Hello from Grenada!

There is definitely something very relaxing about lounging in the cockpit of a yacht at anchor, watching the river traffic in all its variety conduct its business. You know that the backdrop to all this activity will change every six hours as you swing with the tide, so there is no pressing need to get up and move to the other side of the boat for a change of view. At times, there is a new cloud to look at. At others, great big ferro-concrete yachts break free of their anchors and come sweeping downriver on an extremely fast spring ebb, causing all sorts of damage to any yacht unfortunate enough to be caught in its path. While this doesn't happen often, it does happen very quickly and gives the detached observer an interesting demonstration of adrenaline in action. We thought there would be a problem when Morenga II, a great big unkempt-looking ferro-concrete boat with a long bowsprit, came and anchored fore-and-aft right in the middle of Natal yacht club's swinging moorings. An ugly boat, regrettably British-flagged, and a disgrace to our once-proud seafaring nation. Being anchored fore-and-aft means you don't swing, which is why the middle of a lot of swinging moorings isn't a good place to do it since the likelihood of your position intersecting another boat's arc of swing (i.e. collision) is enhanced.

Natal Yacht Club

This was being demonstrated nicely by Gwen ha Glaz, a Breton boat, whose movement as the tide turned was bringing it into a collision with Morenga. With nobody on board either boat, We thought it would be a good idea to go ashore and warn the owners of events occurring. I found Morenga's owner (let's call him Wallace) with a drink in his hand, told him the news, to which he responded with a calmness you wouldn't normally expect from someone in full possession of the facts. I couldn't see the Frenchies, so I motored back to Puffin, and found Louise had read my mind and was already getting our fenders ready. I took them, and tied them all down the side of Gwen ha Glaz, at which point M. Frenchie appeared in a dinghy, took in the situation with a single glance, and straight away did - nothing. One of the club's marineros motored out, climbed on board Gwen ha Glaz, took their anchor and laid it out across the tide to prevent it swinging any further. So now we had two boats moored fore-and-aft at right angles to each other while all around other boats continued to swing. It was like one of those dreams where you know things aren't right and you shout and shout and no-one listens and you can't move and your trousers are missing...

OK, maybe you haven't had that particular dream. Gwen ha Glaz was now on the move - somehow, she had got in front of Morenga and was having her stern gear gored by Morenga's bowsprit. And now Moby Dick, a Swedish boat, was swinging down to join the fun. The owner was on board, and started his engine preparatory to getting the hell out of there, but was spared the necessity by Morenga, which at this point broke free and started to move down with the tide. Towards us.

Things happened a bit fast then. Louise went forward to fend off, I started the engine and went up to help Louise, who was now using every ounce of strength to keep thirty tonnes of concrete away from our stemhead. I managed to get one of our big orange fenders into the gap, and Louise went for the breadknife. Say what you like about the Chinese, but they know how to make a breadknife - it went through an inch-and-half of nylon mooring line like it was nothing, then we were free and motoring away from the scene as quick as our prop would push us. Wallace had turned up in his tender, trying to get to his rampaging vessel, which he would have managed if it hadn't got to him first and tipped him out of his dinghy into the river. We watched helplessly from mid-river as Morenga just missed Antares, paused to have some fun with Samuffin's GPS aerial and sunshade, before finally hitching up with a little black Brazilian cruiser and dragging her away towards the sea, no doubt with dishonourable intentions.

By now it was dark, the tide was at full strength, and the mooring we had hoped to tie up to had been dragged under the surface by the torrent so we couldn't see it to pick it up. Moby Dick's skipper was out in his dinghy and led us to a buoy close to the shore. We tied up there and washed the surplus adrenaline away with a nice cup of tea, and then spent the best part of the rest of the evening tilted over at twenty degrees as the receding river settled us onto the muddy bottom. Still, we weren't damaged, which was lucky, and when the tide returned we motored back to our original mooring.

It turned out Wallace hadn't got insurance. He explained that he'd not paid for insurance for thirty years and had, by this economy, saved a lot of money; a lot more than this little mishap was going to cost, and he was therefore still in pocket. He was based in St. Helena, an island in the south Atlantic, and it was difficult to get insurance there, but it was a really nice place, and we should all give serious consideration to visiting. Cape Town was also a nice place, with a nice yacht club - had we been? All this was said in an affable, chatty sort of way, and it became obvious to all of us why this guy was sailing single-handed. But, fair play to him, however tenuous his grip on reality, he did pay for the damage caused, and he did give us twenty metres of polyprop to make up for our severed mooring warp. And that was that.

