31 Mar 2003
Green Lights and Tropic Birds... the journey south.

We left Puerto de Mogán on the 21st March, a fine scotch whistling round the island of Gran Canaria to speed us on our way at 7 ½ knots, 770 miles to go. However according as the wind committed us to the ocean it began to weaken, until by the second day out it died away all together. Under a hot sun we were gently reminded that we were deep into a desert neighbouring the Sahara, that could possibly be even more implacable than it.

But after a few hours contemplating 500 miles plus with nothing to propel us but the sweaty little old Perkins, the elements had mercy and the trade wind started to do its thing.

It was a trifle tentative at first, and for one day we piled on both spinnaker and gollywobbler, but gradually it gained in conviction, and we settled down to a real trade wind sleigh-ride. There is little to do but to go through the daily chores, read, enjoy the sun, admire the night sky, curse the rolling, and as the stars pirouette around the sinking North Star, to wonder what it can be that we are supposed to be doing on a little boat that is perched on a gigantic roundabout amidst all those stars.

Once in Brittany longer ago than I care to recall, I sat on a little cliff watching the sun sink into the Atlantic, only to be regaled with ‘Ah, tu as vu le feu vert?’ I hadn’t seen any green flash, and have watched many’s a sun sink into the Atlantic since without seeing it either. However my dear sister came back from Loop Head on a recent evening, full of this famous green flash, and renewed my faith in the phenomenon. I was rewarded with a distinct green flash, like a flash from a green lighthouse, just after the sun set on a particularly cloudless evening this time. Trouble was no one else saw it. Tricky things these green flashes. Just don’t go looking up in the sky, it’s right there on the horizon.

Dolphins visited less frequently as we went south. I thought I saw the giant fin of an orca, but there were those aboard who disagreed. Various petrels and shearwaters flittered or sheered by. We knew the GPS lied not, in telling us after 6 days that the Cape Verde Islands approached, when a red-billed tropicbird flaunted its magnificent tail past us. The ould machines never seem to lie, and we found our lump of volcanic rock and dust stuck out in the ocean bang on time.

And so we came to anchor and landed in Palmeira on March 27th. Fortunately the trade wind just honks away in the one offshore direction, except for the very odd occasion mostly in December. However, one wouldn’t need to get blown away to sea in a wee boat, unless one felt that one could make it to Brazil in her. The odd sailor of various denominations, fishermen as well as yachties, did not make it, although some local fisherman in fact succeeded in fishing their way across the ocean.

The beautiful and friendly people who have made their homes here would really renew one’s faith in our incredibly resilient and resourceful human race. It’s good to have Simon Berrow aboard. Now to find a few humpbacks…

Joe Aston