We cast off from the Jacare
Marina pontoon at 16:30, slack high tide with the rest of the boats and motored
sailed out of that muddy river. Crossing
in front of the lighthouse, guarding the river entrance, we officially started
this last and final leg of World ARC 2017-2018.
The weather forecast called for a rainy first few days combined with
light winds. Let’s call it a poor forecast for the start of leg 16. We turned off AURORA’s engine as soon as we
could get out of the channel and threaded between squalls keeping our decks
dry. Around midnight the wind ran out so
we motored for 4 hours. Around 4 in the
morning we found 8 knots of wind so we quieted the old girl down and started
slow sailing. By now were in last place
as all the other fleet boats chose to motor on.
At the morning roll call we were surprised to find our position at only
about 15 miles lagging the fleet. A knot
of tail current pushed our sailing speed up to a blistering 4.4 knots average for
the first24 hours. We trudged on for another day of light wind and rounded the North
East corner of Brazil successfully dodging all the squalls in our path. On the not so successful front Captain Ken
cut close to what he thought was a fish pot buoy - a little too close. After passing it we heard a noise behind the
boat – like we were towing something. We
had hooked a nylon line attached to a free drifting buoy and AURORA was now
towing it toward Grenada. We tried to
cast it off with the boat hook. But no –
she was hard on. We had to turn AURORA
into the wind – heave to - and stop her
so Captain Ken, in his snorkin’ gear, could go over the side and cut her
free. That accomplished we got on our
way again. The third day the wind picked
up 12 to 18 knots and we averaged 8.2 knots for that 24 hours – and started
catching up. Day 4 our luck ran out regarding
successfully dodging squalls and we got hit by a white out – 20 to 35 knots of
wind and lashing rain lasting 35 minutes.
AURORA had her sails washed big time.
Another hit us at sunrise – same ferocity with rains equaling the
thickness of a good south east Asian monsoon.
The day was getting old. Squalls
everywhere. We stopped counting the number of squalls
which washed us that equatorial day but there were many. These were not the normal localized squalls
we have experienced everywhere else in the world. These were huge take no prisoners squall
lines which you could not run around – there was no avoiding them. By the 4th change into dry cloths
we were getting used to this version of nautical
hammering. The seas between the squall lines were very confused with waves
running all directions. The wind licking
off the wave tops made it appear that the sea was boiling. Luckily we had a break between the storm
lines and at 10:38AM on March 5th we cracked open a little bottle of
AURORA Champagne and celebrated our crossing of the equator:
In case you are interested in
knowing how you determine where the equator is you just look at your handy
dandy GPS driven chart plotter and check the latitude – 0 degrees North or 0
degrees South = the equator (OK - we were 34 seconds north of the equator by the time Eilo took the pic):
In an instant we were back
into the North Atlantic now really feeling like we are going home. The wind never died. Have you ever been on a horse and half way
out you turn around and head back for the stable – did the horse not pick up
the pace knowing he’s heading home?
AURORA felt the same way – she being mostly from the Caribbean and she
was now in the final stretch – heading home – and man did she pick up the pace. We flew.
A good day, when passage making, is 200 nautical miles or more. We had 6 days in the row where we made over
200 miles with our best being 249 miles.
We arrived 2 days before the early arrival date (for the fastest
boats). AURORA will most likely take the
final 1st place for this World ARC.
We were on the dock at Saint Georges Harbor:
…in Grenada at 4 in the
morning on May 10th and after drinking beer for 3 hours we watched
the sun rise and then crashed out heavy.
We will depart on the 21st for a Grenadine Islands
exploration and apart from getting a few things repaired on AURORA (Mast Spin
Pole Track, forward starboard macerator pump, handrail varnish, deck gel coat,
steering cable adjustment, foot switches for windlass, etc.) we had some time
to kill thus started at the top of our tourist priority list – a tour of the
old River Antoine Rum distillery. On the
way we passed this decorated cactus;
I bet you will never guess
why the cactus has eggs on all it’s pointy bits? It is to keep the Zombies away. In this specific case it was decorated too
late and the Zombies got this particular guy (you can see his car and his house
have not been used in a while). The
lesson learned - Never ever mess with Zombies.
The distillery was started in the mid 1700’s and it looks it. They still make rum the exact same way except
now they use a few electric pumps to pum the juices around (to cut down on
labor). This waterwheel is the oldest
still operating water wheel in the western hemisphere:
It started operating in 1753
and is used to drive a sugar cane conveyor and crusher (but due to a blown bearing was not in operation today):
These are the vats they have
been using for over 280 years where they concentrate the sugar syrup. There are wood fired ovens below boiling the pots:
The concentrated syrup is
fermented for about 5 days and when the alcohol content hits 16% the juice is
pumped in batched distillation (with wood fired oven below to heat the still):
The rum they make is 75% and
is highly flammable. If you buy some and
you run out of gas on the way home – no problem - you can burn it in your
car. It is too flammable to be able to
carry on any airline so it is all consumed locally on the island. We had a taste and it burned like nothing we
have ever tasted. Working our way down
the priority list to something less toxic we headed off for another waterfall
to cool off. Here is one of the locals
catching some air time from the top of the Concord Waterfall:
Here is Captain Ken catching
a little less air from a safer/lower point of departure:
After drying off we headed
for a 200+ year old farming estate where they were currently harvesting Cacao
for making some of the best chocolate in the world (as judged by the worldwide
chocolate growers association). You may be wondering how chocolate is made – so
here is the short version. The Cacao
pods are harvested from trees when they turn yellow (these guys are not ripe
yet):
Then the pods are cut open
and the white beans are removed and put into wooden bins and are covered with
banana leaves to let them ferment for 6
days – and the bean changes color turning brown. Each pod has about 40 beans – good for 2 good
size bars of good chocolate. The beans are then left in the sun for about a
week to dry and are turned over with a rake or by foot… Eilo is demonstrating how to
walk the beans:
A little further down the
road is the Grenada Chocolate Company:
There the beans are roasted
and their shells removed leaving the nibs of pure Cacao which are ground
turning them into a liquid cocoa butter type substance:
This raw chocolate is then
cooled and the cocoa butter is separated from the solids or cacao cake in a
high pressure press (note the coco butter in the pan at the bottom –the cake
stays in the press):
The cake, 70% for 70% dark
chocolate is mixed with about 27% sugar and 3 % cacao butter to make your basic
70% dark chocolate which is then put into molds, refrigerated and voila – a really
good choco bar. They make 6,000 bars per week. But enough with the
touristy stuff – back to sailing. We
attended the final awards dinner tonight March 20th, for this final
leg 16 of World ARC 2017 -2018 and as we had reckoned AURORA took first
place. But that’s not so relevant – what
we found out is that AURORA CRUSHED IT beating last years record by 4
days! We finished in slightly under 11
days from Cabadelo Brazil to Grenada.
Last years record was just over 14 days.
Good now we can relax. NOT! WE are off tomorrow for a quick stop and some
snorkeling at an under water sculpture garden about 10 miles up the coast then
on to Carriacou starting 2 weeks of free sailing then to the Grenadine Islands
working our way up 153 nautical miles to Saint Lucia where we started this
adventure and ultimately can declare our
circumnavigation complete! Again we’ll
let you know how that goes.
