sulfur springs, hot streams with water of various hues (orange, yellow, black, white), and a steaming, bubbling lake about 1/4 mile in diameter. The water was white, with a large active spring in the center, and we were told that the temperature was well above 212 degrees fahrenheit. We did not get a chance to actually test this for ourselves, as the walls were vertical 50' cliffs, but it did steam convincingly. Bill got lots of video footage to quiet the skeptics at home. Underwater, the place was equally impressive. Almost every dive had some area with gas bubbles venting from the rock, like champagne. And one dive, actually called Champagne, had hot fresh water rising from thermal vents along with the bubbles. We saw our first sea horses, and on one night dive we saw octopi, large crabs, many lobsters and a variety of odd creatures like slipper lobsters, many of which were new to us. Bill and Felicity brought mail and care packages from home, along with some essential boat supplies, not to mention a nice boost to our spirits. We are all feeling a little homesick at this point. We did two more dives after they flew home, then headed north again.

An uneventful 180-mile overnight sail brought us to the Dutch island of Saba on february 24th. We arrived at sunset, during a rainsquall, with a blaze of rainbows over the island, which was already spectacular enough on its own. It is a tiny, steep volcano rising abruptly out of the sea and reaching up to a permanent cloud cap and tiny rain forest at 3000 feet. Total population is only 1200 people, mostly in 4 absurdly neat, charming little villages perched high above the sea. Until very recently, it was only accessible by landing on a very exposed beach and climbing up 524 steps in the cliff. That the place was settled at all is a mystery. Now there is a breakwater with a harbor big enough for a few dive boats and the occasional tiny freighter, as well as a tiny airport, so it is a little easier to come and go.

There are no hotels, just small guest houses for intrepid tourists who want to dive and hike in a very out-of-the-way place. (note the heavy emphasis on the diminutives) Oh, and a tiny medical school, of all things. We came here because a dive park had been made, with buoyed dive sites, trail maps, and shops willing to fill tanks for independent divers like ourselves who wanted to explore on their own, at their own pace, as in Bonaire. They even put out moorings for visiting boats. A paradise, we thought. NOT! They just banned independent diving, ostensibly to protect the reef, but more likely to protect the dive shops, in our opinion. So our only option was to dive with a dive shop, at $50 a pop (vs. $5 for a tank refill). Needless to say, we did more hiking and snorkeling than planned, both of which were fantastic. We did do a few dives, having come all this way, and the underwater topography was dramatic: pinnacles rising straight up from the abyss, tunnels, walls and such. Compared to Dominica and Tobago, the differences in marine life were more subtle: more of the fish are at the upper limits of size, like 4-5 foot long moray eels, and 4-foot barracudas, which are a little disconcerting when they glide up beside you and look you over with those cold, predatory eyes. Nurse sharks were promised, but none showed up for us. Lots of sea turtles, and very large, healthy corals.

We are sailing again, on a fine, sunny day with a following breeze. St. Maarten, Saba, Statia, St. Kitts and Nevis are all showing off their respective volcanic peaks along the horizon. Bonaire is 450 miles to the southwest, 3-4 days sailing if all goes well.

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: Martinique to Dominica 1999

12 February 1999

West of Martinique, heading for Dominica

The Caribbean way of life has apparently affected me as well; it looks like my last log entry was over a month ago. Despite the hubris of declaring our arrival in Tobago 2 days in advance, we did in fact arrive without incident, and it was a spectacular landfall. The northeastern end of the island is high and dramatic, but even more impressive was the presence of something we hadn't seen since leaving Flores: luxuriant vegetation, everywhere. Amazing what a little rainfall can do for a place. We cleared customs in Scarborough, a charming little port town, with colorful buildings straggling up steep hills and loud Calypso, steel drum, church music and Reggae blaring from various places at all hours. Scarborough is also home to the first Kentucky Fried Chicken we have seen since Farmington, as well as the nastiest set of Immigration officers on the planet. We were pleasantly surprised to find old friends from earlier in the trip here, with whom we did a great rainforest hike and nightly sessions at the Kingswell Inn Pub. We caught up on sleep as well, and restocked the larder with a stunning array of fresh fruits, some of which we'd never heard of.

Joel helped our friend Roland, on Luna Azul, sail his boat down to Store Bay at the southern end of the island, and got some nice video footage of Tammy Norie sailing in convoy. Roland had been stuck in Scarborough for a month with engine troubles and needed a change of scene. Store Bay is the only conventionally touristy part of the island, with a long stretch of white sand beach and numerous hotels. We stayed a couple of days to do some snorkeling, and had a fabulous turkey dinner aboard, courtesy of Roland.

Next we worked our way up the north coast, against wind and current, to Man of War Bay and the town of Charlotteville. This is the NW corner of Tobago, and a different world. Charlotteville is a tiny, picturesque fishing village nestled into a deep cut in the mountains and surrounded by rain forest. Great hiking all around, lots of interesting birds. Then on to Anse Bateau Bay, where we planned to rendezvous with Connie. This is a tiny bay at the northeast corner of the island, completely exposed to the trade winds but protected from the swell by a string of reefs and small islands. While waiting for Connie to arrive, we went into dive camp mode; Shifra got her Open Water Diver certification, and Joel and I did the Advanced Open Water course. This is said to be one of the great diving spots of the world, and we would be inclined to agree: thriving coral reefs, the largest brain coral in the Caribbean, teeming fish life, and a fair sampling of exotics, like Shifra's manta ray. We each did about 8 dives, and lots of snorkeling and free diving from the boat. Joel worked on his lobster-hunting skills. We had a great visit with Connie, who in addition to her delightful self brought a prodigious package of essential supplies, like books, Monty Python CD's, tapes of This American Life, and the latest issues of Funny Times. Enough stuff to keep us laughing for months, which we need to keep us from becoming some kind of floating encounter group. We had rented a car for Connie's visit, which allowed us to check out some other rainforest and waterfall hikes, not to mention a few beaches and restaurants. This was a healthy change from our steady diet of fish life. Left to fend (and cook) for ourselves once again, I abandoned ship and went shopping in Trinidad, for solar panels and the like.Then we popped down to Scarborough to clear customs. In Scarborough, we met up with more friends unexpectedly: Ziggy and Bimbo on La Dengue, en route to Carnival in Trinidad; our Norwegian friend Stein on Alva, en route north from Brazil; and Ariel 4, a Swedish family with 3 sons making a 3-year circumnavigation. These were all boats we had spent time with in Madeira and Gomera, but had not expected to encounter again. After a final celebration at the Kings Well Inn, we moved on to Grenada.

Originally, we had planned to go to Carnival in Trinidad, but decided against it. The music and costumes are supposed to be fabulous, but we kept hearing about what a dangerous unpleasant place Port-of-Spain is, and the prospect of being in a crowded anchorage with 1,000 other boats, for the privilege of roaming the streets with hordes of drunken revelers just didn't seem like our cup of tea on closer reflection.

We had a pleasant overnight run 80 miles to Grenada, where we hoped to haul the boat and do a little bottom painting. That din't work out, but we did get our propane tanks refilled, and now we are moving on to Dominica to meet our friends Bill and Felicity from home. While some would be horrified at our casual passing by of the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Martinique itself, we are drawn to a different sort of island. Dominica, like Tobago, has spectacular mountains and rain forest, great diving, and a minimal tourist industry because of the lack of good beaches and protected harbors. The guidebooks describe it, in their patronizing way, as an "ecotourist destination", or sometimes they just say it is "primitive".

So, we primitives here on our scruffy little wooden boat are thrashing northward at the moment, reefed down and close-hauled into a 20-knot northeasterly wind, bound toward Roseau, island of Dominica, which is 60 miles distant. Mt. Pelee at the northern end of Martinique is standing sentinal on the northeastern horizon as the Pitons of St. Lucia slip below the eastern horizon. Shifra is on watch, playing her clarinet, the dolphins visit from time to time, and a manta somewhere is waiting for us to scratch his ears.

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: Tobago 1999

Shifra's Log, January 30, 1999
Anse Bateaux, Tobago.

