After long discussions we decided to go via the Cape Verde Islands instead of crossing the Atlantic straight from the Canary Islands. And what a mistake it would have been not to have visited these beautiful islands.
We spent ten days in Mindelo, the main city on the island of Saint Vincente. Initially after spending a week at sea the respite the marina gave us was very welcome. We fixed what we could on board, primarily we had to refit Marvin to the helm so he was fully functional again. Further more we did a stock take of spare ropes and purchased more incase of issues further down the line. What we could not repair ourselves we tried to arrange for someone else to repair. However, ‘cape verdian time’ and a language barrier certainly made this quite the task. Sam wanted a small bit of fibreglass work to cover the four tiny holes we had found in the stern cockpit locker. After four different work men had come to look at the job and a lot of translation later we thought we had found our guy. However, the job we required clearly hadn’t been translated correctly with the guy taking an angle grinder to our boat and looking like he was about to gauge a big hole in our stern. Eventually we managed to steer him in the right direction and a job, of sorts, was completed.
It was great that my Dad flew out from the UK to join us for a few days. We took this opportunity to have a few days off from working on the boat and to explore Mindelo.



