Chapter 16: Southern Atlantic

Cape Town to Fortaleza in the Southern Atlantic

Passage to St. Helena

12-1/2 days

February 5, 10 a.m: freeing the dock lines we said goodbye to Wilfrid who had taken leave from work to see us off. Soon Suka had filled away into the Southern Atlantic, as we watched the distinctive landmark Table Mountain withdrawing steadily into the distance astern.

Looking back, we were leaving South Africa with fond memories of dear friends and richly rewarding experiences. Looking ahead, we were laying a course for the island St. Helena, standing insular and forlorn nearly 1,700 nautical miles to the north-west.

Three hours after we had embarked, the fax machine produced a weather chart that indicated a strong, westerly depression charging in our direction. Had we been in the vicinity of Africa's southern or eastern seaboard, straightway we would have returned to port. But here we felt the gale would merely blow us in a favorable direction.

Tempest

The next day we motor-sailed into light headwinds, while riding the strongly sweeping Benguela current. Then at four o'clock again the following morning the convergence passed overhead, and brought with it gale force winds from the south. Seldom had a tempest driven us in the desired direction of travel, allowing us to use it to best advantage. But this one did. We dowsed the mainsail, and after frapping it securely to its boom, we eased it's topping lift and lashed the boom's after end to the cockpit coaming. Then we affixed both running backstays and bowsed them taut, hardened the jib sheet, and trimmed the self steering gear so as to keep the blast fine on the quarter. Riding the storm at seven knots under her own management, Suka proved herself reassuringly stable, and allowed her crew to retire belowdecks to lose ourselves each in a book. The ketch's heavy displacement and full keel, combined with our knowledge as to how to take advantage of them, were now working in our favor.

Twelve hours later the wind had intensified, and rather as a precaution we decided to shorten sail by exchanging the solitary working jib in favor of the storm jib. However, the Force 9 winds were stretching the jib sheet bar taut, and had we simply eased the sheet, the tempest could have ripped the unrestrained, sun-bleached sail to shreds. So first I adjusted the steering vane to jibe the headsail, a maneuver that backwinded the canvas, bracing it immovable against the inner forestay where it then stood supported mainly by its clew. Then while I hand-steered, to prevent any wind shift or boat lurch from precipitating an inadvertent jibe - which might have spelled sudden disaster on the foredeck - Jenny crawled forward and dowsed the sail. With the sheet now slack I released it from the throat of the self-tailing winch, then joined Jenny forward, and while she unfastened the hanks, one after another, I began cramming the sail into the forehatch.

Bare poled, Suka made 4-1/2 knots; but after we had bent and set her storm headsail, her knot meter swung to six.

Again we stowed ourselves belowdecks, and I returned to my Louis L'Amour paperbacks, so adroit at conveying the mind elsewhere, like any good read that served as a mind diversion in such disquieting conditions such as these. These few books, incidentally, were a gift from my grandfather, who had amassed nearly the entire L'Amourian collection.

In another thirty six hours the blow moderated, leaving our little brig rushing ahead while climbing stern-ward over the face of each huge and rolling following-sea, and descending gracefully into the successive yawning trough. These were the largest waves we had experienced, and some were crest-breaking menacingly and smashing Suka in onslaughts of seething brine. Nevertheless, Jenny is not one to sit idly about, and that afternoon she baked a sumptuous banana pudding. This was a gallant effort in such conditions, but had been suggested by the over-ripening of her stock of bananas. However, as she was holding her finished product secure on the counter top, where the pudding was cooling, she turned to reach for something, and in easing her guard at just the wrong moment the ship lurched sharply, and the pudding catapulted into the air with what I imagined might have been a 3-1/2 forward somersault. The sad result: an amorphous, yellow blob on the cabin sole. Petrified, the mate could not decide whether to cry or scream, and for the moment I was safe. In jest, I dubbed the affair: "the chef de cuisine's culinary creation, climaxed in catastrophe."

SouthWest Trades

“From my journal:

Feb 10. The ship's corrected log from Cape Town is 609 miles. The wind 15 knots SW; seas moderating. Having fallen in with the southwest trade winds, Suka is running free at 5-1/2 knots, flying her full main with the genoa poled-out, wing-and-wing. The sky is sunny and the air warm. A shark, presumably, bit the trolling lure and took the tackle.

Feb 11. I'm awaiting the number cruncher's (sat-nav) producing our daily position fix, after completing my morning's enterprise of wandering about the decks, frying pan in hand, collecting the daily allotment of a dozen or so flying fish. As Suka travels northwest at a genteel trot, the days and nights are warming delectably, and sitting out on watch unencumbered is a most welcome luxury. We have crossed the 7-1/2 degree west meridian, meaning that ship's time now coincides with Greenwich Time. Such seemingly insignificant events are appreciated by the global rover who navigates celestially. His computations of longitude take into account the difference between ship's time and Greenwich time, and over the years he had watched that difference gradually lessen, now finally to zero.


Snake Mackerel.

Feb 14: Valentine's Day. Wind: 10 knots SE; beautiful weather: abundant. We've been catching dorado, one per day; but last night we hauled aboard a 4-foot long, snake-like fish equipped with large eyes and an intimidating set of teeth. We had caught one of these in the South Pacific, and had tossed the repulsive creature back into the sea. But when we later described the fish to the natives, they told us that we should have kept it, as they considered it a great delicacy. So we sampled this one, and found it, indeed, excellent eating. During our morning ham radio chat I described our unusual fish, and Tom Venwick aboard Fair Joanda produced a fish book that identified our denizen of the deep as a snake mackerel. Tom also remarked that this is the same species as featured in Thor Heyerdahl's book Kon Tiki.