We've been here in the tropical paradise of Tobago for a couple weeks now, I figure it's probably about time I checked in with y'all. Since we are in the Caribbean I thought I would take advantage of the crystal clear water, well preserved reefs, and our multiple sets of dive equipment to finally learn how to scuba dive. It just so happened that the hotel overlooking the bay where we are is not only situated near some of the best diving on Tobago, but it is a "Five-Star PADI Resort". I'm not sure what that means (other than that they can charge more for lessons and we get a GOLD certification card rather than a SILVER one), but they are only a miniscule dinghy ride away so once we got here the entire crew of the Good Ship Tammy Norie started in on dive camp. Each morning at nine o'clock we putted in to the dock with our PADI manuals tucked under our arms, Advanced Open Water Diver course for them, ordinary Open Water Diver course for me. After an excruciatingly boring 3 days of classroom work, not to mention the HOMEWORK (I thought I had finally escaped school!) I was ready to "see the fun and adventure diving offers". Sadlly enough the course didn't offer a ritual torching of the PADI manual, because really, there is nothing I would like more than to see that thing go up in flames. Anyway, despite the cheesy writing in the textbook, diving is incredible. The feeling of being underwater and just hovering is...amazing. I feel like the reef is sort of an added bonus, just feeling the water all around me and watching my bubbles ascend to the surface is enough to give me chills.

Nonetheless, the reef is there and what a bonus it is! I've become accustomed to creatures that have previously only existed in photographs. I've learned that parrotfish aren't just blue, they glow, and trunkfish are even stupider looking in 3D, but most importantly I've learned that no photograph and no drawing could ever hope to capture the mindboggling grace of a manta ray. On my final training dive I had the incredible luck to be visited by one of those exquisite creatures. He/she/it was...wow. The only way I can describe their movement is like the most fluid and graceful bird, but without bones. This manta was about 6 or 7 feet from wingtip to wingtip and seemed just as curious about the 5 oddly colored noisy things that had descended into it's world as those bizarre things were about it. I spent most of my air in a gleeful ten minutes of communing with the manta, we followed it up towards the surface, then down again to the depths. We petted, tickled, and caressed it's back and belly until it got sick of us then followed it around until it was ready for more. It was strange, even from close up it looks like mantas would be velvety smooth, like an eel, but they're not. Their skin is rough, like a cat's tongue or a 5 o'clock shadow, and when you touch them you can feel and see the muscle twitch under your hand. It was such a beautiful experience, the woman who was diving with me came to the surface at last when her tank was completely empty and screamed at the top of her lungs out of sheer joy, even the dive masters were feeling giddy.

Hopefully while we're here I'll get a chance to see another one, keep your fingers crossed for me. 'Till next time,

Shifra T.

Atlantic Island Voyage: January 1999

Captain's Log
0200 hours, 9 January 1999

Mike, navigating

Position is 11d34m north, 59d31m west by a very satisfactory fix using the moon, Capella and Canopus. Conditions are the best they have been for celestial navigation, with seas running not more than 10 feet, perfectly clear skies, and a half moon giving enough light for a clear horizon, but not so much as to blank out the stars. The stars are a bit different down at this latitude: Polaris is very low on the horizon, and we can see both the Southern Cross and Canopus, neither of which is ever visible in Maine. This fix is consistent with yesterdays sun fix, and within 2 miles of our GPS, and puts us 57 miles west of Tobago, in good position for a mid-day landfall today, which is ideal. And a very welcome landfall it will be, although it is almost sad to watch the glass run out on this best of all possible passages, 2200 miles in 14 days, with a steady wind all the way and the proverbial flowing sheet, no significant gear failures and no injuries. Almost too good to be true; no doubt something nasty is waiting for us in Scarborough, which is where we will go to clear customs.

This run has been an interesting laboratory for observing our adaptation to motion. There was no gentle transition this time: we went immediately into steep 15-20 foot seas and 30 knot winds, which moderated only in the second week. We experienced the usual spectrum of nausea and more or less difficulty spending time below at first, which is always the case. But I was particularly struck by the more subtle effects of motion this time, not very original observations I am sure, but fascinating to contemplate nonetheless. There are other physical effects besides nausea; headache is common, as is lassitude, both in the sense of sleepiness and in the sense of great mental effort being required for tasks which are normally easy. Sleep is more fragmented and less restorative, with all of us needing more daytime sleep in the first few days. One is more susceptible to fear, and to a sense of feeling overwhelmed by it all and unable to cope with new challenges. These are particularly poignant impairments in weather conditions where frightening things occur, and crises requiring masterful coping and quick action are likely to arise. Other fairly subtle psychological effects occur, including a sort of deadening of the higher human traits: sense of humor is strikingly diminished, as is the capacity for pleasure and delight, and for creative or imaginative thought. The parallel with clinical depression is irresistible. The best description I can come up with to describe the entire constellation of changes would be "dogged coping". To be sure, some of this is purely physical challenge. For example, to heat up and then eat a can of soup in a seaway, without flinging it all over the boat or yourself, and without grievous bodily injury, is a kind of epic gymnastic feat, not unlike what the ancient Irish warriors had to pass through to join Cuchulain's band (minus the requirement to memorize poetry).

The motion-induced changes come into sharper relief as we begin to emerge into our normal states of function. The nausea improves, to be sure, but far more than that. One begins to hear spontaneous laughter again, flashes of wit. The log entries become funnier and more articulate. Appetite improves, and the food both gets and seems much better, not just fuel, as if a Norwegian palate had become French overnight. Undone tasks start to be tended to in an increasingly brisk fashion. And one begins to hear phrases like "Hey, we should try ..... sometime"; imagination returning, like spring. It is so much like what people describe as they emerge from depression or chronic illness, there must be some neurochemistry in common, although the time frame is far more compressed. Perhaps it is just that motion, like any other stress, has an depressive effect on mental function, but one that most people can adapt to and overcome in a matter of days.

And more than overcome. Perversely, motion itself can become a source of pleasure. Take the case of Bernard Moitessier, the famous French singlehander. After sailing once around the world in the Globe race, well ahead of the other competitors, he amazed the world by forgoing the prize and continuing on for another 10,000 miles to Tahiti, most of it in the rough seas of the high southern latitudes. In part, he did this because he loved the sensation of constant motion; he described a kind of hypnotic joy, and dreaded ending it by going ashore. Any lessons here? Probably not, just some random reflections from a mind reawakening to what passes for normality aboard this here barky. I hope you all have a week that is moving, but not too moving. 

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: 12deg 28min North- 55deg 25min West - 1999

Crew's Log- January 7, 1999
Joel Rowland (nephew etc.)
What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor?
Position- 12deg 28min North- 55deg 25min West

My last entry and news from home about the huge snowstorm got me thinking (ouch) and I entertained myself for the duration of an entire 4 hour night watch pondering these two questions...

What would be worse to be hit by than a flying fish?

a flying cow

a frying pan

a snowstorm

the Mafia

an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

a flying fish wrapped in a lawsuit

a wet cat

a truck driver

What are things I'd rather be hit by than a flying fish?

beer

ice cream

a thrown kiss

a biscuit

a flying fish wrapped in a hundred dollar bill

a revelation

(this has got to end somewhere)

(truck optional)

Believe me the list goes on, but 4 hours of things that make me snigger at 4 o'clock in the morning probably isn't what ya'll were hoping for when you logged onto this website.

Onward and upward---

Mother Ocean and our galaxy have been putting on a spectacular show for the past week and a half. At night when the sky's clear the moon and stars have been spectacular- a few days ago when the moon was full it was so bright that I couldn't look directly at it without hurting my eyes. Sunrises and sunsets have also been of the religious experience order and I'm lucky enough to be on watch from 4-8 morning and evening, so I see them all. The other evening there was a particularly amazing one which inspired me to write in my neglected journal, here it is... Before I start I'd like to point out the lack of references to beer and ice cream- thank you very much.

'The sunset tonight was long and slow and beautiful. I was enjoying steering the boat, wind shifty enough to keep it entertaining. I was focused on the seas coming up behind us, wheel in my hand, our sails winged out in front of me and the boat moving and alive beneath my feet, hardly noticed the sun was setting. My mind drifted and I became aware of the sky, first the colors pulled me in, pretty sunset colors shimmering orange and pink against the blue, then the texture of the clouds, all at different altitudes and distances- Tall, billowing cumulus clouds- distant and sweeping black and gray squall lines, high cirrus wisps and tiger stripes of stratus, and I noticed that one side of each cloud was dark- they had a day side and a night side. The sky behind the clouds was a deep blue with a hazy silvery sheen- For a moment all my senses opened up and I felt like I was on the outside looking in at the vast sky above me- I saw the line where day and night meet- Twilight- I could feel the Earth moving through space and sensed the planet spinning beneath me. I watched the twilight line move westward. We are over a thousand miles in the middle of the Atlantic and I know we shared this sunset and this twilight with no-one on Earth, the colors of the clouds darkened, the sky became azure and stars began to appear and to sparkle and the night began.'

So that's it, things are well. We are now within 350 miles of Tobago. Next island, next party. Quality, Mon.

