At 10.30am, when we enter the port, our first impression is that some of them are still here, for Mindelo’s harbour is home to a number of large, rusting hulks. Mother Nature, however, has a way of mitigating even the worst insults we humans inflict on her. Along with a number of self-seeded shrubs the hulks have been colonised by herons and little egrets. The latter, with their blistering white plumage and long black legs are as slender and graceful as ballerinas just so long as you ignore their feet, which are the avian equivalent of over-large, yellow wellies. But then, it is those enormous yellow feet which provide the stability that produces their gracefulness, even over slippery mud or rocks.
A garrulous, rather demanding man in an ancient dinghy appears from nowhere and says that for US$10 he will help us anchor. All we really want is a little peace in which to do it calmly and quietly by ourselves once our brains have stopped rolling from side to side, even though Voyager herself has stopped doing it. We tell him we’re fine thank you and he rows away. We find a suitable place with the right depth, drop our hook and dutifully raise our quarantine or Q flag up our mast.
A yellow quarantine flag should be raised by any vessel arriving in a foreign country although yachtsmen from EU countries tend not to bother when visiting another EU country. Nor do the authorities. But this is the first non-EU country we have entered and we dutifully dig out our yellow duster and hoist it as a Q flag.
Its meaning, according to Reed’s Nautical Companion is: ‘My vessel is healthy and I request free pratique (dealings with the port). This is used universally as a request for Customs clearance when a vessel is entering a foreign port from another country and also when returning to her own country from abroad.’
The flag’s purpose is to alert the authorities that the boat has not yet registered its presence with them and technically – although many countries do not bother about this either – no-one except its skipper is supposed to go ashore until the necessary documentation has been completed. Along with our Q flag we also hoist a Cape Verde Islands courtesy flag.
Then we unstrap the dinghy from the foredeck, lower it into the water and set off to clear in. Once that is done, our priorities are to find a dentist, arrange to fill our fuel tank and get our staysail repaired.
As we near the beach a large number of young men become visible, standing around talking or lying in the sand. After the eagerness of the man to help us anchor, we suspect a rush to mind our dinghy. However, according to our cruising guide, close to the beach a German has received permission to anchor an old freighter which he has effectively converted into a small floating marina. Yachts can tie up there and it has showers, a washing machine and water. For 100 Cape Verde escudos, or one US dollar, you can also leave your dinghy and the slender young African who is running the place ferries you to a small jetty on the beach.
‘When you want to come back,’ he tells us, ‘just give me a wave and I’ll come and get you.’ We ask him where we can get a sail repaired and he points to a little French boat anchored nearby.
The Capitania dos Port and the Policia Maritima share an office in a large building across the road from the beach. As we enter a man observes us wearing deck shoes and clutching our ship’s papers, gives us a wide grin and says, ‘First floor.’ A woman ahead of us on the stairs turns and gives us an encouraging look, leads us unasked to the first floor landing, then nods at the relevant door.
This friendly interest and polite concern for your needs is a feature of Mindelo’s general population whose approach to life appears in our very limited experience to be African. Its bureaucracy, on the other hand, seems to be based on the Portuguese model with which we have become familiar in the past year, with all transactions perpetrated in triplicate and twenty-four hours’ notice required if you wish to buy fuel.
The large open office has a deep counter running from wall to wall where you enter. Behind it are a number of unmanned desks and two clerks who open cupboards and inspect the contents of box files without any sense of urgency. At the open window, a generously-proportioned officer (whether the Harbour Master or the chief of Maritime Police, we do not know) sits like a statue of Buddha gazing out over the harbour below him. Very occasionally he drags his heavily-lidded eyes, briefly and tiredly, from the window to the two male office staff and then stares out over the harbour again as though something extraordinary is imminent.
Completing the necessary forms with one of his subordinates is a time-consuming business, because our vital statistics are pecked out one letter at a time by an index finger on an elderly, sit-up-and-beg manual typewriter which has two sheets of carbon paper between three printed forms wrapped around its roller.
In one of the longueurs between questions, while the man behind the counter tap-taps our details onto yet another triple-decker of forms and carbon paper, we ask the officer where we can find a dentist. He writes down a name and address for us and suggests we take a taxi.
By the time our documentation has been completed here, it is too late to get to Immigration, down on the harbour’s main breakwater, before its office closes for lunch. So we decide to leave that until the afternoon and go to the dentist first.
We are glad of the taxi, not just because of the distance but because of the heat and the steep uphill climb. The spotless waiting room, with its chilly air-conditioning and television set, is a world away from the hot, dusty streets outside. The surgery itself is immaculate, if somewhat short on equipment. It has two dentist’s chairs and a drill. No x-ray machine or anything else. The two dentists, a man and a woman, have virtually no English and we speak no Portuguese.
The man examines David’s teeth by gently tapping them with a small hammer. He consults with the woman and she taps David’s teeth, too. The man then explains, mostly in eloquent but rather painful-looking mime, that David has an abscess and will need root canal work under three teeth. He makes it clear that the abscess will have to be cleaned up before the root canal work can be undertaken. Apart from the time this is going to take, from their expressions they are not keen to do the job. They ask where he intends going after leaving the Cape Verde Islands.