Snake Mackerel.

“We crossed the prime meridian, longitude 0 degrees; meaning that we are now back in the Western Hemisphere.”

Feb 16. Caught another Dorado last night - about the only excitement we get around here, and an appetite appeasing one at that. The weather is perfect; the wind is holding a steady 15 knots and we have been riding with Paul Bunyan's washing hung out wing-on-wing, carrying the same sail wardrobe night and day for a week. Also, during the past four days we have been varnishing the brightwork topsides. Yesterday we crossed the prime meridian, longitude 0 degrees; meaning that we are now back in the Western Hemisphere.

The Loss of a Friend

Certain unfortunate events must be recounted here, as they occurred at about this time; although it should be noted that neither Jenny nor I, nor other members of the Rum Line Net, were aware of them at the time. "No one wants to read about the loss of a yacht, and especially about the loss of a life," Richard Molony wrote to me several months later, "but I suppose there's always a message there somewhere."

It seems that after 5,000 miles of complaining, Dorothy left Gordon and Mam'selle in Durban, and flew back to Fremantle. In her stead, Gordon's son Colin traveled to Durban, in order to crew for his dad. In Durban, Mam'selle had apparently tangled a piece of rope on her propeller, as obvious marks were later to indicate. Suspecting a problem, Gordon dove overboard, but perhaps due to the lack of underwater visibility, and a lack of diving experience, he did not find the problem. Nevertheless, he and Colin sailed out of Durban, and after stopping at East London they continued on, encouraged by a favorable weather forecast. After passing Cape St. Francis, though, they met with a southwesterly gale, which drove them back toward East London. In the darkness, Gordon cut one of the headlands a little too close. Actually, though, the South African chart reputedly shows a depth of 6.1 meters off this cape, where in fact a rock reef extends 300 meters off-shore. Mam'selle collected these rocks.

Gordon managed to reverse her off under power, but the ferrocement hull was now breached and taking on water, and soon the prop shaft "let go," rendering the auxiliary power inoperable. As Mam'selle drifted seaward Gordon radioed a mayday. A passing tanker intercepted his message, and relayed it to Port Elizabeth Radio, who in turn alerted the National Sea Rescue Institute. Oddly, though, help was not in coming for another eight hours.

Mam'selle was not equipped with a life raft. A few months previously Jenny and I had questioned Gordon and Dorothy about this, and Gordon replied that he considered his hard dinghy a viable alternative. Anyway, Colin and Gordon unshipped their hard dinghy, but in the melee they holed it on a stanchion. Also, they lost its oars. Abandoning ship nonetheless, they began hand-paddling toward shore, bailing all the while. But the wind was contrary and strong, and easily overpowered them. Try as they did, they were not advancing. And when they could see that the yacht remained afloat, its lights gleaming, they tried to return - only to meet with failure once again. Throughout the night the dinghy capsized repeatedly in the heavy seas, and Gordon and Colin exerted their utmost in reboarding every time, and bailing. Shortly after dawn the dinghy capsized yet again, but this time Gordon's strength had waned, and he was unable to climb back in - and tragically, despite Colin's frenzied attempts to maneuver closer, Gordon drifted away. A passing a trawler rescued Colin, but his dad was never found. Nearly awash, Mam'selle was towed into the Kromm River.

Back to the narrative

Several of the yachts that had sailed in the company of Suka across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope were also en route to St. Helena. By coincidence, all of these had transited the Panama Canal earlier in their circumnavigations, and were now bound for their respective countries breasting the North Atlantic. So from St. Helena the group would disperse, its members heading in separate directions. Within a day of us, but not in sight of course, sailed the British yacht Fair Joanda and the Swedish Crypton. Three or four days behind us stood the American yacht Michael Stuart, the British Moongazer and Capella 1, the German Pusterblume, and the Swiss Aena. Indeed, the fleet was multi-national.

Once, rather than our daily fish, we hooked a large sea bird: a giant petrel - similar to an albatross but not as large. Apparently it had dove onto our trolling lure, for a great commotion astern alerted us to the exigency. I hauled the feathered creature aboard with no little haste, in order to save it from being submerged and drowned. But as I swung it aboard, the hook came free of its mouth and the bird tumbled into the open aft-cabin hatch. We scurried below and gently coaxed the poor fellow into the main salon, and there it stood quietly while I applied an antiseptic salve onto the flap of skin where the fishing hook had penetrated. This was when we noticed that the bird was infested with two-inch long, centipede-like parasites - bugs that apparently lived warm and dry beneath its feathers. These prompted me to carry the beast outside, where it then stood on a cockpit bench pondering its fate for a few minutes before hopping onto the coaming and flying away.

St. Helena hove into sight and the wind grew light. So wishing to make port before nightfall we hung sails all over the rigging in an attempt to maintain some semblance of progress. To starboard we poled the jib. High to port we flew the cruising chute. At deck-sweeping level we set the genoa. And of course this rigmarole augmented the mainsail and mizzen. As if to add interest, around mid-day the self-steering mechanism dismembered, conscripting us to the helm. Then by late afternoon we came to realize that if Suka was to reach the anchorage before nightfall, Perkins would have to lend its assistance.

