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Firefly - French Guiana not Fernando de Noronha



Today is Saturday 18th of February and Firefly is passing the north eastern corner of Brazil having left Salvador 4 days ago. It has been a good passage heading north east up to Cabo De Sao Roque where we are now altering course to the north west. On the basis of information about ocean swells, received via e mail from several sources, we decided not to go to Fernando de Noronha. Noronha is a national park and anchoring is restricted to one area that is open to the north and notoriously rolly - the predicted swells for the next few days are coming from the north. Therefore it would have likely been very uncomfortable if we were able to anchor at all.

We are now planning to stop at French Guiana en route to Grenada. As we sail up the coast of French Guiana we will anchor for a night off the group of islands including Royale, Saint-Joseph and Diablo - Diablo is Devil's island from the book, Papillion. Then we will go up the Maroni River to Saint Laurent di Maroni, right on the border with Surinam. Its certainly off the 'beaten track' but we have an excellent RCC pilot book and it sounds great - limited tourists, pristine rain forest and part of France so security is good and it is apparently easy to check into.

It is 1200 miles from here to the Islands and another 100 or so onto the Maroni River, with Grenada another 600 miles on from there. As we route north west past the entrance to the Amazon River we are anticipating some very favourable currents, possibly up to 3 knots moving us to the north west - we already have about 1 knot. This is the notorious 'doldrums' area but relatively close to the Brazilian coast there are reasonable winds forecast.

In fact, the wind has been better than expected for the passage so far - although today is not behaving quite so well. This morning we hoisted the gennaker and are now a broad reach, going fast in almost the right direction. Its quite choppy, probably as we effectively off a cape so not that comfortable and very hot.

We left Salvador in a group of 6 other WARC yachts, all of whom were heading into Cabadelo for their next rendezvous. All should have reached the marina by now. Our intention was always to sail for Grenada ahead of the World ARC schedule as it suited our crew change over plans better.

With Gerard replacing Gareth as crew the quantities of food being consumed dropped considerably - this probably just while Gerard is developing his sea legs. However, the quality of the food remains good with Peter cooking an excellent seafood chowder last night. The previous evening Paul produced one of his 'staple' ginger cottage pies, sadly spoiled by the 'salt beef', incorporated as we could not find mince in Brazil.

We are expecting to reach our first stop off French Guiana in about 7 days.

Paul, Peter and Gerard



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