Canary Islands–Senegal. Arrival

Canary Islands–Senegal. Arrival Life on our ocean passage to Senegal became bearable after 12 March. The swell subsided, and the wind gradually slunk away with it. The crew perked up, regained their appetites and even started venturing into the galley. The result: three days of making guacamole, Maslenitsa pancakes, baked sweet potatoes and vegetable stews. Feasting returned to our floating home. With a menu like that, we could sail around the world! 🙂 The girls set about decorating their girly journals, which kept them busy for all three days. Even I joined in and stuck a couple of little butterflies into my planner. Gems from Lada Ladka began spending more time alone in the cockpit. After scanning the horizon, she announced: “I saw a whale or a dolphin thiiis big—tiny! Yes. A baby. A dolphling or a whaleling!” 🙂 She’s so funny. She treated us to a breakfast dessert of fruit skewered on toothpicks. We’ve drawn close to the shipping lanes; judging by the AIS, they’ve surrounded us on all sides. I doubt we’ll manage to doze off on watch. Dead downwind, only very light. The genoa is flogging, the poor thing unable to decide which way to fold itself. At this rate, we may not make Dakar even in two days. 13 March The captain delivered his verdict: we wouldn’t increase sail area, so as not to arrive in Dakar tomorrow night. Better to slow ourselves down until the day after tomorrow. Nastya and I were about to go into mourning over this, but then remembered that everything was fine now. The main thing was for the house-sized waves not to return—the ones that nearly brought about the Triumphant Exit of a Farming Family from Their Circumnavigation 🙂 Nastya wrote in her journal: “My parents have lost their minds. Dad said the windvane is now a member of the crew too and named him Iron Felix. And Mum suggested naming our one and only flower Alejandro, after all the suffering he has endured with us. Now everyone except Lada and me has friends. And we’ve only been in the ocean for five days. What on earth is going to happen next??” Andrey began making rope steps up the mast—a new attraction for the girls. Today, for the first time in the entire history of my sea passages, I took a shower on the bow. It had always been too cold and too rolly before. I put on a soft robe and settled down on the now-dry settee with a cup of tea. I feel human, and the boat feels like a cosy home. Another first in the history of our passages. By evening it was going completely calm, and we were flying along under a butterfly rig of genoa and gennaker at a whopping 4.5 knots. At dusk, the butterfly went to sleep, and we began standing still at one knot towards Cape Verde—with our stern pointing towards our destination. The sails were flogging themselves mercilessly. 15 March Why do you think there were so many teenagers in our generation who dreamed of sailing around the world? After watching our beloved film In Search of the Castaways on this passage, I realised that even in the worst storm, there is less rolling on screen than in the flattest calm. As though it were not a sailing ship but a submarine. And so none of the viewers has any idea that leaping about the masts in a sailor’s cap with a pompom, or peering through a spyglass at distant shores without ever changing out of a lace dress and white hat, is IMPOSSIBLE. The lace dress will be left hanging from the very first shroud the lady crashes into on her way down to the saloon, while the young sailor will mostly be falling off the yard—even if he manages to reach it in the first place. But... dreams do come true! And this morning greeted us with complete silence, while we made a perfectly respectable speed for near-calm conditions—3.5 knots. That indescribable feeling when there’s wind but no waves! It happens maybe a couple of days a month )) Plus, the African coast was there, twinkling with lights—something to gawp at through the spyglass. Africa A mingled aroma of incense and sewage. At first the incense predominated, then—...alas. At last, the first plastic bottle appeared, accompanied by a flotilla of crisp packets. Thank God! I was beginning to worry that we’d missed Africa. We wanted to get closer to Gorée Island. There’s a fortress here, a garden in bloom and lots of beautiful houses from the days of French colonial rule. But, as usual, the approaches to the African capital were securely blocked by fishing nets. For about three hours, we tacked between independently drifting plastic bottles and net buoys made from the same sort of bottles, carefully telling one from the other and changing tack with gusto. The winch can testify to that—today, at least, no one can accuse me of shirking my workout! Phew. We seem to have found the precious channel through the web of nets. We joyfully dive into it, look up... and here it comes! A fishing boat rushed to intercept us and ordered us off into the hazy distance, towards Brazil: there were invisible nets somewhere around here... While those guys were sending us on our way, our fishing line was not idle and hooked their boat. The fishermen looked rather sheepish and disentangled themselves. We realised that, in a little while, we would definitely have to tack back against the trade wind to the anchorage. “And I don’t neeeed Africa,” I sing cheerfully as I crank the winch. We’re honestly sick and tired of going around nets! On the bright side, we got to see coastal Dakar from the north, west, south and sideways too. Right at the entrance to the anchorage, we once again nearly finished in a net. We turned sharply and gracefully slipped clear in four metres of water, right beside the breakwater, which was covered in loons (or whatever they were?). At the sight of our yacht, the Senegalese began fleeing the shore en masse in a single little boat. Their shouts and laughter made it clear that they were happy to see us 🙂 Welcome to Senegal! Continued here — Senegal and the Senegalese from the Anchorage