‘Trinidad,’ says David.
They look relieved and say, ‘Good dentists in Trinidad.’
We shall set off on Monday.
The man writes a prescription for antibiotics along with instructions on how many tablets a day to take and for how many days. We pay the bill, which is incredibly small, and go in search of a pharmacy.
Currently the Cape Verde Islands is classed as the poorest country in Africa based on a scale which uses a nation’s resources as its criteria for measurement. It has no agriculture, no mineral deposits and its main source of income disappeared when ships stopped using coal and could carry enough diesel on board to be able to sail straight past. Most of the population here is under 30 years of age and much of the male part of it seems to be out and about. The streets, like the beach, are awash with young men, not a few of them in football shirts given to them by people passing through or visiting home, and all of them are thin. In fact, with the exception of the man presiding over the Capitania dos Port, everybody in Mindelo seems to be thin.
One man, somewhat older than the rest, hears us talking to one another in the street and speaks to us in English. It turns out that some years ago he had worked in the shipbuilding industry at Birkenhead, just across the Mersey from Liverpool where Voyager is registered. After a chat he gives us directions to the pharmacy.
On the way there we find an ATM with a policeman guarding it, who says not to count our money in an obvious way and to put it away out of sight quickly. We’ve never used an ATM with an armed guard on it before.
The pharmacy has a long wooden counter and wooden shelves and drawers lining its walls like the old country shops of my childhood. The pharmacist speaks English and, given the uncertainties of our situation, I ask her to sell us double the ten-day course of antibiotics in case the abscess flares up again before David can get proper attention.
; At the post restante counter in the big general Post Office the clerk asks our name and then pushes a large box filled with envelopes across the counter at us. We rummage through it until we find the one addressed to us but when we show it to her and offer some ID she is not remotely interested.
To make a telephone call to England we have to book the use of a wooden booth against a far wall which contains a large, old-fashioned, black handset in it. Even with the door propped open, the booth is very hot. We then pay for the call at the counter. It costs a small fortune but at least Tony is pleased to know we may still be around to enjoy another Christmas.
Our next stop is at the Shell office to book diesel. We are assigned the first delivery on Monday at 10.30am. We are to tie up on the commercial dock at the black and yellow Shell sign. From the fuel office it is then only a short walk, along with many affable groups of young men, to the main breakwater and Immigration.
There are hundreds more men waiting in lines at the docks in the hope of being taken on for work. A few are lying on the ground and look as if they have been waiting all day. But, as everywhere else here, there is no sense of menace at the sudden eruption into their midst of two people from the white, affluent West. Not even vague resentment. Quite the contrary. You actually feel welcome. The armed guard on the ATM notwithstanding, whether it is on the beach, on the streets or here at the docks, these young men smile at you. Ask for directions, and they are polite and helpful and ask where you are from. And when they hear you are from England, say, ‘Manchester United! Best team in the world!’ A sentiment not over-enthusiastically received by the Aston Villa supporter in their midst.
There is a row of open-fronted wooden sheds down the left-hand side of the breakwater. Inside each of them a man in uniform sits at an ancient manual typewriter tapping in the personal details of the job-seeker standing in front of him. The place we want, one of the men waiting in line explains, is in one of the wooden offices on the opposite side of the pier. He points out the relevant one.
The official inside it contemplates our yacht registration. ‘Liverpool,’ he says, ‘has a fine team, but Manchester United is the best in the world.’ I smile and nod, and don’t even glance at David. Villa just lost at home to Newcastle.
The amount of English spoken here is at first surprising for a former Portuguese colony, but for a century there was a strong British presence due to the bunkering of coal from British mines into Atlantic steamers. And working on foreign ships now, or finding work abroad and sending money home, is the only option for many. These islands are the first place we have ever visited where the majority of people are so poor and it makes us very sad. Not the absence of material goods, but the lack of opportunity; of young lives spent waiting on a dock in blazing heat in the hope of a day’s work and doubtless a very small day’s pay. And, most of all, the brevity of those lives.
At the same time you know that there are people far more deprived and at risk than those on this island. But you are here, not there, and you look at the wide smiles and thin bodies and the occasional football shirt and wonder at the unifying force of football and a shared language.
Somewhat weary we stand on the beach and wave to the young man on the freighter/marina who comes to pick us up and reunite us with our dinghy. Our last act of the day is to collect our small staysail off Voyager and take it to the little French boat anchored nearby. The woman on board inspects the damage and says she will have it done by Saturday afternoon.
Saturday morning we take a turn around the town before doing some essential shopping. Mindelo retains its graceful colonial buildings but they have gone to seed. Its high-maintenance Portuguese mosaic pavements have also crumbled, although the roads are well-maintained. A few new buildings have gone up among the old, banks mostly and a hotel.
We walk across the seafront, down a wide street into a large square busy with card schools and fish stalls. The men smile when they pass. The women look at you. The children are nice. Thin, light-brown dogs lie curled up in the shade. There are rows of small, neat houses fronting onto the pavements. Like the pharmacy, the shops are traditional: a bread shop, neighbouring meat shops selling chicken in one, beef next door and a covered fruit and vegetable market.
