Preperations Before the Crossing

1/22
It’s my last day in port before our western passage across the Atlantic and a brief but exciting dip below the equator. We’ve been in the Cape Verde Islands for about a week. No one is really doing any touring, or going on excursions though. There seems to be a national holiday here once or twice a week, and half of those are independence days, so not much is open. We’re all taking this time to relax, provision for the next month or so at sea, send our last communications, and just generally taking care of personal business. I am trying to download the season premier of LOST. I am pathetic.

The Islands here are barren, desert mountains and dunes, desolate and dramatic. They look like they might have been formed when some ancient titan kicked the dirt off his heel on a stroll from Africa to the Americas, the clods plopping here in the Atlantic. Beautiful terrain from a distance, however this would be a miserable place to find yourself left to your own devices. I’m impressed people live here at all, but they do – and well – and their villages are quite nice, actually. The atmosphere is more Caribbean than African, at least more so than Dakar.

Though we are nearly finished with the third leg, this feels more like the turning point of the voyage than the actual, mathematical middle in Mallorca. Something about crossing back to the west, the turn up north again coming soon, has people onboard talking about the ever looming A-word: after. Often times these discussions are instigated by questions containing the lesser known, though still disconcerting, N-word: next. It’s good to think about I suppose, but we still have lots of sailing to do, islands to explore, and several thousand miles between us and all that after/next business. Not to say it hasn’t crossed my mind though…

So signing off for now, westward bound for a short stop in the sapphire Brazilian island, Fernando de Noronha, and then turning out our fresh shellbacks and heading up to Grenada, four-thousand miles later. Should be fun.