We were motoring merrily along when an unidentified yacht crossed our track astern. Peering through the binoculars we saw that the sailboat was without a helmsman. No doubt the condition was temporary, nevertheless the errant vessel veered away on a westerly heading, motor-sailing some 70 degrees obliquely from the island. "The crew must have fallen asleep," we bantered, watching it fade away toward the distant horizon.

St. Helena

The Island of St. Helena, in the middle of the Southern Atlantic Ocean

After steaming around the east coast of the island, then its north, at seven p.m. we reached the open roadstead where half a dozen visiting yachts lay wallowing to their bowers. In a place recommended by the crew of the nearest yacht, we lowered the plow into 35 feet of water, as indicated on the sounder. However, the chain paid vertically downward for 80 feet, at which point we had to haul it laboriously back aboard. Apparently our depth sounder had been sonaring the verge of a shelf, or a sunken object. Lacking an electric, hydraulic, or even a manual windlass, we gained plenty of exercise; for Suka was equipped with what seafarers of yore called an "Armstrong Patent windlass," one that worked only with a generous application of elbow grease.

Once we had grappled the chain aboard, with the plow dangling a-cockbill from the bowsprit roller we circled for a second try, cautiously edging in closer toward shore. Being wary of fouling one of the submerged wrecks rumored to fester the area, we tried again. This time the anchor found the bottom and set fast. And with that, we concluded our 12-1/2 day passage. Later that evening we noted the arrival of the errant yacht we had seen earlier. Her crew anchored nearby.

The following morning we broke out the dinghy from the forecastle, and inflated it for the first time in many months. Aboard the tender, bobbing at Suka's stern I began removing the fractured self-steering gear, mounts and all. Jenny helped from the afterdeck, scrambling below many times to fetch some needed tool. The job proved a considerable struggle due to a heavy ground swell working into the open roadstead, and I wondered how we would manage the more difficult job of reinstalling the devise. When finally we had wrestled the contraption into the cockpit, I disassembled it and found that one of the more substantial components had fractured into two separate pieces. This was disconcerting, considering the many thousands of sea miles yet in our intended path. Our particular species of self-steering gear was manufactured by Auto-Helm of California (no relation to the British firm by the same name). It featured a large, independent rudder connected to Suka's transom by a decidedly inferior arrangement of aluminum tubing struts, connected to loose-fitting aluminum castings with through-bolts. The arrangement was so poorly designed and underbuilt that I had come to regard the vane more as a nemesis, but each time I repaired it, laboring 10 or 15 hours to force it back into operation once again, the device steered adequately for the next several months. Now well into this present operation, which already had consumed the better part of the day, we decided to remain aboard another night before setting foot ashore.

We always looked forward to making new acquaintances among the yachtee fleet, so when the crew of the errant yacht came to visit, we welcomed them aboard.

"You're the ones who shot by us!" the fellow proclaimed. "You sure were going all over the place out there! What is this about a 48 footer?"

"Well no, actually Suka is a..."

"Just the two of you, huh? How in the world do you handle a boat this size? Nice thing about our boat is that we use only about a third of the fuel you do. That's really some engine we have you know, uses only 3 liters of fuel per hour at full throttle..."

We invited the fellow, his wife, and college-age daughter below. "How do you handle something like this in a storm?" the skipper muttered to himself, gazing blankly about the salon. "You know, we were caught in a really bad gale north of Cape Town. Wind blew 70 knots for 3 days. Had to drag warps. And how do you navigate? This island was hard to find." From there he launched into an incisive monologue about the virtues of his boat compared with the shortcomings of ours, and soon had Jenny and I fairly squirming in our seats.

To the sea rover, his or her yacht is typically a creation of exquisite design. To complement the yacht is to win a friend, and to downgrade it is to forfeit one. That evening my thoughts roved back to the time when Jenny and I were enjoying the company of Tom Venwick and Heidi relaxing in Suka's cockpit. Gazing in awe at his boat "Fair Joanda" moored close by, Tom remarked with soulful abandon, "Isn't she beautiful?"

"Yes," I replied, looking at Tom's yacht and seeing instead the embodiment of a warm-hearted sailor's affections, "she sure is."

Venturing Ashore

The following morning a heavy swell bashed the shore with such vehemence that Jenny and I shared serious reservations about landing the skiff. Fair Joanda was presently anchored here at the St. Helena roadstead, and we watched Tom and Heidi's landing technique. (Heidi was crewing for Tom at the moment, while Comitan tarried in Cape Town for the season.) At one place along the rock-walled bay is a concrete stairway, somewhat hidden from view and situated where the waves merely heave up and down, rather than crash headlong into the wall. It was here at the stairway, with proper timing, that Tom and Heidi stepped ashore with impunity. The technique was to approach the stairway, stop about 20 feet out and ponder awhile, then row mightily ahead of the next oncoming roller. Perched on the crest and stepping briskly ashore while holding the dinghy's long painter, one then allows the tender to plunge the four or five feet into the next trough as the swell receded; then, as the boat rose on the succeeding crest, one could then snatch the tender from the water and carry it to high ground.