So, how was your day?

Local boat

Natal is a nice place, but not photogenic - although the beaches are pretty, one palm-fringed beach with dunes looks much like any other, and the urbanisation is downright ugly. This is a fact acknowledged by the local photographers, evidenced by the difficulty in finding postcards of the place. But it's safe, the people are friendly, and the food is good. In fact, it's very good. One of the many interesting culinary concepts to be found in Brazil is the kilo meal - basically a self-service buffet, where you fill your plate with as much as you want of anything, and take it to the checkout for weighing. This means you can have a very expensive meal of rice and black beans, or an extremely cheap one of fresh fish and huge prawns. The meat is invariably excellent. A popular drink is guarana, which is derived from a cherry-like plant from the Amazon region. It is widely regarded as a tonic, and is available in many forms. One of these is a fizzy drink, like Fanta or Pepsi and marketed by the usual conglomerate suspects; very refreshing and a great mixer. And available in a low-cal version!

Tradionally guarana is a frappe made with the powdered guarana root blended with milk and ice; this is rather nutty in taste and perhaps more alien to European tastes, but not unpleasant. It is usually made and sold by street vendors, and bars serve an alcohol-enhanced version. We reckon the fizzy guarana would be popular in the UK, so if you want to make a fortune, start importing. We'll take 1% for the idea. The powdered root is already available in Britain - Boots the Chemist sells it in capsule form at a thousand times the price of the local product.

Another national favourite is the caiparinha (kye-par-in-ya). This is an alcoholic drink poured over ice, sugar and a whole crushed lime and it is incredibly refreshing. It meets all the criteria applied by yachties and students everywhere - it's cold, tastes great, is highly intoxicating, and - best of all - very, very cheap. The raw materials can be picked from the trees in the street, begged from the local fish market and bought from the supermarket for about eighty pence a 750cl bottle. A slug of vodka turns it into a caiparoska. The research team observed no ill effects from over-consumption.

Christmas in Natal

Christmas Day arrived and we had the freedom of the yacht club. Our Christmas barbecue was a splendid, multi-cultural affair, with representatives from six countries. Gerry from Antares is a Dutch jazz musician and he brought his piano accordion, adding much-needed class to the alternative, which was me on the kazoo. There was a lot of food and drink, a babel of conversation, and much laughter. Occasional dips in the pool refreshed between courses. The evening ended with lots of cheek-kissing, with some confusion between the Dutch (three kisses), the French (two) and the English (one long lip-mash with lots of tongue).

We decided to use the usually anti-climactic lull between Christmas and the New Year to relocate to Fortaleza, about 260 miles to the north-west, where we would see in the year 2000. It was perfect weather for it, bright and clear, as we left the Potengi river and ran with the trade wind. For a day and a half, anyway. The wind died, so we turned on the engine and donked along for a few hours until the engine stopped, dead, for no apparent reason. Oil, air and fuel were all clean and freely available, but no amount of key-turning would coax the engine back to life. Not an immediate problem - we could always sail, and we had the current with us, but it's always nice to know you don't have to rely on the wind for a spot of collision avoidance and there were lots of fishing boats about. Samuffin caught us up, and we told Mike and Val what the problem was. They went on and recce'd the approach to Fortaleza so that we wouldn't have any unpleasant surprises on our arrival. After negotiating several wrecks and busy fishing traffic, we eventually anchored under sail about thirty metres from Samuffin, behind an artificial spit on which four huge wind turbines slashed lazily in the slack air.

We had a look round the little harbour, observing a boat laying right across the opening to the space Armando had earmarked for us. That would make anchoring interesting, we thought . Then we got back in the dinghy and motored around, noting all the floating lines waiting to snag unwary propellers and looking for other obstacles to safe entry.

Satisfied, we started back, but not before being buzzed by a jet-skier, smiling like an angel as she treated us to some wake. We steadied the dinghy and continued into the outer harbour. There she was again, obviously really happy to see us still the right way up and giving us all thirty-two as she came in for an even closer look. Like most right-thinking sailors, we are not fond of jet-skiers, but this one, we decided, deserved her own special corner of hell.

We got back to the boat as it was getting dark and joined Mike and Val on Samuffin for drinks and a bit of planning. We decided an early start would be best, as there was usually less wind and swell then, and returned for an early night. That night, thieves cut Mike's line and stole his dinghy. Ours, we think, wasn't taken because we'd hoisted it out of the water before retiring, but apparently, even that hasn't stopped the thieves in the past. We spent the next morning looking for it, but without much hope - which was justifiable, as it turned out. I reckoned the dinghy was probably on the seabed, having had the outboard bolt-cropped off the transom and hidden in a lock-up somewhere.