Peas Ruv, Joel

Atlantic Island Voyage: 13deg 00min North- 44deg 40min West - 1999

Crew's Log January 3, 1999
Noon Position- 13deg 00min North- 44deg 40min West
Joel Rowland (Nephew extraordinaire)

You know, it sure is nice to have a screen and keyboard that don't wave around in front of you so much that you end up bouncing your nose on the [[ key when you meant to hit the q. These boisterous but benevolent Trades are finally blowing like the Pilot Chart says they should and, dare I say it, the Milk Run has begun. We passed halfway last night, 7 days out exactly- 1050 miles...!!!!!! I did the math for you- that's averaging 150 miles every 24 hours and 6.25 knots per hour!!!!! And that doesn't even include all the damn up and down. Granted, a small amount of that is current, but I think our average speed through the water is at least 6 knots!

Man, this first week we had all sorts of visitors aboard- among the unwelcome we've had numerous waves- from the great big bucket of water in your face kind, to the kinds that spit in your lap, soak your back, run up your pantleg or drip down your scalp (that was a fun sentence to write). The uninvited but not necessarily unwelcome flying fish have been pelting boat and crew at night, sure they're just as surprised to run into a wall of Gore-tex as we are to be smacked by a fluttering, stinky fish. They litter our decks every morning- from 6 inches long to the tiniest sardine. I've been putting them on fish hooks in the mornings and trying my luck. And up until just the other day we had a chicken aboard!

It wasn't some fancy pelagic chicken or anything, just your ordinary barnyard rooster. Wait, I take that back, he was no ordinary rooster he was a right salty bird from Ilha Brava, Cape Verde. He couldn't wait to get back on the water, in fact, when I brought him aboard for the first time he flapped out of my grasp right into the sea, and the little bugger started swimming! Took him a second to remember how, but once he did he was gone, pulling like Mark Spitz with a little more neck action. I have absolutely no idea where he thought he was headed (maybe for Sydney 2000), but I thought that the deck of our boat would be a little more comfortable, so after I recovered from my initial shock and swearing routine and after almost laughing myself overboard I went and fetched him in the dinghy. He was a real seafarer- he strutted our poop deck in his little chicken oilskins- smoking a pipe, daring those giant squid to come after him. He was looking the wrong way. And unfortunately for him he got his crow back, not to mention his pecking and biting instinct- right around New Year's, so the three of us wrestled him to the deck and somehow in the process his head got chopped off (fine way to treat a guest), and so help me, the very second that I threw it into the sea, a wave washed it right back on board and completely soaked me while it was at it...Ewwww. Do any of you believe in chicken Karma??

Chicken on deck!

Anyhow, we roasted him to perfection and celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's in one big gravy covered throw down. And you can believe that we gave thanks to the spirit of Freestyle, beloved, late rooster of the Good-ship Tammy Norie.

So we're Caribbean bound with a bone in our teeth, knocking down waypoints one after the other and celebrating each with a toast to Neptune and a Mint Milano (thanks Felicity). Yep, all's well on the water. Til next time!

Sea ya- Wouldn't wanna be ya (brrrrr), Joel

Atlantic Island Voyage: 14d 34m North, 34d 33m West - 1998

Captain's Log
30 December 1998, 1600 hours local time
Position: 14d 34m North, 34d 33m West

Day 4 of our passage to Tobago, and we have covered 580 miles, a little over 1/4th of the way; outstanding progress for the old barky. Still contending with a very boisterous trade wind, up to 40 knots at times last night, but moderating some today. The tossing and heaving is mostly done, but we are still rockin' and rollin'. A few bruises and some minor wear and tear on the boat. Lots of flying fish aboard during the night, with the occasional fish in the face while standing watch: that wakes a person up! Still flying single jib, reefed down most of the time. While crude, this has the advantage of being able to reef and unreef quickly and safely from the cockpit as squalls come and go, so no one has to venture out on the exposed foredeck. If the wind ever drops, we will try some more creative sail plan. The poor rooster that we picked up in the Cape Verde's doesn't know what's happening, and has taken to biting the hand that feeds him, although he let out a good crow at dawn today; Joel will be providing a full report in upcoming logs. Happy New Year to all our friends and family.

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: 260 miles West of Brava - 1998

Captain's Log, 28 December 1998
Position: 14d 42m North, 29d 08m West (260 miles west of Brava)
Wind 20-30 knots, northeast
Course 264 degrees true, speed 6-7 knots

The "Milk Run" to Tobago has begun as more of a Milkshake; lots of wind, 15-foot waves, lots of water aboard, and caked salt has now replaced the harmattan dust on our decks and persons, arguably an improvement. We are making fine progress, 144 miles in the past 24 hours, and happy to be moving purposefully again, though we could all do with a bit more modest motion. 1900 miles to go--New World, here we come!

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: Brava

Note from Shifra, Christmas, 1998
Brava

We are now on Ilha Brava, the smallest and western-most island of the Cape Verdes. I don't know how much you know about the Cape Verdes, but they're essentially little pieces of Africa floating on the ocean. Actually, this island and the one next to it (Fogo- it's an active volcano!) are a little more Portuguese than the first ones we visited, but not much. Anyway, the anchorage that we're in now is incredible. There's a small black pebble beach fringed by brightly painted stucco houses which give way almost immediately to steep hillsides. The hills rise into steep jagged peaks all around us, but near the shore it's pretty much your classic paradise (a bit drier than usual though, they're just starting to recover from a 3-year drought).

Brava - Cape Verdes

Apparently there are a lot of Cape Verdeans who live in America, but come back here to Faja de Agua for vacations. We met one of them, Henry Rodriguez, who has been showing us around, he has a pretty sweet piece of property. Up behind his house there are terraced fields of sugar cane which he uses to produce his own Groque/aguardiente/rum/moonshine in his little backyard distillery. He showed us how he makes the rum (110 proof), it's all the old fashioned way too, he uses horses to run the press for the sugar and has basically all the old Okie bootlegger equipment to process the cane syrup. It's really neat. On top of that he has a few fields of white sugar cane for eating, palm trees for coconuts, mango trees, and a few scattered banana trees that look like they're only a few years old. Walking through the shades groves of mangoes with this loud semi wealthy American I could almost forget that the rest of the island- even the rest of the country- lived in a state of pretty god-awful poverty.

Shifra T.

 

Atlantic Island Voyage: Cape Verdes - Faja de Agua 1998

25 December 1998

Christmas Day
Faja de Agua, Brava, Cape Verde Islands

Merry Christmas to all from the shores of Africa, where there are no Christmas carols on the radio. On the other hand, Christmas trees and turkey are in pretty short supply. We are winding up our tour of the dry dusty barren Cape Verde archipelago, in a village described by everyone as the greenest, wettest place on the greenest, wettest island at the extreme western edge of the Cape Verdes. That is to say, if you drill deep enough, you can find water, enough for the 100 villagers here and the 8,000 inhabitants of the rest of the island to drink, do laundry, and even irrigate crops in a limited way. There are even a few flush toilets on the island. And in Faja de Agua palm trees and papayas can find enough water to grow, which gives the eye a small patch of green on which to rest, amid all this expanse of brown rock and dust. At one time, we are told, there was even a stream here running down from the mountain, year-round. Now there is a brief flow of water after a brisk rain, all of which is carefully diverted to reservoirs and cisterns, lest it be squandered by running uselessly into the sea.We actually had rain here last week, for several hours, which completely cleared the Harmattan dust out of the air. Hallelujah.

Water is a central theme in the Cape Verdes. The first island we visited, Sal, is entirely dependent on a desalination plant (ironic, since the island used to make and export salt), and there is no excess for fields or even family gardens. Apart from the tenacious acacia trees, there is simply no vegetation on the island, not even cacti, and the island generously contributed to the load of red Harmattan dust from Africa whenever the wind blew hard, which was almost every day when we were there. (Actually, we shouldn't make too much of this dust business: overall, the climate here is delightful, with no mosquitoes and the breeze quite cool except in the middle of the day.) Palmeira, the town off which we were anchored, had one source of water, a building called the Fontaneira, with 4 taps, connected to the desalination plant. For a few hours each day, the gates were opened and people streamed in with whatever battered plastic jugs they possessed to pay 1 escudo/gallon (about a penny), and then stand in a long line until the battle axe superintendent admitted them to the communal faucets. One false move, or any wasted water spilling over, and she was in their face, screaming. Mad Max, Tank Girl, Waterworld and all the other post-apocalyptic movies we have seen had nothing on this scene, played out daily. We did get some water there, but believe me we didn't spill any.

