An Account of the leg between Cape Verdes and the Azores
We left Praia, Cape Verdes on May 1st on a nice clear morning and motored in the lee of the island of Santiago. The trade winds came on strong soon after that and it went quiet again due to the wind shadow cast by Ilha de San Vincente and Santa Luzia. There was a wild 2 hours when the breeze screamed though gap between Vincente and Santo Antonio and complete quiet and tidal rips in the lee of Santa Antonio.
Once around the corner we got into a lot of wind up to 40 kts. which I think was due to a compression effect of the high northern face of Santa Antonio. This continued until the following morning when the NE trades settled down to about 15-20 kts.
We were making very nice progress until we lost halyard tension on the genoa and down it came.Fortunately, the breeze was light and we were able to secure it on deck without problem. The light line holding the genoa to the swivel had frayed through and we could not get the swivel down the forestay. I thought that the knot tying the swivel to the halyard had jammed into the masthead sheave and sent Ian up the mast to free it. He freed the knot but the swivel was tightly jammed at the top of the forestay and would not come down.
This effectively put the genoa, our main power sail out of commission and we thought about going back to Mindelo to try and fix it. In the end we decided to persevere and continue on using the staysail in heavy wind and the cruising spinnaker in light air.
This we did for a number of days. The wind stayed quite light and then backed to the NW and we were able to make slow but steady progress. We had some problems with plugged up fuel filters which required regular cleaning and/or changing. I think this was due to the fuel tank having been cleaned and the fuel treated in Capetown. I was warned that any remaining algae from the corners of the tank and suspended in the fuel would potentially plug up the Racors and the primary fuel filter and this did in fact happen.
As we proceeded north, we saw a significant low pressure system barreling across the Azores and there was no way to avoid it, so we motorsailed as fast as possible to take advantage of the SW breeze ahead of it. It was indeed a strong weather front and we had wind of between F5 and F8 for two days. We decided to put in at Santa Maria, the most southerly island in the group as the front had already passed through and we were concerned that the wind would veer to the north.
It was just as well we did as about 50 miles out the motor quit due the propshaft brake engaging. Further investigation revealed a leak in the transmission oil cooler heat exchanger and all our transmission fluid was going into the exhaust at a significant rate. Fortunately, we had plenty of transmission oil and we replaced 3 litres right away. This only lasted an hour and it all leaked out again. We shut the engine down and sailed to within one mile of the harbour on Santa Maria, put another 3 litres of ATF in and managed to get in without frying the transmission leaving a trail of red oil behind us. It was a filthy, rainy night with wind to 25 kts and we were very pleased to be tied up and safe after 11 days of hard sailing.
The weather improved over the next day and we thought that we might have many days in Santa Maria getting a replacement transmission oil cooler. There is a very good yard in Santa Maria with a 65 ton travel lift and a very good technician called Ricardo who managed to find us a used one that we could modify to fit. We got that done without problem and after spending a pleasant couple of days on Santa Maria, we made the 50 mile run to Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel.
Ian's wife, Marie Luce was on the dock to greet us and the Admiral was due on Saturday. We all looked forward to a little R and R in Punta Delgada.