The tow

So it was about midday when Samuffin came alongside. We stuck every fender we had between the two hulls, made up springs and lines abreast, and brought the anchor up. There was a bit of a swell, which caused the two boats to roll a bit, and we had to watch that our masts and rigging didn't snag, but we got to the hotel's harbour without incident. Which isn't to say we got into our berth without some excitement. Both Samuffin and Puffin have fairly long, deep keels, which is great for directional stability, but hopeless for manoeuvrability, especially astern in close quarters. Even more especially when tied together. Our berth was towards the end of the harbour, which was to windward, and our freedom to manoeuvre constrained by the aforementioned boat lying across our space.

Of course, the wind chose this moment to pick up, and the two boats started to drift horribly close to the harbour wall. Which wasn't so bad for us, since Samuffin would have absorbed the impact nicely, but we could see Mike would take some time to see the benefit of this. Fortunately, we'd left our dinghy inflated and were towing it behind, so I jumped in, started the engine, cast off and zipped around to Puffin's bow while Louise and Mike made up some long warps. We managed to get these to the crowd of interested onlookers gathering on the pontoon, and as they pulled us in, I grabbed a line from the bows and started pulling with the dinghy. Eventually, we managed to coax the two vessels into the berth. We dropped the anchors into the dinghy, ran them out as far as we could, and plopped them into the drink. When these had been winched in and had bitten, we were safe.

It's a sad fact of boating life that, if you enter a harbour smoothly and professionally, and park your boat with that total mastery that borders on the poetic, no-one will ever see you do it. The first scent of a major foul-up, however, vultures start circling, crowds gather, small children are hoisted onto fatherly shoulders and every video camera for miles around is trained in your direction in anticipation of a fat cheque from You've Been Framed. Well, as far as we are concerned, if you can get into your berth without touching another boat or any of the quayside furniture, then that counts as a success. We met this criterion, and so the crowd melted away, their disappointment almost tangible. A few people remained, among them Gerry and Anna from Antares, who had arrived the evening before after following us out from Natal. We chatted about our respective passages, and after we tidied things up we explored our new environment.

The pontoons were big steel boxes with holes in the middle. Through these stood great concrete posts that kept the pontoons in place as they clanked noisily up and down with the tide. They were ugly, black things, except for the extensive areas of rust, where they became ugly brown things. The literature had promised water and electricity, and these were provided via a couple of tired old hosepipes and an equally knackered cable dangled across the gap separating the pontoons from the shore. One hosepipe for twenty boats, and some extremely dubious power sockets sprouting half-heartedly from the cable which itself was occasionally submerged in the water. An interesting Health and Safety Inspector's case study waiting to happen, one thought. But the hotel - ah, the hotel.

OK, reading back through that it does sound a tad over the top, but only just. The point is that all this was ours to enjoy for less than four quid a day in harbour dues. It seems that, in Brazilian society, if you own a boat then it is only because you are very rich. It obviously hadn't occurred to the hotel policy-makers to have a good squint at the bums, tramps and computer consultants that were sailing up in droves, who in their own countries would be considered no better than social flotsam. We had boats, therefore we were rich and deserved the best that the hotel could offer. Security at the Marina Park was so tight that anyone of our class trying to gain entry without a boat would find themselves being interrogated by several uniformed heavies armed with guns. We know this, because until they got to know our faces, it happened every time we came back from town.

We spent the afternoon of our arrival next to the pool, sipping caiparinhas, still not quite believing it all but adjusting bravely to our new surroundings. We got talking to a man who introduced himself as Leo, who spoke every West European language more or less fluently. He offered to drive us to the various authorities that needed to be told of our arrival in Fortaleza. If we cared to, he would show us some of the best spots in town for food, drink and entertainment - why didn't we join him and his lovely wife Karen that evening and we would go to Iracema beach, the Cococabana of north Brazil? Leo turned out to be a real star. He made our stay in Fortaleza a lot easier and more enjoyable than it might have been if he hadn't been there to act as our guide. We had a terrific evening exploring the restaurants and bars of Iracema, and we returned home by way of another beachfront venue where the atmosphere was alive with Brazilians having the time of their lives. Forro is the music of this part of Brazil - a sort of latin reggae with cajun spice, and very popular. We watched an eighty-year old sex machine dancing hot moves with a very much younger woman and it was exhausting to watch. He didn't break sweat and the young Brazilians loved him. It was very late when we got home.

