Charm - To Grenada 3 - corrected

I’ve mentioned that we’ve had “no wind.” This is a relative term that basically means we don’t have enough wind to sail at the speed at which we would like to sail. Charm can sail in light winds but we’re spoiled with having a fast boat so our expectations for speed are high. We often turn on our engines unless there’s enough wind for us to go 6 knots or if we’re racing and don’t want to incur motoring penalties.

Usually “no wind” means less than 8 knots of true wind. If we “really have no wind,” that might be 5 knots. But tonight, I’ve seen 2.5 knots, which, to borrow an overused term of the kids, is, “literally no wind.” We are about 50 miles south of the equator, probably in what’s known as the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone). It’s my understanding that two equatorial currents converge somewhere near here, producing lots of squalls and very little wind. Sailors call it the doldrums and it’s not anywhere we want to linger.

While squalls do bring cooler temperatures and refreshing rain, they also bring unknown amounts of wind. Any time we see one on the horizon that might reach us, we reef the main, bring in the seat cushions, close the hatches, etc. So far none of them have amounted to much, wind-wise. But, as Joe said, “I don’t want to get caught in 30+ knots with the full main up.” Neither do I.

My mother recently sent out a request for poetry about the ITCZ and there were some impressive entries. My favorite rhyme with ITCZ was “hyperbole” – nice work, Aunt Sharon!

Today was another normal day on the sea – while I usually only write about the good stuff, I want you to know that we also have bad tempers, grouchiness, rudeness, unkind words, hitting, throwing, pinching, pestering, screeching, whining, fussing, wailing, complaining, impatience and downright meanness. And that was just me, today. J

A squall just brought a fresh breeze and we went from 4 knots to 17.5. I pulled the jib back out, turned off the engine and messed around with the trim on the main. I’m not entirely clear what happened – were we caught in a lull?, did the squall clear out the dead air?, did we just find the wind? but we are now sailing at around 8 knots so the details aren’t important.

My intent tonight was to tell you about our time in Jacaré Marine Village, near Cabadelo. It was a complete contrast to Salvador and quite delightful. The best part was that the kids could run around on their own and they had places to go that interested them. The marina is about 10 miles up a muddy brown river, with the beach on the Atlantic Ocean just a couple miles away. The marina had a large, open-air seating area that remained cool and breezy during the day. It had a good full-service restaurant with helpful staff and a small swimming pool where the girls spent much of their time. Probably the best part of it all was that they had lightning fast Wifi. This usually lasts until one or two boats start using it and then it’s never fast again. But this place had lots of boats passing through and all of us seemed to be able to surf and download to our hearts’ content without impacting the speed for everyone else.

There wasn’t too much in the way of sightseeing that interested us so we spent almost all of our time in and around the marina. We did go to the beach, the mall, and to a delicious Brazilian-style steak restaurant with several WARC (World ARC) folks. Cobin was surprised and delighted with all the amazing meat and I shared a giant ice cream concoction with Stefano, one of the WARC staff members. Mainly we hung out, did boat jobs, caught up on e-mails, taxes and work and enjoyed not rushing around.

Marin immediately befriended the son of the marina manager, Gabriel, and his group of friends. Despite the language barrier, she and Tully managed to play soccer and frolic in the pool with them. Once there was an issue with Tully thinking the boys were calling her a dog so she left the pool and told me about it. I learned that Gabriel spoke French as well as Portuguese and he explained to me that they were asking her how to say “dog” but realized she had misunderstood and couldn’t figure out how to apologize. Yet another international incident avoided with constructive dialogue!

Tully spent lots of time with the cats that had adopted the restaurant. She regularly went searching in the trees for the black cat and then would find someone to “keep an eye” on it while she located the striped cat. Then she would tell me that she had to hold the black cat because otherwise the striped cat would fight with it. Despite the black cat’s obvious desire to escape, Tully carried it around and/or otherwise monitored its location. Occasionally Marin got to hold it as well.

Cobin did some work polishing the stainless steel on another boat and tried to get as much internet time as he could to download various shows, classes and podcasts. He told me that it wasn’t fun to play with kids that don’t speak the same language, although he did think about organizing a video game session with the pack of boys that traveled with Gabriel. I have found that Marin and Tully are at an ideal age for this trip. They still like to play with pretty much any kids and aren’t at the point where language is always necessary for their play. Cobin likes playing as well, but language is more important to him as are kids closer to his age. The first half of this trip was great for all of our kids because the WARC boats came with built-in friends. Now that most of the kid boats have departed, our kids have to find other ways to entertain themselves.