Thus safely landed ashore, Jenny and I reported to the officials, who extended us a cordial welcome in the form of various harbor dues: two pounds sterling for landing, five pounds for section such-and-such, and another eleven pounds on account of something else. To add injury to insult the officers confiscated our passports and retained them for the duration of our stay, meaning that should a storm arise in the night and force us to depart, we would have to return in the wake of the storm, for our credentials. Fortunately we carried no underwater breathing apparatus, which we would have been required to lug ashore and surrender to customs, against the supposed temptation of appropriating artifacts from shipwrecks lying in the roadstead. As we walked away, visitor's permits valid for one week in hand, we resolved to leave as soon as possible, which was probably the reaction they were hoping for. In the end this worked to our favor, though, as a number of lingering yachtees subsequently contracted influenza, a malady currently afflicting much of the local populace.

Politics astern, we wandered through Jamestown on streets flanked with closely spaced, corrugated-iron roofed houses and shops. The ambiance was agreeable and the little town quiet, and the air was redolent with tantalizing odors - predominately those from a nearby bakery. The town, if it could be called that, lay tightly ensconced in the maws of an immense ravine, destitute of vegetation save for the occasional cactus. We followed a paved road that switch-backed steeply into the hinterland, and after we had climbed high above town, we noted that to stray off the paved road would have been to trundle a volley of rocks down onto the hapless villagers far below. As no doubt this would have produced a disquieting cacophony of stones pummeling on innumerable tin roofs, we kept to the road.

Eventually we arrived back in town, feeling rubber-kneed after descending Jacob's Ladder, a former cable tramway since converted to a steep stairway, said to comprise 799 steps.

Work on the Self-Steering Gear

While the other yachtees roved blissfully about the island, Jenny and I worked on Suka's self-steering gear for four days. I had located a small machine shop secreted along one of Jamestown's back streets, and its shop owner looked at my broken parts and said, "Oh, this is for your self-steering rudder. I fixed one of these last year." Incredulous, I questioned him further, and he replied, "Yes, it was a broken aluminum tube with these plastic bushings inside, just like this." From a length of pipe the fellow machined a steel sleeve, which we then fitted tightly inside the broken tubing. Back aboard, I labored through the ritual of rebuilding all the mounts that had once again worn loose. Of course this was not the best occasion for the skipper of the errant yacht to row past with the advice that I should just fix the thing once and for all, so that it would give us no more problems.

Each day the ground swell grew more bulbous, and Jenny and I were feeling an increasing urge to weigh and set sail, if not for forward progress then merely for the roll-steadying effect. Presently, Suka felt as though lying a-hull to her anchor, which indeed she was.

Eventually came the time to reaffix the contraption to the ketch's transom. Kneeling in the dinghy, which was rolling, pitching and heaving mightily, while I tried not to drop tools or parts irretrievably into the sea, I began bolting the heavy, unwieldy contrivance onto Suka's transom, which was rolling, pitching and heaving as mightily but out of phase with the dinghy. The undertaking proved ridiculously exacting and strenuous, but we were motivated by the prospect of otherwise having to stand tyranny to the tiller innumerable hours while hand steering across the remaining half of the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Departure

Once we had successfully remounted the self-steering gear, we rowed ashore several times lightering water jugs. Twice we hiked the half-mile to the petrol station, carrying four diesel jugs of five gallons capacity each. Well exercised, we returned ashore to collect four loaves of fresh-baked bread, then our passports and clearance paper.

We were away.

St. Helena to Fernando

Hearing us weighing, the crew of the errant yacht sprang to life and set sail soon thereafter. Reasoning that their yacht might have been capable of sailing faster than ours, and assuming that the reason they were leaving with us was to navigate by following us, I was worried about them zeroing in on Suka's masthead light in the night, and inadvertently ramming us. So Jenny and I made all possible sail, and ran throughout the night without showing the slightest hint of a light. Their masthead bulb glowed ever more faintly in the distance astern, and eventually it faded away to the starboard quarter, leaving us in tranquility.

Two days out, the wind moderated, so we set the spinnaker, and for the ensuing six days it flew continuously, save for the few times when it hour-glassed around the headstay. When this happened we simply lowered the snuffer, then raised the snuffer and hardened the sheet, whereupon the sail would snap open with a bang. And after I had re-trimmed the sheet, the brig would be off and running again.

From the bulk of material written by seafarers both antecedent and contemporary, the consensus is that the Southern Atlantic can indeed be amenable to fine sailing. And in fact our passage was proving among our most enjoyable in our sailing experience, blessed by steady trades, flawless weather, and benign seas. Rarely did anything happen noteworthy, yet the profound beauties of the ever changing light playing over the sweeping, oceanic panorama; the resplendent sunsets; the swaths of glorious stars; and the burnished daybreaks readily captivated and sustained our interests. Our moods were enlivened particularly by the simple privilege of living unshackled, and as free as the wind that filled the billowing sails of our little brig and drove her ever onward.

There were, however, minor events that seemed to transpire in endless succession. One afternoon, for example, as we were cruising an empty sea while lounging in the cockpit beneath the sun awning, I happened to notice a floating object ahead. Against utterly improbable odds, at the last moment I had to grab the wheel and steer clear to avoid colliding with a wooden cask. Its massive undergrowth of algae suggested it had been long adrift; its lid was missing, and as we swished past we could see that the 50-gallon container was empty.