Adjusting bravely...

Karen, Leo's wife, was indeed lovely and great fun. Smiling like an angel as she described her work as a doctor, she gave us all thirty-two as she... hold on a minute! 'Do you jet-ski?' we asked. Oh yes. Why, only two days ago...

Every day, at 1245 UTC, my watch alarm would remind me to turn on the SSB radio to work the daily radio rendezvous that we called the 'sked' (for schedule). We were anxious to contact the other boats on the rally to pass on information we'd received concerning the end-of-rally arrangements. There didn't seem to be many boats left in the rally - Horn 2000 had headed south from Salvador to be the first Slovenian boat to sail to Antarctica (and thence round the world). Bols Sport was headed for Cape Town (or so we thought), Alegria had crew problems and no SSB, and Tarot never joined the sked anyway. Carmen had missed Brazil completely and was already somewhere in the Caribbean. Samuffin, still in Fortaleza, found its signal blocked by the buildings close by. We had made tentative arrangements to meet Joker V in Belém, but we couldn't raise them. It was a very lonely sked. We did hear Joker V on two occasions - once fleetingly, and on the other they put out a call on every frequency we were using, but they didn't receive our signal. It was all very frustrating. At least it wasn't the radio playing up - I did manage to talk to some boats in Antigua, which was reassuring.

The approach to French Guyana was horrible. The South American continental shelf extends a long way north and you can be seventy miles from land in only twenty metres of water. There is a trade wind that has blown in a lot of water thousands of miles from the north-east, and when that water goes from a depth of over two thousand to just fifty metres in less than five miles, the result is much lumpiness. Add to that a cross-swell from somewhere else (we never worked out from where) and you have the makings of a very uncomfortable ride. Eventually, we approached the landfall buoy for the River Mahury, and from there it was fairly easy to see the red and green buoys that marked the channel up to Degrad des Cannes.

Things began to brighten up as we passed the first channel buoys. The wind dropped, and the vicious chop that had plagued us for the last twenty-four hours became a smooth undulation helping us up-channel. The Remire Islands straddle the channel, and they gradually changed from a grey murkiness to a lush verdancy as the sun boiled off the morning mist. Morale improved. Say what you like about the Frenchies, we thought, they do good buoyage.

Dredging it up

Bit of a shallow channel, though - down to three metres under the keel, and still eight miles to go. Two point five. Two. Then we saw a big dredger coming out of the river along the edge of the channel - surely he must draw more than us? Point nine. Point three. Point six - one point two! Phew. Point three, zero, zero, zero - still moving forward, though - zero, zero blink, zero blink, oh dear. We managed to push the keel through the mud to the outside edge of the channel, dropped the anchor, and settled down to a three-hour wait for the tide. The dredger passed by, oblivious to the fact that there was simply no water to float on. He must have been on wheels.

Degrad des Cannes is French Guyana's major port, but there's not much there. It consists of a long wall that can take up to about four small freighters, a couple of cranes, and lots of little buildings. Out of these would come customs, immigration and port police officials, who would leap into their little boats and come and check us in - or so our pilot book said. We had expected to anchor in the river just north of the dock, so it was quite a surprise to see, just around the corner, a full set of very modern pontoon berths, joined to the shore by an articulated bridge and served by an enormous car park. You wouldn't find better in the Solent. God bless the French, we thought - they really care about their yachties. And that's without a trace of irony. If it was British, there would be nothing, you'd have to anchor, you would be charged for the privilege, and then you'd be moved on.

'Zere's no sharzh', said the lady who came to take our ropes. 'We 'ave been 'ere for two years and paid nozzing in zat time.' 'What about checking in?' we asked. 'Ow long you stay?' 'Two days, three tops.' 'Pooh! Zis is Europe, you are European, you don't bozzer.'

Just to be on the safe side, though, we left the yellow 'Q' flag up, so if the customs man didn't come out it wouldn't be for lack of an invitation. But it was Thursday afternoon; there would be no officials until Monday, when we'd be gone. So here we were in France, in Europe, and surrounded by rainforest! Sacre bleu!