De-salination plant and water supply on Sal

Sal had other redeeming features, which kept us there almost a week. We went to a wonderful concert by Cesaria Evora, the queen of Cape Verde music, held in a large concrete amphitheater with walls and doors, but no roof. (Why bother, with rain once every 10 years). People were also very friendly, and we felt like we had really made human contact, not just as tourists and not just with crews of other yachts, for the first time since Flores. We also enjoyed meeting crews of some of the other boats: at one point there were 35 of us in the harbor, which is the most protected anchorage in the Cape Verdes. Very few American and British boats, almost all we have met are French, Belgian or German. As in all the islands, we were able to get excellent, fresh-baked bread at 5-7 cents/loaf, and our grand total for harbor and entry fees for the entire month in the Cape Verdes was $10. Overall, a very inexpensive place to cruise.

The Cape Verdes are an interesting mix of Portugese and African culture, in proportions that vary from island to island. The first 2 islands we visited, Sal and Santiago, were much more African in terms of dress, color, and language, speaking mostly an African/Portugese Creole. The islands of Fogo and Brava have been much more Portugese in flavor, more like the Azores, with a more recognizable Portugese being spoken. Here we are seeing more intensive cultivation with irrigation levadas and terraces, houses that tend to be more of finished and painted stucco, and lighter-skinned people with more European dress. Still quite the rainbow of skin color compared with Maine. All the islands are appallingly poor, with an economy based on low-technology fishing from small boats, subsistence agriculture (where water can be had) and lots of informal aid from relatives abroad in lieu of exports. Tourism is talked about, and there are apparently a few small hotels on the nice beaches, as in Sal, but this is in the fetal stage at best. There are about 300,000 inhabitants of the Cape Verdes who actually live here, and another 400,000 or so abroad, mostly in the US. Brava's population is even more distorted, with 8,000 on the island and 37,000 in the US. This was a major port for the New Bedford whalers, with an excellent protected harbor in Porto da Furna, and close ties have been maintained between the 2 communities ever since. We have had a royal welcome here on Brava simply because we are the first American yacht anyone here has seen in a long time.

While we were in Porto da Furna, the other harbor on Brava, the Prime minister of the Republic of Cape Verde came to the island to visit. There is a tiny airport but it is almost never used because it is so dangerous, so he arrived aboard the Cape Verde navy, which is a 100-foot patrol boat with no guns. He went ashore in a rowboat rowed by local teenagers, like every other cargo which arrives here including cars, and walked into a political hornets nest. It seems the Bravans are chronically unhappy about the fact that they get more public works accomplished using dollars from New Bedford than with Escudos from the capital in Praia. I met the minister of state the next day, and he was still a little shaken up. So Bill Clinton is not the only one who don't get no respect.

Cinder cone on Fogo - a rugged hike to the top!

There is much more to say, especially about Santiago and Fogo, and one of us will get around to it soon. The boat is ready for the next big jump, probably starting tomorrow, weather permitting of course, although there isn't much weather here other than the northeast trade winds this time of year. All that's left to do is have Christmas Dinner, get a few eggs, some fruit, maybe a chicken, and we're off to Tobago, 2100 miles to the westward. So it's out with the Old World and in with the New.

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: Cape Verde Islands - Sal 1998

13 December 1998

Joel's Log, December 13, 1998
Sal, Cabo Verde

Hello Everybodeee!!! Welcome abored (sic) the Tammy Norie. I realize that it's been awhile since you've heard from us. We've been too occupied lately defining our new roles on the boat to give ya'll an update. Thanks to all of your good input we know that one of us is a turkey, one of us is a dodo and one of us is a slacker but there's some debate as to who's what. Hmmm...

This island, Sal, is quite a place. I've honestly never seen anything like it. If ever there was a landscape that I could paint, this is it. Just a flat line with a three spiky hills, a few patches of scruffy acacia trees and surround it with ocean. Bob Ross eat your heart out. The people are very cool everyone makes eye-contact and greets you. My first few steps ashore, I was taking it all in, I admit I must have had a guarded expression on my face, feeling a little like a sore thumb- But I passed a small group of little boys, the nearest one to me and I locked eyes, I think he was mirroring my expression- Sort of furrowed brow curiosity, an ambiguous face. But after we passed he reached back and touched my arm very lightly, I turned around and he gave me a goofy grin and a thumbs up. I laughed, and gave him thumbs up back. It was such a neat thing for him to do, and amazingly perceptive of the little guy. I relaxed so much after that. I think that this is an inherently good place, despite its bleakness...

Sal landscape

Yeah. We're in the Cape Verdes. What does that mean to you? To us it means, Africa and lots of it. 350 miles off the coast of Senegal, the islands had been a Portuguese Colony since the mid- Fifteenth century, they peacefully won their independence in 1975. But Portugal hasn't exactly been a financial superpower in a really long time and these islands seem to have been left to more or less fend for themselves. And they seem to have done a fair job of it from what I saw. They are completely different from anywhere that I've ever been. I'm sure the U.N. classifies them as a 'Developing Country', as in people are really poor- Please understand that this is only my impression of things from what we've seen thus-far, which amounts to two of the ten islands and the second-largest city in the group, I've heard no numbers, or done any research, basically, I'm just spouting- (WHALE!) All of the houses are cinder-block and many of them have pigs, chickens, goats- you name it milling around their doorstep.

Tchiede and Tidan with Joel and Shifra with a bottle of grog aboard Tammy Norie

The streets and roads are cobblestone, and everybody's wearing last year's styles. The island of Sal our first stop was really dry, one of my friends there said that it hadn't rained in two years- I have no idea what they did for water before they opened the de-salination plant. The island is basically just a desert of red dust and rocks- the wind is constant and blowing hard enough that all the stunted acacia trees that have managed to survive are all bent to the Southwest, it seemed to me like the whole island was being relentlessly blown into the sea. That's the other thing- the wind has a name- it's called the Harmattan. It blows from mainland Africa and is filled with fine red dust, that fills the air and plasters everything it hits- It's more passive than a sandstorm- the air feels heavy but you can't actually feel the dust on your skin- but you can see it on everything- the boat is covered with it. Anyway I must say that the people of Sal were welcoming and friendly- Very rarely would I make eye contact with someone who didn't say Hello- or Hola or the equivalent- And I met some really good guys there who were my age they spoke English well enough that we could communicate fairly well, and Rum, the universal translator is only 30 cents a glass here, so conversation flowed. Anyway I was really impressed by how content these guys were, they had their family and friends, their health, most of them had jobs- and I think they realized that was really all they needed and were thankful for it. None of the dispossessed confusion that seems to affect a lot of people my age at home, receiving mixed messages about their responsibilities and roles in life from our over materialistic and pseudo- spiritual culture. Ah but enough of that.... Here we are on our way from Santiago(beautiful harbor, nice beach, sweet fishing boats painted Rasta-style) to the island of Fogo. And how appropriate for me to be making this entry as the name Ilha do Fogo means- Island of Fire- in Portuguese (remember my last entry??). How they keep it lit surrounded by all this water remains to be seen- because even though our chart tells us that it's only 3 miles away, thanks to the Harmattan (cough!), we have yet to see it. Supposedly there's an active Volcano on the island somewhere that last eructated in 1995- We hope to go check it out, cause we're that hard-core. We've also heard that people who go all the way to the top of the cone have to sort of hop, prance and dance in place because the ground's so hot- So wish us luck- Hopefully we'll live to tell about it. And if you hear about any explosions in the Eastern Atlantic any-time soon, remember this- we didn't touch nothing.

Talk to ya later- Joel

P.S. To the second-graders- We just saw a pair of whales, a big one and a little one, the little one was playing and leaping out of the water! We think they may have been Sperm whales.

Atlantic Island Voyage: Tenerife. 28 November 1998

28 November 1998

Tenerife

I went fishing a few days before we left Gomera- Piled my tackle and fishing-pole, snorkel gear and speargun into the dinghy and took off around the island. My unspoken goal for the day was to spear a squid, but I would have been content with spearing a big fat grouper or hooking something fat with my line as I drove around. It was a fine sunny day and I probably ended up motoring almost 15 miles out around the island before I found a really sweet spearfishing spot up in a little bay with an abandoned settlement. So I chucked the anchor over and hopped in, puttering around in the water looking for yummy fish to bring home for dinner. There was plenty to look at, but everything I saw was much too small.

Suddenly out of the gloom below me I caught a flash of white, reacting instinctively I twisted and dodged while firing my spear over my shoulder. The death struggle with the ferocious hammerhead began- No, just kidding, no sharks in the real version, hope I didn't scare you. For real I was just diving and looking under boulders in good hiding places, when all of a sudden this completely strange creature just sort of materialized in front of my eyes, about 3 feet from the bottom. It was the length of my forearm (wrist to elbow), and sort of a mottled brownish purple, it had a big fat body with a translucent skirt around it, and short, stumpy arms/ tentacles. We both surprised each other and backpedaled a bit, then hovered and stared at each other. It took me a moment of staring before I realized it was a cuttle-fish. So I raised my spear and popped him. He squirted ink everywhere, man. It was a 5 minute trek with flippers back to the dinghy and he still had some ink in him when I loaded him aboard. I decided that he was close enough to a squid to count so I headed home.