The supermarket is a more recent arrival, basic and DIY-style. As one would expect, the range is limited but also surprisingly expensive, even for an island, and especially for such a poor one. An unexpected find, and something I haven’t seen in years, is a packet of six little cone-shaped sponge cakes known to me as coconut pyramids.
There is a wide disparity between the old and the emerging new here. We have lunch in the modern hotel’s bistro. There are some luxury goods in the shops, like the huge, ultra-modern cooker sitting incongruously in the centre of an old-fashioned hardware shop. Nevertheless, everything here, including the most basic, is expensive. It is no wonder that so much of the wage-earning population works abroad.
For those who remain it is not only a life of limitations but of physical risk. From our cockpit we watch a ferry arrive. It is so rusty that it is hardly distinguishable from the hulks around it. It is listing to one side and groaning with the number of passengers arriving from the other islands, many of them poorer even than this one. And you wonder if, sooner or later, you will read about a ferry disaster off the Cape Verde Islands with a horribly familiar catastrophic loss of life. And you understand as never before why so many people in very poor countries take such deadly risks to become illegal immigrants.
We stop off on the way back to Voyager to collect our staysail but it is not ready. Sunday evening for definite, she says.
19
Preparing for the Crossing
On Sunday morning, given the failure of our staysail, and the voyage ahead of us, David does another masthead inspection. Fortunately our mast has steps up it so it is not a problem.
Then he turns his attention to the water maker. Water makers have been around since the 1960s and, like Teflon, are a by-product of the space race. But it is not something we would have installed ourselves. Like everybody else we should have loaded up with large plastic containers and bottled water. But like the steps up the mast and the radar, Voyager already had the water maker when we bought her.
The average yacht making an Atlantic crossing would be capable of carrying less than two weeks’ water under normal usage. Therefore it not only has to be used with restraint during the voyage, but quite a large part of the supplies taken on board prior to setting out will be bottled water and/or plastic containers of tap water stowed on deck. Some yachtsmen also set up elaborate systems for catching rainwater during a long voyage and for channelling it directly into their water tanks.
We head out to sea until we are clear of pollution and make our first attempt at converting seawater into drinking water. We have not used it before because Europe’s coastlines are so polluted and clean water was always available on tap.
David spends ages crouched in the stern locker where the valves prove resistant. Ultimately, with the help of a little oil, brute force and some choice language, they free up and the pump begins to work. The process is simple enough. Seawater is pushed through three sizes of filter to get rid of contaminants and then into the desalinator which removes the salt. The result is excellent and very drinkable. You also have the benefit of knowing where the water came from (well away from habitation) and that it goes into your tanks by the shortest possible route (avoiding contaminated equipment).
It is hot and by the time he is finished David looks tired. Fortunately the pain in his jaw has been reduced to a dull ache thanks to the antibiotics. I am concerned, nevertheless, having once read about someone who died in his prime when poison from an infected tooth was blamed for a fatal heart attack.
On our way back into the harbour a local boat sails in ahead of us. Its main resembles Jacob’s coat of many colours until we realise that it has been patched so many times with whatever fabric has come to hand, that little of the original white canvas re
mains.
We collect our staysail at dusk.
On Monday morning we make an early start. We have a lot to do. The first job is to put up the repaired staysail. After that we make Voyager as secure as we can against big seas.
We put the storm boards over the front windows, lay out a safety line and the warps for the drogue. We put the tarpaulin handy in case a window gets smashed and when we return from our final trip into Mindelo we shall lash the dinghy upside down on the foredeck. Finally, when we leave the fuel dock, the fenders will be stowed away in a locker so that there is nothing loose bouncing around the decks.
Then we take a last trip into town in the dinghy. Since we are going ashore anyway, we go first to the main breakwater to make sure we know where the black and yellow fuel distribution point is, alongside which the Shell official has told us to berth for refuelling. We figure it will probably be easier to find on foot than from Voyager’s deck if the quay should be obscured by other boats. We walk the length of what turns out to be a deserted dock, twice, but still can’t find anything remotely black and yellow and there is no-one around to ask.
So we carry on to our most essential stop: the Capitania dos Port to complete the necessary disembarkation formalities and get our ship’s papers back. Although the office is empty apart from us, after putting in our request we have a long wait on a bench in the corridor outside. Ultimately we are handed a small printed form with the barest of details filled in by hand. Then we sit and wait some more, to pay for it, at the accounts office next door.
We go to the post office to send a reply to a friend’s letter received in the package we collected from here on Saturday, and then to a large modern bank to collect cash for the diesel we are going to buy. I’m not sure if I find it intimidating or just plain silly to look up above the counter clerk’s head and count seven security cameras pointed at us. Our last stop is the bread shop. Then we return to Voyager, haul up the dinghy, lash it to the foredeck, weigh anchor, stow it away and motor to the quay in good time for our 10.30am appointment.
A Thousand Miles from Anywhere Page 12