From Devil’s Island, we traveled a leg of over 1000 miles, all at sea, bypassing the Amazon River delta, and for good reason. Especially at its seaward reaches, the river has become a noted haven for pirates. Its enormous length and width is daunting as well. Its European discoverer sailed up the river some 1000 miles before he realized it was not an arm of the ocean. Even 2000 miles upriver it’s seven miles wide. […]
On Wednesday, July 19, 2006, Phil, Grant, Grant’s friend Will Proctor and I flew to Miami to begin our trip to the boat. We flew from Miami to Fortaleza on Tam Airlines. It was one of those all-night flights that many of you are familiar with and even though Phil and I were in business class, I don’t think we slept any more than Grant and Will did in coach. […]
It’s Thursday, July 20 and we arrived to the boat early morning. The boat looks beautiful and the weather is glorious: about 82 degrees with a wonderful breeze. We all took naps (since we had a sleepless night on the plane) and then Phil took Grant, Will and me to a Brazilian restaurant called Sal e Brassa. I have no idea what that means—Portuguese is a bit difficult. But whatever it means, the food was very good. […]
It’s Friday and another beautiful day in Brazil. We all woke up a bit earlier than the boys wanted to so we could visit the boat-building factory that is on the premises. Turns out that the marina, the marina hotel and boat-building operation are all owned by the same family. Phil had met Flavia, the daughter of the man who started it all, and she invited us to take a tour. […]
It’s Saturday and the weather is great. Today we took a taxi and drove about 30 minutes to Cumbargo and to a resort. There we rented two dune buggies and were driven over lots of dunes—they weren’t even right on the beach which shows you how many dunes they have here. We drove over many very high dunes and even I thought is was exhilarating to the go down the other side—quite steeply! […]
I know you have gone many days without a new entry here but that’s because we have been in areas of Brazil that don’t have internet access so we couldn’t add to the blog. And actually, until I got home, we were never in an area with internet access. But don’t worry—I made lots of notes so it’s now catch-up time. […]
Well, we left this morning about 0600 on our way to Natal. We will be out to sea over 24 hours so the Captain has assigned watches to Grant and Will. Grant will stand watch 1000 to 1400 and then 2200 to 0200 and Will stand watch 1400 to 1800 and then 0200 to 0600. Don’t worry—another crew member will be with them. […]
The seas calmed a little during the night—or did I just get used to it? This time at sea gave me a chance to do a little more reading about Brazil so here goes: Brazil is called a racial paradise because of the high number of inter-racial marriages and the absence of open racial conflict. […]
I felt bad for the crew last night since we didn’t get home from dinner until rather late and they had to come over to pick us up from the dock in the tender. It was just a short trip but still, someone had to stay up until we got back. We were warned not to leave the tender tied up anywhere and when we get back to the boat at night, we always use the crane to lift it up to its place on the upper deck. […]
We left Natal this morning to go to Ponta Negra which should be about a one hour trip, but there was no quiet port there and the seas were too “rolly” to anchor out. So we continued on to Cabadelo on the Rio Paraiba which meant several more hours on the ocean. We didn’t actually arrive until about 5:30PM. […]