30 Mar 2003
Fog in Amsterdam...

Fog in Amsterdam meant the plane from Cork was late in leaving and arriving. Not an unusual event, but when you are trying to make a connection with the only flight to Cape Verde Islands that week it is frustrating !! Not much help in Schippol Airport, but it took a 6 hour wait at the transfer desk to find out. Cape Verde Airways also fly from Paris, but only once a week too, and that is on a Monday. This was a Thursday.
I knew that TAP flew (Portugese Airways) to Cape Verde and probably more often than once a week, so why not get to Lisbon and try there. There was a flight at 19:00 to Lisbon, so if I could find my luggage I could try to get it. Luggage was located, pulled off the baggage reclaim and left on the floor, and a dash made to catch the flight. On arrival in Lisbon at 21:00, I noticed there was a flight leaving at 22:00 for Sal in Cape Verde. Can I reclaim my luggage, find a booking office and get on the flight in under an hour... Fortunately a friendly TAP officer was a great help and I made the flight. Ironically I arrived in Sal at 1:00 am, only 10 hours later than I was due to.

A long, and at times stressful, journey to the Cape Verde Islands, but worth it, I hope.

Cruise plan:

Leaving anchor at Palmeira we will sail southeast along the south coast of Ilha do Sal looking for humpbacks. Depending on how successful we are we may continue south crossing the short 10 mile hop to Ilha da Boa Vista. These two islands are thought to hold the greatest concentrations of whales in the island archipelago. We hope to encounter whales over a two to three day period before heading to Ilha de Sao Vicente where we have to obtain permission from the authorities to work in Cape Verde.

While searching for whales we will operate a 2-on-2 off routine with one person searching for whales from the bow and one listening on the hydrophone. Each station will last one hour per person so we will have two hours on and two hours off. This is important to ensure we maintain vigilance throughout our searching time, which may be up to 11 hours per day.

Our main aim on encountering whales will be to try and obtain images of their tail flukes and if they are vocalising, to record their songs. For these purposes we have camera lenses of up to 500m, although 300m are usually the maximum size you can use at sea and a DAT recorder to record humpback whale songs.

Simon Berrow