The Pirouette

The following evening came something most inexplicable. Suka was flying her chute and her double reefed mainsail sheeted free, both on the port tack. Without warning, the eight-knot wind suddenly backed and drastically increased to 15 knots. Caught aback, at once the sails inverted; whereupon Suka stopped dead in her tracks and began rotating. She was not sailing in a circle; rather, she was pivoting: her bow sweeping to port, leaving a glassy wake, and her stern doing the same to starboard. The wind continued backing as the brig executed a 360 degree spin in some ten seconds. As she reached her original heading, the trade winds resumed, the sails popped back into shape, the wind vane rose to the occasion, and Suka sailed onward as though nothing had happened. Apparently we had encountered an invisible whorl in the otherwise steady wind, and with finesse Suka had executed a beautiful pirouette.

Jenny wrote the following entries into our log:

March 1: Noon run 131. We spent a few hours sanding and painting from the cockpit. Engine noises heard, not our own. Airplane? Submarine?

March 2: Noon run 131. Same conditions, same sails. Idleness setting in. I wanted to start sewing my Brazil flag, but realized I don't have enough green material. Made two large batches of granola, which should last several days. Also did some varnishing.

March 3: Noon run 136. Our 8th day out from St. Helena; we are over half way to Fernando de Noronha Island. The sea and sky are kindly, for which we are thankful. While Ray was catching up on his sleep this morning I simmered a pot of applesauce, laundered a few clothes, then cooked a lunch of French toast with applesauce. Lost yet another lure to a big fish, so dinner tonight will be spicy East African noodle stew. Later in the evening squally weather has finally forced us to douse the spinnaker.

March 4: Noon run 140. Hash browns and fried eggs for breakfast, fresh squeezed orange juice, and granola with bananas for lunch. Set clocks back an hour again as we march across the time zones. After my three hour sleep I sanded and varnished, then simmered a stew and baked banana bread. The sky is filled with high cirrus, but the winds are less squally.

March 5: Noon run 145. A slow leak at the rudder shaft had been increasing lately. I cleared off the aft cabin berth so that Ray could tighten the packing gland, and in this he succeeded. While I had the berth open, from the under-berth lockers I brought out my once-a-week supply of canned and dry goods. Outside, the air is laden in dust, presumably blown from African deserts, and I have to sweep the salon floor daily. The box of Cape Town apples is spoiling quickly in the heat; I will make more applesauce. Dough is rising for English muffins to go with chili for lunch. Laundry is drying on the lifelines. We have just over 400 miles to go to Fernando. I am full of anticipation. Although we're progressing well, the days seem to pass slower the closer we get.

March 6: Noon run 152. A sunny, bright new day. A small bird rested on the mizzen boom through the night. Decided I could patch together some scraps of green fabric, so I started my Brazil flag. Ray is doing a lot of reading, studying, and trip planning. We are unsure whether to go out to Hawaii or up the coast of Central America. Both options have merit. Beautiful early-evening sky with dramatic cumies, golden in the light of the setting sun.

March 7: Noon run 125. Gorgeous daybreak with the full moon smiling back at the rising orange sun. The sky is a subtle blue, then a purple-lilac above the moon. The wind is slackening and we are slowing, taking in the beauty of the last few days of our South Atlantic crossing.

March 8: Noon run 140. 75 miles off Fernando at noon. We are feeling the lack of exercise and fresh food. We haven't caught a single fish on this leg. Guess we caught our quota for this ocean en route to St. Helena, catching as much as we could eat. More ships sighted. Spent the morning sewing. Not flags, but the mainsail. Last night I put quite a tear in it as I was trying to hoist it without untying one of the reef cringles, unnoticed in the dark. Poor old sail, it has seen its better days. While writing this, I have one hand on a spoon, stirring a pan of fudge.

Fernando de Noronja

As we exited the trade wind belt, the wind dropped to a whisper. We drifted throughout the long night, slowly rounding Fernando de Noronha to its north-east. This island stands aloof, some 200 miles off-shore mainland Brazil's eastern extremity. And as is the case with the open roadstead at St. Helena, Fernando's anchorages are subject to a ground swell that reputedly can make them uncomfortable. And indeed, after motoring under the island's lee at dawn, to our dismay we found the main anchorage wholly untenable, being swept by heavy, rolling waves marching in from the northeast - no doubt a vestige of some far away storm. Hugging the shore, we plied the coast while inspecting each of its indentations and coves - but none proved suitable as an anchorage. Ours was unfortunate timing, as the yachts that arrived a few days later enjoyed interesting, if somewhat uncomfortable sojourns here. Nevertheless, we consoled ourselves that at least while exploring the island's seaboard we had enjoyed a visual smorgasbord. Our eyes had been staring across an empty horizon for 13 days, and were now feasting on terra firma. Even so, we were eager to plant our feet on land, so we decided that rather than sail directly to the Caribbean, we would point the bow for Fortaleza, a Brazilian port 375 miles to the west.

Lack of Sailing Wind, and Another Advancing Squall

During the next two days we engaged in an ongoing battle, more mental than physical, with the impulsive and massive forces of nature. After spending hours crowding on all possible sail in order to capture the scant breezes, we would observe yet another colossal squall advancing furiously in our direction, necessitating a frenetic dowsing of Suka's canvas. Each time the wind howled, and the rain fell by the ton. Then we were left to await the wind's procrastinated return. Adrift in the wake of each venomous squall, eventually we would start the engine and motor for an hour, if nothing more than to gratify our combined urges to continue with the journey over the water in the appropriate direction. Finally, though, a meager breeze would waft our way, prompting us once again to hoist all possible sail. After we had ghosted along for perhaps an hour, yet another monster squall would come charging our way, prompting us to rush about, desperately handing sails. In the deluges we would often stand on deck, absorbing the bone chilling, wet and decidedly welcome respite from the glaring equatorial sun.

