November 30
After motoring all night, a sudden silence wakes me up. I fall asleep again only to be woken up by a voice asking for my passport; hiding under my pillow, the document is duly and sleepily handed to that voice, and I fall asleep again, to wake later to a bright display of sunlight coming through the porthole. A round display of greenery is what I can see as I look out.
We are in Ilhabela, an island off the city of Sao Sebastiao, where we have come to get the clearance out of the country.
Ilhabela, a small resort town, is at the bottom of some high hills, covered in a variety of shades of green, where palm and other trees offer some protection from the sun to the houses scattered in the hillsides. The effect is awkward: tropical trees in a landscape that resembles that of New Zealand, or Northern Spain, and a temperature that is neither tropical nor continental.
A Yacht Club looks after a number of small yachts anchored off the little pier. Looking at the little boatyard and yacht club workers one can trace the yachts that have recently been this way: Andromeda, Fair Lady, C'Est La Vie III and other T-shirts are worn by the staff. We shall leave no memories here as we will leave Ilhabela Yacht Club with no Shenandoah T-shirts left behind.
While Serge deals with the Brazilian authorities, the girls go shopping for fruits and vegetables to the little local supermarket. A man – or is it a woman? a teenager? or maybe an eunuch?, we cannot decide really what that is – deals most efficiently with the seemingly very complicated logistics of delivering all the supplies to the Yacht Club.
Underway again after lunch, we proceed through the straight between the island and the mainland; a lovely breeze keeps blowing, right on the nose, but as we clear the island and motor into the open ocean again, the breeze dies. So, we carry on motoring, hoping for some wind to show up before landing in Punta del Este.
After dinner and shower, I go up on deck to a bright moonlit night, with a few stars showing in the dark blue sky. Looking for the Southern Cross, I am unable to find it; not risen yet, apparently. A very nasty smell of dead fish keeps us company until the end of my watch . Later on, the next watch will see the corpse of a large sperm whale, rotting away floating in the water, about 15 meters from the boat.
During the night, very rough seas build up, and for a few hours we have a very bumpy and jerky ride. I wake up feeling like a daiquiri, and very close to serious seasickness: I never liked motoring in rough seas on a sailing boat! Does anyone? (Years before that - or was it years later? - I refused to go from Monaco to Mallorca on board Alejandra because the skipper refused systematically to hoist the sails, regardless of the weather: "too much work", he used to say. On that occasion, not hoisting the sails meant definitely trouble for that beautiful sailing submarine, so I took a plane). Finally the sea calms down, my guts as well, and I go back to sleep.
December 1
In the morning, quiet seas again and still not a drop of wind. Chris has spotted some morning dolphins and a very large oil spill, around one mile long.
Dead whales, probably hurt by some large ship, or maybe poisoned by swallowing much garbage along with their standard plankton diet, oil spills, brown water instead of blue or green, plastics floating... What a pleasure to go sailing in some waters those days! Is there any bit of ocean that is safe from the polluters?
At night, the moon is almost full, but still many stars can be seen. We can distinguish the lights of Florianopolis and Santa Catarina Island as we motor along; Anne Marie leads a dance on deck, with the music full blast to cover the noise of the engines (which by the way are not very noisy).
day 6
Sails up at last! Yes! A slight breeze allows us to hoist two gollys and a spinnaker. Waking up in silence, with only the sound of the hull breaking into the water, what a pleasure!. Until 9h30 that is, when Shenandoah is advancing at the pace of a snail. Sails down, motor on again. Boring! So I decide to bake some brownies for tea.
...And so it goes for two more days. In the morning of Friday December 4th the sails went up for one and a half hour in the morning, the duration of the light morning breeze, but we had to finish as we started: motoring; landed in Punta del Este at 16h00.
The water, since we left Rio has always been of a dark brownish colour, but here, in Punta it is of a very thick brown, not very tempting to go swimming, in fact, not very tempting at all, period. A colony of seals has taken up residence inside the yacht harbour, maybe a dozen of them, scavengers feeding on the fish bones and heads thrown at them by the local fishmongers, who work right at the pier. They are the local tourist attraction, until Shenandoah docks at the end of the main jetty, that is.
The authorities here are quite friendly, and it only takes two and a half hours to clear in, and to do so, Serge needs an interpreter, me - who else?. A race to Buenos Aires is scheduled for 18h00 and the racing skippers are clearing out at the same time we try to clear in. By the time the starting gun goes, the spectators of the race are all watching Shenandoah, with all the crew shamying and tidying the deck, some of us answering the questions from the people on the quay. For a whole week, we will be watched and questioned by many Uruguayans and Argentineans that have come to see us. To most of them, we are the largest yacht or vessel of any kind besides the Buenos Aires ferries they have ever seen. They do not know that soon there will be another beautiful classic yacht at the same pier: we have heard that Kentra, the Fife gaff rigged ketch, has arrived in Salvador de Bahia and that she is coming down this way. Serge announces that she should be in Punta del Este on the 18th, a week after we leave.
Punta del Este used to be the first stop in the Whitbread race and is a good place for the crew to take a break and go partying. There are pubs and restaurants open till early morning hours and the place is safe, unlike Rio. Soon, Sébastien, Chris and Nicolas are surrounded by girls: after all, they are good looking and they have an exotic air here, with their French accent, British in Chris case, and European looks.
Shopping and provisioning is relatively easy thanks to the help of the local French restaurateur Jean Paul, the owner of "La Bourgogne", the top restaurant in the area, and some of the staff of the Hotel Conrad. I buy some fresh fish from the seller at the beginning of the quay, where the seals are waiting for their due. Two of them are having a fight, or so it seems to me since they keep trying to bite each other's jaw, never actually succeeding. Meanwhile, the rest of the seals, oblivious to their colleagues fight, carry on catching the fish and other foods thrown at them by the watchers and passers-by.
After a week of shopping, eating out, surfing and partying, the owner arrives with a guest and we set sail – literally, this time – bound to Buenos Aires. We were due to leave on Saturday afternoon, but we are delayed because the third guest we expect does not arrive until late in the evening, at dinner time. Shenandoah leaves the port of Punta del Este during the night, all sails up, to find very rough weather at the entrance of Rio de la Plata, but at least we are sailing on a wide reach towards the channel.
tbc/
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