Took me a little while to get back but it wasn't too bad in the sunshine. And this fish just kept changing colors, he ended up being white with brown tiger-stripes. Pretty cool. The coolest part though was cleaning him. And I'll spare you the details of that. Never did get to taste him though- I was literally on my way from the dock to the frying pan with him and I slipped and flung the huge plate of fresh Calamari into the harbor. Uggh.

Curse of the Devil Fish. I hate anti-climax, but sometimes life is just like that, eh.

Joel

 

Atlantic Island Voyage: South of Tenerife, 29 November 1998

29 November 1998

Position: 26d 3m North, 18d 33m West 120 miles south of Tenerife
Steering 210 degrees, for Ilha do Sal, Cape Verde archipelago

Wind is the NE trade, dead aft, 20-25 knots, occasional gusts to 30.
Barometer is rock solid and the weather is fine.
We are tearing off the 780 miles to Sal with a bone in our teeth: 
6-7 knots under double-reefed mainsail and poled-out genoa deeply
reefed.

Ashore on Gomera

After a furious last-minute round of negotiations with Pirahna Brothers Press, the threatened launch of the tactical thermonuclear device was called off and the missile rolled back into their garage. Their parting observation was, "we wouldn't throw away a good piece of equipment on this piece of #@&*!".We believe that was intended as an insult, but it appears that we once again have the freedom to write whatever pops into our waterlogged brains. Our apologies if you were among those many readers hoping for a direct hit.

The Canaries are among the islands now referred to as Macaronesia, very loosely translated as The Fortunate Isles. This group also includes the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape Verdes. While there is controversy about the exact sequence of their formation, there appears to be consensus that all these islands began with great volcanic events, in some cases combined with either uplifting or separating tectonic plates. The high islands, like Flores, Madeira Grande, and Gomera have been able to capture moisture from the clouds which form high on their upwind slopes, resulting in deep valleys where streams occasionally run. (Think Grand Canyon). The lower islands, like Porto Santo and Lanzarote, look more like the Sahara just over the horizon. The high, "wet" islands are suitable for farming, with some difficulty: terraces have to be made on the very steep hillsides by building stone walls and backfilling with dirt, and water has to be brought to the fields somehow. The levadas of Madeira are the highest evolution of this process. In Gomera, the more popular strategy is to impound water in reservoirs created by building dams in a stream bed to catch all of the occasional rainfall. The fields are clustered in valleys below each reservoir. During the 1930's and 40's, there was a sudden drop in the population of Gomera, from 30,000 to 20,000: the old-timers we talked to said it was partly due to men going off to fight Franco, but more because the climate became gradually drier, forcing many farmsteads to be abandoned.

We saw a number of very extensive ghost settlements and terraces which looked fairly recently inhabited, a depressing sight when one considers the heroic effort of carving out terraces in the hillside to begin with (not unlike what happened in New England in the 1800's as better land opened up out West and people got tired of growing rocks). In the case of Gomera, people emigrated to Venezuela and Tenerife or shifted into tourism-related work. Agriculture is far from abandoned, however. Where water can be gotten, there are banana groves, large vineyards, citrus groves, and lots of goats (we encountered one herd of nearly 200).

Although it is too steep and craggy for anything more than a small landing strip, tourism has also found Gomera, with crowds of Germans (and other pasty-faced white people like ourselves)arriving by ferry from Tenerife. For the active hiker/masochist, the island offers a dramatic, vertical landscape, with walking trails through either desert, mountains, or the lovely laurel forest which grows on the northern slopes of the island. This is a carefully guarded treasure, being one of only 2 remaining examples of this type of forest which used to cover the entire Mediterranean basin. Madeira Grande has the other.

The Canaries have had more in the way of human history than either the Azores or Madeira, both of which were unpopulated at the time of Portugese discovery. The original inhabitants are genetically African, blue-eyed Berbers from the west coast of Africa. This stone-age culture, known as the Guanches, were "discovered" and subdued (i.e., exterminated, mostly) by the conquistadores in the 1400's. On Gomera, some traces of that culture can still be found in the form of unique foods such as almagrote, a whistling language known as "silbo", and some folk music and dance that is primarily rhythmic and not very Spanish-sounding. One of the early visitors to the island was C. Columbus, who almost didn't make it to the Caribben because of his obsessive attachment to Beatriz de Bobadilla. Some speculate that he made 3 more voyages as a pretext for visiting Gomera again.

These islands for centuries marked the Western border of the known European world, giving rise to numerous legends. They have been variously called Atlantis, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, the Fortunate Isles, and one of them was probably St. Brendan's Isle. (Gomerans make a pretty good argument that is was Gomera itself). It is imaginable that the Tir na Nogh of Irish legend, the enchanted place to the west, was one of these islands, perhaps in the Azores, which actually look a lot like parts of Ireland. We found some ancient maps while we were here, one of which gave Flores (westernmost Azores) as the prime meridian (now Greenwich), and the other Hierro (westernmost of the Canaries). In the pre-Columbian mindset, the end of the earth would not have been much further west. 

We ended up staying for 3 weeks in Gomera, which included a wonderful visit from Connie, who also brought along some much-needed supplies and equipment. Then on to Santa Cruz, Tenerife, for final resupply, topping off of propane, diesel and water tanks, and food supplies, before pushing on for the Cape Verdes, where all these things will be harder to find. This passage should take about a week, and our itinerary is still up in the air: we'll clear in at Sal, and we'd like to see the volcano on Fogo, but the rest we'll play by ear.

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage: Gomera. 19 November, 1998

19 November 1998

Gomera

Okey dokey, here ya go, it's the BRAND NEW (trumpet fanfare), NUMBER ONE (choir of angels), episode of FLOSSIE THE FLYING COW (Madre de Dios!!). Nope, actually, sorry to disappoint you but this is really just Shifra's first Lubber's Log -quick mom, get the camera!- and if any cows show up they're going to get REALLY hungry here on the southern slopes of Gomera. Well, following in the brave, stinky footsteps of my dear cousin I'm going to take you for a brief jaunt around the North Atlantic.

Although I haven't gone for three day hikes into Cauldrons of Hell, I think I've come about as close to seeing hell as any human can. While mum was here last week (no, no, no, that wasn't hell) we decided that we'd take a day to go see Tenerife since Da and Joel had already been there (and done that). Well, at six o'clock on Thursday morning I staggered out of bed with bleary eyes and a slight sunburn itch tugging at my fingers from the day before. Well, we got on the ferry over to Tenerife just in time to see the sun rising over Teide. The tallest mountain in Spain, Teide is the crowning glory of Las Canadas del Teide National Park, and probably one of the coolest words ever thought up -at least, it's really cool to say. As the ferry pulled out of the dock the mountain was still silhouetted against a slowly lightening orange sky, which blended to yellow and pink. Then BAM! the first rays of the sun hit the upper slopes, bathing the faint covering of snow in rosy light. As the sun crept higher more of the mountain and the jagged peaks surrounding it were revealed, until finally the sun freed itself entirely and shone down without mercy upon the west coast of Tenerife and our destination, Los Cristianos. Los Cristianos could be kindly described as Miami's soul sister of the eastern Atlantic, or less kindly, as, well, I'm supposed to be a role model for the second graders (hi Ms. Larsen), so I won't repeat the descriptions we thought up while driving through.

After the ferry dropped us off in Los Cristianos we headed toward Teide and the Park. I swear it was some of the most incredible scenery I've ever seen. As we entered the park jagged teeth of rock jutted out all around us. The early morning sun backlit the thin pine trees struggling to thrive in the sandy, volcanic soil. The road wound around a bend and all of a sudden we were in a valley where the trees were stopped abruptly by an ancient flow of lava. Teide dominated the landscape to the right of us while cliffs -ancient caldera walls perhaps?- rose out of the dust to our left. Cascading down from Teide's slopes were rivers of tormented red rock overlapped by one long line of black which emerged about halfway down the mountain and ended a few hundred meters later, as if some twisted God had wanted to play traffic controller and said "Okay, that's enough for today, stop here." Well stop it did and God must have gone on to his coffee break because since that day in the late 17 or 1800's there hasn't been a single eruption. Well, that wasn't the only incredible part of the valley. Where the tortured flows of spiny lava hadn't reached, orange and yellow and red sand formed a base for broom bushes, a plant unique to Las Canadas. The bushes looked like tiny green alien spacecraft resting on the perfectly flat sand plain. Across this barren paradise the road rushed on, hedged in only by the cliffs which rimmed the valley in striations of red, brown, orange and the occasional splash of lime green- proof of iron ore deposits.