A scant three degrees south of the equator, obviously we were negotiating the doldrums. Yet despite the unfavorable sailing conditions we progressed about 100 miles a day, this due largely to the powerful Brazil Current sweeping south-eastward at nearly 3 knots.

On our fourth morning from Fernando we sat 30 miles offshore, becalmed. If we were to fetch port by nightfall, we would need to motor. But Perkins refused to start. The starter cranked the engine obligingly, so the problem was most likely one of fuel starvation. First I inspected the fuel tank's pick-up tube, looking for a blockage such as the one we had discovered while in the Polynesians. The tube proved clear, so next I checked the fuel lines for clogging, and found them unobstructed. We changed the pair of primary filters, and bled the fuel system, but these tasks proved equally ineffectual. The fuel pump appeared operational, leading me to reason that the problem was with the injector pump, a most intricate and complicated confusion of machinery, and likely unrepairable in a place such as Fortaleza.

Pondering this miserable conclusion, vacantly I studied the injector pump, and happened to notice a spring dangling uselessly from one end, this concealed in a maze of ancillary equipment. Probing into the labyrinthine tubing, I found that the loose spring belonged to the fuel shut-off lever, activated whenever one wished to shut down the engine. After reattaching the spring, I cranked the engine, heartened to see fuel now spurting from the loosened injector lines. I tightened these lines, and with a most reassuring roar Perkins sprang to life.

Her sails hanging flaccid like Paul Bunyan's laundry drying in the equatorial sun, Suka motored toward a continent as yet lying beneath an empty horizon. Considering the distance off-shore, the water here was remarkably shallow, 30 or 40 feet. And its color was an exquisite pale-green.

We began encountering local fishing boats: tiny craft loaded with tawny, crusty fishermen and flying huge, sweeping and brightly colored cotton sails so gracefully shaped as to suggest fluidity. These were the traditional jangadas, a term meaning sailing raft. Indeed, considering the design's diminutive freeboard, the term seemed appropriate. The decks were fitted with a hatch and cover, and at night the intrepid fishermen crawled inside and slept like sardines neatly packed in a tin. Jangadas flitted about the off-shore waters, and each time we passed near one, a half dozen or so tough, leathery, sun-parched Brazilian men waved and grinned toothsomely.

Because we had not originally planned on calling in at Fortaleza, we were not equipped with visas, an oversight we were soon to regret. Moreover, we lacked the appropriate charts, so we had not the slightest notion of the city's whereabouts. However, rummaging through our periodicals we found the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the harbor entrance. These I keyed into the sat-nav, which then indicated the appropriate heading. Admittedly, this was an odd way to find one's way around, but it proved successful, for later that afternoon the buildings of Fortaleza emerged in the perceptible distance, dead ahead.

Plying the shallows without benefit of a chart that might have indicated any dangerous shoals required the utmost vigilance, and this in turn required us to stand exposed to the searing sunshine throughout the long day. Oddly enough, then, on the final day of the 17 day South Atlantic crossing we both became heavily sunburned.

Fortaleza, Brazil

Reaching the anchorage, which lay outside the harbor but under the lee of its protecting mole, we discovered that during this time of year the lobster fishing was off-season, for the basin was packed with hundreds of diesel trawlers, each smothered beneath a mountainous pile of neatly stacked, wire-mesh lobster traps. The day's heat was stifling, so after we had lowered the bower into 15 feet of water, perhaps half a mile from shore, we fitted the forehatch wind-scoop and rigged Suka's large cockpit awning.

Part of the evening's entertainment included a windsurfer towing ashore a motor-stricken launch, in which were seated two uniformed but temporarily helpless conscripts. Their engine had obviously failed them, and they apparently had omitted oars in the boat's contingency inventory. After completing the rescue, the windsurfer sailed back to Suka and introduced himself as Carlos. We invited him aboard for a congenial visit. Yes, he would exchange 20 dollars for us on the black market, and yes, in the morning he would be glad to direct us to the offices of port control, customs and immigration.

That night the sky let loose a tremendous thunderstorm, identical with those we had experienced in the concluding few days of the passage. This time, though, we were in a position to collect drinking water using our large cockpit awning. So Jenny ventured out into the night and the storm, and emptied the awning run-off buckets several times into Suka's fresh water tanks. In this way she collected some 50 gallons, and saved us a great deal of drudgery, lightering jerry-jugs ashore. Even after the storm's passing our night's sleep was fitful, due to a persistent and pressing urge to roll out of the bunks and go topsides to stand dog watch. So groggily the following morning we rose and paddled dutifully ashore.

Walking in the direction specified by Carlos, naively we entered the building that housed the offices of customs and immigration. As it turned out, these men were not pleased with our supposed lack of respect at having arrived in their sovereignty without bringing with us the requisite tourist visas. The uniformed commissar in charge allowed us only two days' stay, enough time, presumably, to bestow upon the local economy our reprovisioning money. I requested three days, whereupon the official crinkled his brow, looked me sternly in the eyes, and rattled off a most assertive statement in the Portuguese language, followed by a forcefully snapped arm gesture - one I'd never seen before but that more than aptly conveyed his meaning. Then with an irascible stab of an index finger to the appropriate square on his wall calendar, he ordered us to leave on the 15th.

