We stayed in Mindela, Sao Vicente one of the Cape Verdian Islands for 5 days. We didn’t feel like sailing to the other islands since we just sailed for 8 days straight and  we wanted to enjoy staying on land for a while before we cross the Atlantic.

There were about 30 boats waiting at the Marina to cross the Atlantic too. They were mostly participants of the Barbados 50 rally. The marina told us that once the Barbados 50 boats depart, the Atlantic Rally Cruise (ARC) with more than 200 boats will arrive the next day so we had to make sure we checked-out on time because the ARC reserved the whole marina.

Barbados 50 rally

Mindelo is a very laid back town and the people are very friendly. There are still several colonial houses and buildings present and there is a Torre de Belem which is a smaller version of the Torre de Belem in Lisbon. Although the scenery is similar to the Canary Islands the atmosphere is totally different so you really know you are in Africa. There are more street vendors and more traces of poverty. We first expected the worst because the information you read on the internet about Mindelo warns you to be careful on the streets because there are many reports of theft especially on the boats. Of course you have to be careful but it is no different from any other major city and the marina was well protected. Although the town has 70,000 inhabitants the facilities are very basic and sober. The variety of fruit and vegetables is limited and it was almost impossible to find fresh meat. So, I guess that means Erwin would just have to catch a fish everyday 😜.

For the first time during this trip we had to clear in through immigration and we had to clear out when we left. From now on, this is something we have to do every time we enter and leave a new country. We first had to go to the immigration office where they stamped our passports and then to the maritime police office for the boat registration. The police asked us to surrender the original boat registration papers and they said that they will give it back to us once we leave. We were hesitant to leave the original papers but we didn’t have a. choice. We planned to leave on a Sunday but since the immigration and maritime police offices were closed in the weekends we went there Friday at 9:30 a.m. to check-out. The police had to print out a clearance form for us but the printer wasn’t working well because the paper was blank every time. He actually had no idea what he was doing because we saw that he was pressing the “copy” button on the printer. Erwin offered to help him with the printer since he saw that there was a configuration error but after a while he told us we had to come back at 2:00 p.m. Luckily everything was ready when we came back.

Maritime police office

Helping with a computer problem

Cape Verde was definitely a good pit stop 😀