Our mad race across the valley floor, sadly, could not last forever. Soon we found ourselves threading our way slowly upwards between bizarre, twisted spires of rock -aptly, but not originally, named "Los Roques"- towards the base of Teide. As we approached the peak we could see the cable car swaying up to the top from it's base station before us. Since we were there for the full touristic experience mom and I parked the car in the immense, but still empty parking lot at the gondola's entrance. It was only ten in the morning, yet somehow a tour bus jam packed full of Germans had managed to arrive before us.

Nonetheless we got our tickets for the ride up and -just barely- got onto the next car. There were just two cable cars and so at any given time there was one going up and one going down. The ride only took about 5 or 10 minutes, but when we bounced our way over the support poles (ahh, memories of ski lifts back home!) it seemed like we would never live to see the top. Well, we got to the end of the line and stepped out onto the snow covered path that led to the very top. We scrambled our way around rocks and signs reminding us to "Keep Teide Tidy!" until we came to a small outlook roughly three quarters of the way up the mountain where, inexplicably, the path stopped. Friendly signposts told us -in 5 equally disappointing languages- that no one was allowed to go to the actual top because they feared erosion and such. It made sense, but I couldn't shake the feeling that we had just been thoroughly shafted. Not only that but we had skipped our chance to get our pictures taken with the traditionally dressed Canarian girl. Oh well. It was nice for me to be cold again though, I guess that little dose of snow will have to last me for a while.

When we came back down from -not quite- the top of Teide it was almost noon and the parking lot and road leading up to it were clogged with frustrated tourists and busses full of people just waiting to get on top of the highest mountain in Spain. It was a perfect day for it. Coming around the side of the island we had been able to see 3 of the other islands floating of in the distance. Even from only part of the way up Teide the view had been incredible, still, the sheer volume of tourism in that area switched all of my mental breakers to "cynical". Nonetheless, we were unwavering in our quest to "see the sights" and proceeded to take on the challenge of .... the Visitor's Center. Actually, we had timed it just right and were able to actually spend some time finding out more about the Guanches while everyone else was eating lunch. The Guanches were the people who had inhabited the Canaries before the Spanish came along. They were a fairly primitive people who, surprisingly, had no nautical interests. As far as I could tell they didn't have boats at all (yet they must have gotten there somehow!) and centered most of their existence around goat herding rather that fishing. Well, personally I'd rather sail than herd goats, but I guess to each his own. Anyway, after we'd conquered the visitor's center we decided that our work in the park was done and it was time to head back towards the water and home.

Shifra T. 

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Canary Islands

17 November 1998
La Gomera

We're still here. We like it. A lot.

MR

.....Editors note: We apologize for the sad decline in the quality of the recent Captain's Logs. We have revoked funding for this pitiful expedition, and a tactical thermonuclear device has been launched, which should remove the literary blight known as "the crew of Tammy Norie" once and for all. We hope you will enjoy "The Adventures of Flossie the Flying Cow", which will be taking over this web site shortly.......-Pirahna Bros. Press

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Canary Islands

Captain's Log, Halloween, 1998
La Gomera, Canary Islands

We left Funchal on Thursday noon, and had a very fast run to La
Gomera, 304 miles in 52 hours, a record for us. En route, we thoroughly cleaned the bilges and topped off the batteries, so the boat is happy with us. While here, we will also clean the Funchal harbor gunk off the sides of the hull. Midway here, we ran into an easterly wind with a haze of very fine red dust, the Harmattan wind from the Sahara desert, which plagues the Canary Islands from time to time. Not really surprising, since the west coast of Africa is only 200 miles to the east of us right now. We picked up the coast of Tenerife on radar at sixteen miles, but never saw it, even though we passed within 4 miles. We couldn't see Gomera until we were 2 miles away. Under normal conditions Pico Teide, the 12,000-foot volcano in the center of Tenerife, can be seen as far away as 100 miles. We are tucked snugly into the fine, cheap, modern, new marina in San Sebastian de Gomera, where we will stay for 2 weeks or so. Connie is flying in next week, and we look forward to exploring the island with her. From here, we can also take ferries to the 2 other equally remote islands of the Western Canaries, Hierro and La Palma. We may also go to one of the larger islands, Tenerife or Gran Canaria for boat supplies before moving on. The skiing here is not very good, and it's hot and muggy at the moment, but we can take all the cold showers we want, so no hay problema.

Hasta luego, 
MR

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Madeira, 31 October

Captain's Log, Halloween, 1998
La Gomera, Canary Islands

With great difficulty we have torn ourselves away from Funchal, after a stay of almost 3 weeks. We got in a total of about 10 levada and mountain walks apiece, and there would be enough for several months more. The blisters are starting to heal. We rented a car for the last 2 days, which opened up a whole new world of more remote walks inaccessible by bus, but for the most part were able to get where we wanted to go cheaply using public buses and our own shanks. We might have stayed even longer, but for the fact that our bilges were starting to smell like the harbor; imagine equal parts septic tank, old motor oil, and fishy salt water. Marina fees were a bit steep, too.

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On one of our walks, along the Rabacal Levada, we startled a group of sheep grazing on a very steep slope. We saw them bounding up the hill and heard a splash, which we thought was a rock they'd dislodged. We rounded the bend, and were amazed to see a very young lamb down in the water, bleating wildly and losing ground against the flow of cold, cold water, which was about a foot deep. Without a pause, Shifra took off her shoes, jumped in, and set the poor wee beastie up on the bank. He was just barely able to clamber up to his mum; hard to imagine how he even got up there in the first place. This was on the side of a mountain, 3000 feet up, with slopes averaging about 45 degrees, much steeper in places. Tough sheep they've got there in Madeira. We did observe, by the way, that they all had legs of equal length, unlike the cows of the Azores. Perhaps evolution is not so far advanced in Madeira.

Another highlight of our time in Funchal was the purchase of a barrel of wine. Ziggy, our French friend, had found the shop, and brought back his barrel with great panache. He even went so far as to cut into one of his bulkheads to make a permanent mount. God forbid we should be outdone by a Frenchman. So off we went in search of the nameless, signless shop on one of the backstreets of the old town, and in our very best (unintelligible) Portugese, asked if we could purchase a barrel for our very own.

The old gentleman replied, in a torrent of toothless Portugese, that it was "vinho natural", no additives, stomped by foot in the traditional way, and for domestic consumption only, illegal to export. We would have to take it out in a big sack and tell no one who had sold it to us. This took some time to work out, during which various people came in with plastic jerry cans of various sizes, which he filled with a siphon from one of several immense oak casks, a line of which stretched back into the gloom. In the intervals between other customers, he let us sample some of the vintages, dipping into the casks with a long bamboo cup.

We asked if we had a choice between red and white wine: "ha, ha, we only have MADEIRA wine, which is neither red nor white". Overcome by the rustic wonder of it all, we plunked down our 18,000 escudos (about $100) and watched entranced as he uncorked a bright new 16-liter oak barrel, popped in a funnel, snaked a long hose into the mother cask, sucked on it to start the flow, and ran the pinkish-orange stuff in till the little barrel overflowed. Then he bunged in a large cork, and Bob's Your Uncle. We stuffed it into our largest knapsack, and staggered off (due to the weight, of course) in ridiculous pride. Once home, we screwed in the petcock, and invited all the other boats in the raft-up over for a victory round. Fortunately, there was still quite a bit left afterward. We lash it down while underway, and prop it up in the foc's'le while in harbor. At our fastidious rate of consumption, it should last most of the trip, unless the barrel springs a leak, in which case proper thrift would demand a quick kill.

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Madeira, 24 October

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October 24, 1998 
Crew's Log 
Madeira Grande, Portugal
Joel Rowland, Nephew extraordinaire 

Hope you all have V-chips 'cause here comes Joel's adventures on Madeira (ma darlin')- No, no, you can uncover the kids eyes, the only dirty stuff in this entry are my feet, which you should count yourself lucky are on the other side of the Atlantic.

Anyhow, I just finished a couple day stint tromping around this island, pack on my back, boots on my feet, eyes wide open and a song on my lips (for the scary parts). I started from a mountain pass called Encumeada, it gave me a head start of 3000 vertical feet, and on this island the bus ride up is half the adventure. The busses themselves are ultra modern, no old school busses with chickens and pigs in your lap here. But the roads, now paved smooth, were built for horse carts, and Madeira probably has a bus system in the first place because the horses refused to work on such roads. 