Outside again, I now understood why Carlos had stayed clear of those office buildings. But now he directed us to board a fume-filled bus and ride it across town to the harbor master's office, where we recorded our vessel's particulars. We were now officially received, even though only temporarily. As a matter of routine, the clerk included that we were to return three days before departure in order to check-out. "In that case," I said in Spanish, "we would now like to check out." After a quizzical pause, he opened the drawer and produced the necessary clearance paperwork.

We then ventured into the city to have a look around. Ambling through a downtown market proved a fascinating few hours. The open-air emporium was congested in street vendors and a multitude of small, closely spaced shops festooned with all manner of wares, most having been crafted by local hands. The Brazilian Cruzeiro was sinking fast, and was quite low compared with the dollar, so the goods seemed remarkably inexpensive. Nevertheless, we bought only a few items: a bag of limes and a postcard.

I purchased the postcard from a small, angel-faced kid, who, after quoting the price and accepting my bill, shortchanged me by a thousand Cruzeiros, or about 20 cents US. Keeping a wary on the muchacho's larger friends, I persisted until he begrudgingly allowed the correct change.

Having become fairly lost, we hailed a taxi and requested "Bimbo" the name of the supermarket Carlos had recommended. The cab driver understood, and soon Jenny and I were strolling down the isles. Jenny selected items from the well-stocked shelves while I keyed her tally on a little calculator in order to restrain the total bill below what local currency we carried in pocket. Our equivalence of 15 dollars stretched a remarkable distance, and shopping at the Bimbo proved the most fun we had experienced in weeks. Throughout the store were small stands where smiling hostesses distributed free samples of various commodities, including sweet coffee, cheeses, and crackers. Moreover, the store's shelves were stacked high with intriguing comestibles, some of which we did not recognize, even after a great deal of scrutinizing. We didn't want to miss some delicacy in our ignorance, so we bought one of whatever we found in relative abundance, on theory that a great quantity of any item suggested its popularity.

One such item was labeled Marron Glace, Doce de Batata tipo, and came in a sizable, flattish tin. Back aboard we eagerly sampled this mysterious concoction, and found it a viscous, sweet paste of what, we could not guess. Packaged with the tin of glace was a tin of unsweetened cream, and we theorized that the consumer was to mix the two together to fabricate a dessert. Another item was a jar of Doce de Leite Real, and unfortunately we opened it not until after we had returned to sea, so we we were unable to buy more. The creamy liquid was simply divine.

Another noteworthy purchase, this from Bimbo's dairy and fowl section, was a plastic carton of eggs, standard in appearance externally, but the contents were not your typical one dozen chicken eggs. Rather, they were two dozen diminutive guinea fowl eggs, about the size of slightly overgrown grapes, mottled tan in color, and bespeckled in dark brown splotches.

Departure

We had arrived on the 12th, presented ourselves at immigration on the 13th, and were ordered to leave on the 15th. I imagined that we would remain legally within the bounds of the mandate if we lingered until 11:59 p.m. of the 15th. Further, I considered it doubtful that the police would come looking for us at such an untimely hour of the night, in order to determine whether or not we had complied. Chances were, they would wait at least until 7 o'clock the following morning. We weighed and put to sea at 6:30, and reluctantly concluded an all-too-brief visit to a most interesting place.

South American Coast

Two Weeks of Sailing Close Hauled

Initially the winds were light and variable, and the squalls persisted. But during the night, as we moved away to the north, the wind began multiplying from the east-north-east. This required that we reduce sail and harden the sheets. Heeled to the port rail, Suka surged ahead throughout the long night as I maneuvered her around the occasional jangada. One small boat in particular would have met its untimely end as the hapless crew slept within, had it not been shining a kerosene lantern, albeit diminutive and merely a foot or so above deck. As our brig charged ahead into the darkness, by happenstance the trim of our steering vane had her on a collision course with this boat. The problem was that its light was so small and dangling so close to the water, that it appeared much - and I mean much - farther than it actually was. Suddenly realizing the danger I swung the wheel, and we skimmed barely past, leaving the sleepers bouncing in our wake.

The day previously had marked the official opening of the lobstering season, so not only were we dodging the random jangada, but the much more massive lobster boats. These were putting busily but erratically about, as though bereft of helmsmen - so their twisting turns were difficult to anticipate. To complicate matters, unlit lobster-trap buoys peppered the sea, and we narrowly averted running down two of those, that we knew of. Also, we were contending with the usual shipping, as well as steering clear of a few isolated off-shore oil rigs. Clearly, this was not the place to set the self-steering gear and retire belowdecks.

Having left the intertropical convergence zone astern, we were now subject to the increasingly exuberant north-east trade winds, which apparently had dipped quite far south of late. Suka stood hard on the wind, sailing close hauled and plowing the waves, spray a'flying and green water rolling along her decks, which lay awash in rivulets of foamy brine.

A hundred fifty miles off-shore we crossed the equator, this on our 4th day from Fortaleza.

The days were ones of higher mileages for the likes of Suka: 168, 169, 135, 162, and 159. The 135 reflected a day of winds so powerful and seas so scabrous that they compelled us to reduce sail to a triple reefed mainsail and a storm jib in order to mitigate Neptune's infernal hammering. Then throughout the long week the sailing was so tumultuous that it compelled us to take turns standing hyphenated dog watches.