It was the architecture that made the most striking initial impression - obviously French, but in an old colonial style. The official buildings were quite imposing, with impressive entrances and well-tended gardens bursting with colour. Everywhere you looked in Cayenne were monuments to what could be achieved with corrugated iron and stucco. Some of it was run down, but even these areas somehow managed to retain a hint of grandeur from a more glorious past. We raided the bank and found the internet café, which was actually more of an internet cordon bleu restaurant, and had some fresh coffee and croissants. It was ruinously expensive, but it was the best coffee we'd tasted since leaving Spain so we savoured every last drop. (The Brazilians grow coffee but don't seem to keep any of the good stuff for themselves.) Everywhere were reminders that you were in France - the money, the postal system and stamps, the cars and their number plates, the newspapers, the adverts, the telephones, the roadsigns and of course, the complete absence of British beef. It was almost like a day trip to Calais.

Plas du Coq, Cayenne

There were differences, of course. The bus service consists of lots of twelve-seater vans that follow loosely-defined routes. They wait behind the market and will only leave when they are full. The bus stops wherever a passenger taps the driver's shoulder or a pedestrian sticks a hand out; they will detour on request and drop you at your door, which is useful if you're returning from market with heavy bags.

We thought that would see us through the day, but then we were drawn irresistibly towards a patisserie displaying tier after tier of mouth-watering confections, the like of which you never find anywhere but France. We gorged ourselves on things we couldn't pronounce and washed it all down with more of that fantastic coffee.

One thing we didn't get to see in French Guyana was the European Space Agency's launch facility at Kourou, further along the coast, which was a great shame. Another one to catch next time round. But we had to leave, if only to escape being eaten alive by the anglophobe insects that obviously found British blood more to their taste than the thin, garlicky gruel that dribbles through French veins. We were both covered in bites and scratching furiously as we made our way back upriver and out to sea. There was the dredger again, who obligingly redirected his spray of slurry to port as we passed him on his starboard side.

There was a fair bit of wind, on the nose, and as the tide turned and helped us out it threw up quite a chop. Once past the islands, the swell kicked in and very soon it got very uncomfortable. Not a good start, we thought, as we slugged our way through the slop towards deeper water where, we hoped, things would quieten down a bit.

About twelve miles out, the was a burst of French radio traffic, which we ignored, but then Louise called me up on deck to look at a warship that was heading straight for us. Ooo - perhaps we should have checked in, after all! The radio piped up - we were being hailed.

'British sailing vessel on my starboard bow, this is a French warship, please come in.'

'French warship on my starboard bow, this is British sailing vessel Puffin. Good morning. Are we at war?'

No, but he wanted to warn us that there was to be a launch of an Ariane rocket at 2200 that evening and advised us to clear the area as quickly as possible. Damn! We should have gone to Kourou, after all - there are only seven launches a year and this would have been a perfect opportunity to see one. Still, we thought, maybe we'll see something from seaward. We thanked the warship for the information, he wished us 'Good journey', and we headed off in search of deep water. We were quite excited by all this, and calculated that at 2200 we would be about 40 miles from Kourou and would stand a very good chance of seeing most of the rocket's ascent. As it turned out, however, the South Equatorial Current gave us such a shove that, at the appointed hour, we were eighty miles away, and under heavy cloud cover. All we saw, through a small patch of clear sky, was the flare as the boosters separated from the delivery vehicle and fell to the sea. But it was still exciting.

Later, Samuffin (who had now left Fortaleza and was about fifty miles north-east of our position) told us that they had sailed through a fair number of French military-looking ships. The description they gave of one vessel matched a photograph I had seen of the recovery vessel that fishes the spent boosters from the sea. Just their luck if one landed on their foredeck...

The ride was uncomfortable all the way to St. David's point, at the entrance to St. David's harbour, our destination and the last stop of the rally. Approaching the harbour at the same time was Samuffin, determined to be the first as well as the smallest boat to finish. After seventeen hundred miles, leaving five days apart and following completely different routes, Puffin and Samuffin dropped anchor within two minutes of each other. We were second. Alegria and JokerV arrived a couple of days later. We celebrated their arrival with rather more of the local rum punch than was wise, although we didn't discover that until it was too late to care. The weekend marked the official end-of-the-rally and we had a bit of a party at St. David's, courtesy of the rally organisers and the sponsors. Look out for the report in Yachting World!

It feels like the end of a chapter. The last six months have been focused almost entirely on getting to the Caribbean, and it seems as if a lot has happened on the way here. Now there's a whole new sea to explore, and new recipes for rum punch to discover. Once you start on that stuff, it's hard to stop. Must be the nutmeg.

Rob and Louise Grenada, 7 February 2000

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