Anyway, if there have been any horse/bus tragedies in the past they're keeping them quiet, though that would make a great museum.... So I hopped off the bus at Encumeada, and bounded the 40 feet to the cafe at the top of the pass. There is no shortage of places to spend money on Madeira, and this particular place had really good empanadas. So three empanadas and a Coke later, I started up my trail, contemplating the concept of 'independence'. That didn't last too long though as I had also bought a pack of malted milk balls at the cafe, trail food ya know, and as the trail got steeper and hotter I became engrossed in how quickly they disintegrated in my cheek, and how much further I had to go before I could have another one. A pack of malt balls will only last for so long under such strenuous circumstances and eventually I was forced to concentrate on the task at hand. This trail was intense, flight after flight of stairs either carved into the rock or built onto it, there were sections that had been built outward from a sheer rock cliff, I stood back and tried to figure out how it had been done but the only thing that I could come up with was, "Damn, whoever built this was crazy.". They must have gotten a special deal from the malt ball factory, too.

Eventually the stairs ran out and the trail became a normal dirt and gravel path. Slowly but surely I gained altitude, stopping often to take in the beauty of the mountains around me and the valley way, way below me. I groaned a little when the trail would descend to traverse a ravine or skirt some impassable terrain, but it always continued back up. Up and up, switching back and forth, sometimes looking over the dry, hot South side of the island, and sometimes over the green and lush North, always with the sea in the distance, a reminder that I was a little guy in the middle of a small island that's in the middle of a big ocean (at the end of a long sentence, ed.). It was on this walk that I perfected my Ba-aa-aaa. The computer really doesn't do it justice, ask me next time you see me. There were lots of sheep along the trail, some of them quite conversational, of course, I had no idea what I was saying, and it scared most of them away.

That's funny, that pretty much sums up the majority of my conversations with the people on this island, too.

Anyway, as I am, after all, the hero of this entry, I eventually found my way to the top of Madeira's tallest mountain, Pico Ruivo at 6200 feet. The climb was well worth it, from the top I had a 360 degree view of the island. Clouds as far as I could see had surrounded its perimeter and from my elevated vantage point it looked as if Madeira was floating in a sea of clouds. And then, as the sun sank lower, and the land cooled, the clouds swirled below me and engulfed the island, cutting the tops of the tallest peaks adrift, including the one on which I stood. The sun began to set, and that settled it, I was sleeping right there. I set up my tent and lay with my head outside for awhile and watched the stars come out, sipping wine (trail juice) and eating olives.... It was a good night, not too cold up there, just enough to make me feel that much more snug inside my sleeping bag. I woke up and once again the island was clear of clouds. I soaked up the morning sunshine and marveled at the scenery while I ate breakfast. Packed up and started down the hill towards Caldeirao Verde, the Green Cauldron!

It took me a little while to find the right trail down into the valley- Yeah, so there was a big, huge carved sign pointing to the trail, but sometimes you have to look just a bit deeper than the obvious, to go out on a limb, to explore the unexplored,to seek out new life and new civilizations....to get lost. I found a trail. I wasn't sure if it was the trail I was looking for, but beggars can't be choosers (I think that's the moral of this entry), so I followed it. This time it went down, down, down. It practically plunged into a valley of ferns and laurel trees. Oh man, the air down there was so cool and fragrant. I half hoped a giant butterfly would come land on my shoulder. I had left all my sheep friends far behind though, so I decided that I had a perfect opportunity to try talking to myself. We, I and I, that is, talked about all sorts of incredibly boring stuff, in the end I decided it would be best if I just shut up and enjoy the walk down. It was quite nice, like I said, thick with plants, and such a nice change to be going down. After an hour of continuously walking downhill I started thinking about how much quicker it would be if I could roll down, Joel Rowland, nephew extraordinaire and pioneer of the sport of rolling down steep hills with a big pack. Everybody follow me!!! In the end I decided not to risk breaking my precious bottle of trail juice and I rode the slow train down.

Lo and behold, I had managed to find the right trail, a fork in just the right place with all the right landmarks, the world looked shiny and new. I even stashed my pack in the bushes to skip up the fork I didn't want, just to check out the view. Continuing on down MY path I came to the Levada do Caldeirao Verde- Canal of the Green Cauldron- which sounded pretty good, but what truly got me stoked (ha) was knowing that at the end of the Caldeirao Verde levada another levada began, which ended at the Caldeirao do Inferno- The Cauldron of Hell! Maybe I would never come back or wanna come back, but this I had to see. So I started stepping, and promptly came to a tunnel bobbing with flashlight beams, headed my way. I stepped off the path at my end of the tunnel and allowed the group to pass, they were Germans, led and caboosed by two obviously Madeiran guides with stout walking sticks, which no doubt could quickly become weapons if I didn't give way. It was plain to see that they had turned back before Caldeirao do Inferno, they didn't look the least bit tormented or charred. I hurried through the tunnel and carried on my way.

The levadas are not very demanding physically, for the most part they remain fairly level. The thing is that sometimes to obtain this nice level run, the builders had to remove sections of cliffs or dig through solid granite. So not only do they meander by some spectacular scenery, sometimes they are the spectacular scenery. There were many times along this walk that I would like to have stopped to scratch my head and say "How'd they do that?" but I was too occupied with putting one foot in front of the other. The times that I was able to look up and around I saw that I was in one of the lush ravines that I had feasted my eyes on at the top of Pico Ruivo that morning. I was looking down on a now dry, thanks to the levada, riverbed, maybe 700 feet down. The walls of the levada and the sides of the ravine were covered with vegetation and sometimes dripping with water and waterfalls. As I walked I passed another unsinged group, and was shooed off the path once again by a Madeiran with a big stick, fair enough, they were working, I was playing. In a few more minutes, walking along some particularly inspiring levada work I came to the Caldeirao Verde. A 300 ft waterfall with a series of pools at the base of a half-round shaped cliff that gives the impression that its surrounding you. The entire cliff face and the area around the pools is absolutely blanketed- carpeted- covered with ferns so thick that they look like scales. I was dazzled by green.

Perhaps influenced by faeries and despite the possibility of a thwacking by a stout stick I went swimming under the waterfall. It was cold but I got away with it, and being cold I felt even better prepared for my next stop at the Cauldron of Hell. On I went, at one point climbing a crumbling and heaving stone stairwell 350 ft.. I felt sort of funny ascending when I thought I should be descending, but who am I to question where Satan puts his crockpot, so I went with it. 
When I got within a few minutes of the end (of the Levada), I ditched my pack in some bushes, confident that I would collect it upon my return. I came to a series of tunnels, a couple of them had sharp bends so that I couldn't see any light at the other end. One had a small waterfall at the entrance which left me no choice but to get wet in order to continue. I started to feel a little like a glutton between getting doused and the anxiety I felt in the bending tunnels. Finally I came to a particularly long tunnel, that had a strong breeze and a faint rumbling at the entrance, as I plunged deeper the rumble became louder and louder until I came round the final bend, and the tunnel opened up to a waterfall in a dark ravine, this was actually the head of the ravine I'd walked down into and had been walking along on all day. I stood on the edge of a spillway, collecting water from the falls and shunting it down the levada. The path carried on over a couple of sturdy wood and steel bridges, built not only to dodge the waterfall, but to cross the now dry gully 100 feet down. Man, you'd think I'd have been tired of all the crazy scenery and stuff, but no, there was more to see, I hadn't even reached my Ultimate Destination. But I was close, I could practically hear the water boiling. More tunnels, and I kept expecting to be blasted by steam at every bend, but alas, the anti-climax, which I will spare you all from.

All I'll say is that I've been to the Portuguese Cauldron of Hell, and it wasn't that bad. No flames, no horned beasts (besides me), no otherworldly maniacal laughter, all in all a fairly benign place. The coolest part was that I got to walk back along the same path that I walked earlier that day. Which had everything I could have asked for in a path. Adventures, ah yes.

This entry is long enough. Hope you all are good, as you can tell, I'm having all sorts of fun, and now we are on Gomera, a whole new island to explore. Quality, Mon. - Joel 

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Madeira, 18 October

Captain's Log
18 October 1998
Funchal, Madeira

It has been 3 weeks since the last log entry, and it's time to write before there is so much to say that it becomes impossible. Our "brief stop" in Porto Santo, turned into 11 days. As anchorages go, it was almost ideal: perfectly protected, water clean enough to swim in, excellent inexpensive moorings, and a large and friendly community of other sailboats from all over the world. Here we finally joined the annual southward migration from Europe which occurs every fall. At one point, there were 30 other boats anchored, moored or tied to the dock in Porto Santo, a sort of United Nations flotilla, with crews from the four corners of the globe. In this case, however, the 4 corners would be Alaska, South Africa, Israel and perhaps Norway. We don't see many boats from places like Pakistan or Ethiopia. So far, in decreasing order, we have seen boats from England, France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa (they all say "the NEW South Africa"), Italy, Ireland and Israel. And of course the USA. And conveniently for us, whenever groups of several nationalities get together to socialize, everyone speaks English. So while we are working on our Portugese, our German, French and Spanish are gathering dust. The Pax Romani is long gone, and in its place, the one-two combination of the Pax Britannica and Hollywood has moved into the vacuum. The Brits, of course, don't like to hear us say we speak "English". They like the quip that England and the US are "two nations divided by a common language" (Oscar Wilde?, Mark Twain?)