Clouds besmirched the sky, Suka's hatches remained closed against the infernal spray, and her crew remained largely belowdecks moldering in the stifling sauna-like heat. The ketch's motion was so violent that it began opening previously insignificant seams. Leaks appeared about the decks, ports, and topsides - all awash. As such, seawater eventually found its way into Suka's every nook and cranny, and after five days of this, most everything belowdecks was affected by the all-pervading wetness.

All through this part of the trip, the brig reached tightly to the powerful winds, sailing full and by, in order to hold on to her valuable offing from the colossal Amazon River. This is the world's most massive outflow, carrying more water than the Nile, Mississippi and the Yangtse combined. And it is well known for its propensity to disgorge large logs. So we needed to give it a very wide berth. Fortunately for us, the wind held its bearing and we managed to maintain our offing without having to tack seaward.

Suka's well-traveled mainsail now bore a multitude of patches in every size and description, many encroaching one over the top of the other. Our hand-sewn patches only ripped out along the line of stitching, so instead we had resorted to adhesive patches cut from material purchased in a sail loft. these had proven more effective, but still the old sail was stretched and worn, such that while sailing close hauled, the sail's leech now fluttered distractingly. Its leech line had long ago parted, so as an expediency I affixed a few lengths of cord to the leech cringles, and drew them aft and angling to the windward rail athwartships. These contrivances were ungainly but they at least mitigated the annoying fluttering.

On our fifth day out, the stiff wind began veering gradually east. Day by day, then, we eased the sheets a might, and trimmed the steering vane accordingly, until on our ninth day the wind blew from abeam. By then the skies hung staunchly blue and the sun blazed upon our bare bodies. Suka's hatches lay open to admit the welcome ventilation, and her interior was beginning to dry, as were the dank spirits of her fatigued crew. So when we landed a three-foot dorado, we were ready to set upon it with restored appetites. And that day, flying only her double reefed mainsail and jib, but boosted slightly by less than half a knot current, Suka logged her voyage's maximal noon run: 189 miles. With her fixed-blade propeller and self-steering rudder dragging in the slipstream, she was no America's Cup contender, but given enough wind she could move surprisingly well. Indeed, her humble skipper and mate were mighty proud of their sure-footed little brig.

Caribbean Sea

Wheeling round Tobago's north-east perimeter, we worried about pirates so showed no lights, and on the 26th of March we left the wide Atlantic astern and entered the Caribbean Sea. Easing the sheets free and jibing the mainsail, now wing-on-wing we commenced eagerly the downwind run to the ABC Islands of the Netherlands Antilles.

The following day, as Suka's canvas billowed to the following winds, and as we watched the island of Grenada fading serenely astern, our reveries were interrupted by an increasing rumbling aft, which signaled once again the urgent need to repair the self-steering mechanism. The play in the mounts had been growing more noticeable by the day, until now the vane's rudder was about to carry away. So for a couple of hours we both hung inverted over the taffrail, securing the wobbly mounts with wire rope clamped into place then tightened by twisting pared strands. Additionally, we rigged various safety lines to preclude losing the contrivance altogether, instrument of umbrage though it was.

Shaping a course well clear of the Aves atolls, where the yacht Cheers had struck the coral reef, we hooked the largest fish of our career by a factor of ten. Fortunately for both us, as well as for the massive tuna, it somehow disengaged itself from the lure.

On the same subject, over the airwaves Jim McCane related his having recently caught a big marlin. After he had finally managed to wrestle it near the sloop, the beast went berserk and ran its prodigious beak through Michael Stuart's plywood transom. The beak snapped off and the fish escaped, leaving an embedded souvenir guaranteed to turn a few heads at their next port of call.

A longing to stop and linger awhile had been waxing gibbous in our sea weary minds, so on the evening of March 29, as we raised the island of Bonaire upon our horizon, we discussed the pros and cons of calling in there. We happened to possess a recent magazine article about the place, in which the author indicated that Bonaire might provide a convenient and safe stop-over. It seemed a likely place to allow a short respite from the rigors of seafaring, and despite the agreeable weather and the superb conditions beckoning ever westward, we decided that after having covered the 6,500 miles from Cape Town in 52 days, perhaps a week's rest was justified. So in cracking trade winds we skirted the dark landmass to its north, and for lack of the appropriate small-scale chart, we held the island at a distance, against the possibility of fetching any extensive reefs (of which there are none, we later learned). We drifted the night, apprehensive for want of a proper chart.

First light revealed land standing some 10 miles to windward. So after setting jib and mainsail we beat hard to weather, and arrived in Bonaire's calm, off-shore waters as a mighty squall happened to be passing overhead. This dumped rain by the 55 gallon drum-fulls and bowled Suka nearly onto her rail. The black, hanging drapery of rainfall soon moved on, the wind eased, and the warming sun reappeared. So we shed foul weather clothing, untied our safety harnesses for the first time in 15 days, and hung on as Suka gleefully laid a foamy wake through the effulgent, aquamarine waters.

There is nothing like sailing on a jolly reach in the calm waters fronting a tropical island. Here were white sand beaches lined with picturesque houses - painted in typically Dutch multi-hued pastels. Fishermen bobbed in small punts; children played on the sand beaches; and the seriousness of our endeavor evaporated into the balmy Caribbean atmosphere. We had a feeling we were going to like this place.