Porto Santo is most notable for its 3 miles of perfect sandy beach, almost completely undeveloped, although that won't last much longer. Until fairly recently, this small island was accessible only by small ferry from Madeira Grande, and scratched along on subsistence agriculture and fishing. Now there is a jet airport, a daily car ferry, and a fine harbor created by the building of a mammoth breakwater, while tourism has quickly eclipsed all other economic activity. So far, this has meant mostly visitors from Madeira Grande, which is cooler, wetter, and without any sandy beaches. But the wider world is discovering it as well, and hotels are starting to spring up. The EC has pumped money into development there as well, enlarging the harbor, and funding a huge desalination plant. My theory is that the EC is preparing the island for the day when drug-resistant Tuberculosis spills out of Russia, and thousands of people have to be isolated somewhere warm, dry and pleasant, sort of like the US Public Health Service did with Leprosy patients on Lanai. Naturally, no one will fess up to that. It is a volcanic island, but none of the peaks are very tall, so it doesn't catch rain in the way Madeira Grande does. There is enough moisture at the higher elevations to grow trees, which they are doing, but the rest is desert. One of our favorite walks was up Pico de Castelo, a perfectly symmetrical volcanic cone, the top of which has been terraced, with stone stairs for walking, and a huge arboretum with all sorts of native and exotic trees. The top is a beautiful herb garden, with 360 degree views of the whole island.

We did tear ourselves away from the very relaxing anchorage at Porto Santo just as we began to feel ourselves becoming invertebrates. The night before departure, all the crews got together for a barbecue in honor of Shifra’s 16th birthday. A brisk 8-hour run to Madeira woke us up a bit, and we arrived in the harbor at Funchal on the 11th of October, birthday of Cristobal Colon and Shifra Adler. The inside yacht harbor was completely full, as it always is this time of year, so we spent the night rolling wildly at anchor in the outer harbor. Next day the weather improved, about 20 boats which had been penned in by the strong easterly winds left, and we rafted up against the sea wall where we had stayed in 1995. The sign we painted on the wall then is still there. We started out on the outside of a raft-up of 6 boats, and have steadily worked our way closer to the wall as others have left. At the moment, our raft up includes a 38' British boat owned by a former GP who got disgusted with medicine and went into computer consulting, a 33' British boat owned by a semi-retired pilot who is sailing alone, a tiny French boat sailed by 2 lunatics, Ziggy and Bimbo. And taking up the outside is another American boat a little smaller than ours. Other good friends who have just left included STREET LEGAL, a British boat sailed by a couple of MBA dropouts, and ALVA, a burly little wooden boat from Norway, crewed by 3 completely inexperienced but delightful young men: "a computer expert, a mountaineer, and a philosopher (the owner)". Almost everyone is following a route similar to ours, but some are continuing on around the world, and others will come back to Europe in the spring.

Funchal is as delightful as we remembered it: a clean, beautiful city, which somehow manages to be both sophisticated and friendly. It reminds me a little of Victoria, or Seattle before all the skyscrapers went up. And this time we have gotten out to explore more of the island, which is spectacular. The main attraction is the system of Levadas, which are concrete and stone irrigation channels carrying water from springs in the mountains to fields on the dryer parts of the island. There are a total of 1400 miles of levadas, and all have trails alongside which make perfect hiking, since they are almost level. They also include tunnels of varying lengths, some as long as 2 miles, which provide an unusual hiking experience. Others are carved into the sides of cliffs (this was done by slaves hanging down in wicker baskets), which is also pretty exciting. And there are regular mountain trails which connect the levadas. As if that weren't enough, the place is green year-round, with lush forests and flowering plants of almost infinite variety.

It's the sort of place that could turn even the most craven techno-geek into an ardent botanist; even to the ignorant eye the vegetation is impressive. There are dense laurel forests, some of which flower in the fall, groves of huge pine, cedar and eucalyptus trees, and areas of painstakingly terraced farmland. Yesterday we walked along the cliffs on the north side of the island, in some places with a 1000-meter almost-vertical drop to the ocean. To give some idea of the terrain, the trails are rated on a scale which begins with "potential for vertigo" and "danger of vertigo", on up to "terribly vertiginous" and "horrendously vertiginous". Yesterday's walk was in the latter category. So we kept singing and didn't look down until we got to wider spots in the path. There are, of course, very sedate walks which are equally interesting in their own way, and all quite beautiful. Like the Maine Coast, one could easily spend months, or even a lifetime, exploring the place. We have decided to extend our stay to 2 weeks, to savor it a bit more.

I apologize for the excessive use of words like "beautiful", "lush” and "delightful" in this entry. Winter is coming on back home and a little restraint would be tactful. If I can, I'll tone it down a bit next time. Perhaps the Eastern Canaries will be better; Lanzarote was just described to me as "the ashtray of the North Atlantic".

MR

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Azores, 29 September

Captain's Log, 29 Sept 1998, 1200 UTC
Position: 33d 30m north, 19d 14m west

We are now closing on the Madeiran Archipelago, with the island of Porto Santo, our destination, 150 miles to the east. The remnants of Tropical Storm Ivan passed about 350 miles north of us on Sunday, giving us a nice westerly flow of wind for the first day or so, but nothing over 20 knots. We covered 154 miles in our first 24 hours out of Santa Maria, which is our record for this trip. It was a little strange knowing that a tropical storm was in the neighborhood, but having only fair winds, blue skies, and no dip in the barometer. There weren't even any high cirrus clouds, which invariably precede a low pressure system of any kind. All we really got was about 24 hours of oppressive humidity, like summertime in the Caribbean. Now we are alternately wafting along under cruising spinnaker, and motoring through the lulls, just enjoying the fine weather. Yesterday, we hove to in the heat of the day for a swim. The bottom of the boat is remarkably free of growth, for almost 3 months in the water. It is always strange to swim in mid-ocean, with miles of water beneath you; none of us strays very far from the boat. It is a bit like the sensation of being at great height.

Reflections on the Azores: Due to my work schedule, we ended up arriving much later in the season than we would have liked, but got enough of a taste of the islands to feel they would be worth a real visit in the future. July and August would be the ideal time, with lots of festivals, and more settled weather. It would also be good to come back with more fluent Portugese. There are a remarkable number of people under 40 who have lived in the US or Canada, and we mostly communicated with them. It is quite common for young people to work outside the Azores for a time to accumulate some capital, then come back and buy land and perhaps a fishing boat. Many of our impressions are therefore filtered through people who have lived much of their lives in North America. With true natives we had very little contact.

There is a kind of small town syndrome at work in all the islands, something like what we see in Maine. Young people bemoan the lack of action, long for the stimulus of city life on the continent, and go to Lisbon or Boston or Toronto; many come back regretting they ever left. We saw other examples of this phenomenon: we had heard that there was an excellent Azorean wine made in Graciosa, but whenever we asked about it people would laugh and say, no, no, you should get wine from the continent, not these local wines. Finally, we did manage to find some, and it was excellent. Sort of reverse marketing. Even on Flores, which easily rivals Maui for charm and stunning physical beauty, most of the people we talked to were a little bemused that anyone would come out of their way to visit the island, which to their eyes was nothing special.

There is an interesting east-west gradient as well. In the west, there is lush vegetation, lots of moisture, a more simple and open friendliness, and villages with houses which are neat, well-maintained and fairly uniform in style, none very opulent. Fishing and farming are active, and appear to dominate the economy. As one goes east, the islands get drier, more tired and exploited-looking, the people more urbane and less friendly. And class differences seem more blatant, with well-demarcated rich neighborhoods and more dilapidated obviously poor neighborhoods. Faial suffered a major earthquake a month before we got there, and people were pretty preoccupied with getting their lives and homes put back together, so it is difficult to say what Faial is normally like. This may account for Horta being less welcoming than usual. And even in Santa Maria, we encountered unexpected warmth and friendliness. The port captain there is keen on having more visiting yachts, which he views as a mark of prestige for the island. He was 
ludicrously cordial, even to the point of saying I spoke excellent Portugese--Ha,ha.. So, generalities are dangerous. But, overall, a fascinating place, and we are glad we were able to at least scratch the surface.

MR