A short walk away from the marina is one of the area’s local attractions. Each night at sunset, a gentleman plays Ravel’s Bolero on his saxophone while someone drives him around on a boat. He has been doing this every evening for over 20 years. A whole economy has been built around this man. There are boats that will take you out to the river to get a closer look, shops and restaurants that open only in the evenings when he plays, and other performers, street dancers, and craft merchants that set up to attract the audience that comes to hear him play.


The girls went with me to do a provisioning run and we discovered that Carrefour, a French chain we were familiar with from our time in Spain, had mini shopping carts. This worked out great for all of us. The girls would go off together and browse the clothes section or toy section and bring back things to show me while I did the food shopping. They would go back and forth which kept them busy and allowed me to shop without them complaining that it was taking too long.

During our travels, I have noted some items that I can find almost anywhere while others are unexpectedly difficult. Tortillas and tortilla chips are almost everywhere. When I couldn’t find them in Carrefour, I went to a store clerk and, using my best Portuguese (basically my Spanish said with what I think is Portuguese flair), I asked where I might find tortillas. After this failed, I resorted to Google translate which translated “tortillas” in English to “tortillas” in Portuguese. Still nothing. I looked up a picture of a tortilla and the small group that had gathered to help had an Aha moment and directed me to the correct aisle. Out of curiosity, I asked how to say tortilla in Portuguese and the lady told me “Happy Day.” I repeated, “They’re called Happy Day?” She said yes. The brand name is “Rap10” so it must just be a local term for them. It was a happy day for me when I found them so the name works for me.

My day turned unhappy just afterwards when I couldn’t find peanut butter. Peanut butter is one of those things that I have unexpectedly found everywhere. I considered it more of a US-based food and thought it would be a rarity but its popularity has apparently spread because I think I’ve seen it in every place we’ve been, except Brazil. In South Africa, they had this amazing brand called Yummy Yum that came in all kinds of flavors. It is the best peanut butter I’ve ever had. I wish I’d bought ten jars. But I didn’t and we’re almost out. I persisted in my search and found another Carrefour employee to ask. He told me they didn’t have any but he didn’t seem all that interested in helping me and I wondered if I had used the right term. I tried one more guy and asked him in a different way – nut butter rather than just peanut butter. He led me to a section with ghee (!?) and butter in tins. Not what I was looking for. Before we left, I tried in two other stores and never found any. Todd on EQ2 said he had also looked and found nothing.

Joe did his usual list of things on Charm and then started helping other people with their jobs. I didn’t really see much of him on the days I was provisioning and just learned where he was during that time when we got cc’ed on an e-mail from Babsea to Danica, telling Glen and Mary about Babsea’s time in Salvador. Helmut agreed to let me use his version of the story here. Helmut and his wife, Babsi, are Austrian. He asked me to correct his English but there is very little to correct so I left the original version because the wording is delightful (just like Helmut and Babsi):

“The plywood in our anchor locker broke and all the chain (70 meters) fell into a “watertight” compartment underneath. We took more than 50 buckets of seawater out of this compartment. This “watertight” section is thought to prevent water from getting into the vessel in case of frontal collision. We removed the old plywood which was covered with polyester and fiberglass on the upper side only with a jigsaw (from EQ2). I was lucky because a local shop could deliver most of the material (new plywood, epoxy and the fiberglass mats) and the other things were supplied by Charm.

Unfortunately, nobody was available to do the work within the given timeframe so Babsi and I did it and Joe helped us a lot.

You will see photos (Joe put one on his Facebook site) where I am working in the anchor locker with a grinder and a snorkel in my mouth. The end of the snorkel was connected to a hose from a vacuum cleaner to get air from outside. A diving mask protected me from aspiring through the nose. Whilst doing the grinding work there was incredibly much dust in the air and one could almost not see.

Every time I made a break I was covered with thick layers of dust and it was hot-hot-hot.

Joe showed us how to use the epoxy the right way and helped us cover the new plywood in epoxy and fiberglass. In the end he put the fiberglass onto the new plywood plates in the anchor locker. Head down in the locker – the feet outside – in one hand a brush with epoxy and the other hand putting the fiberglass mats in place. I held his feet to prevent him from falling entirely into the locker.

But we all together managed to have the work completed shortly before departure.”

This is how I figure out where my husband goes when he’s not around – via e-mails and Facebook posts!

I think the best feature of the Jacaré Marine Village was the lack of concerns about security. In Salvador, we were always trying to remember to carry our backpacks on our fronts, keep our valuables out of sight, etc. One lady in our fleet had a gold chain ripped off her neck. A World ARC staffer had his phone stolen and then another person (we assume they were working together) volunteered to get it back for a fee. Walking back from the old town, Gemma saw two teenagers on the ground with an adult pointing a gun at their heads and shouting at them. She had unintentionally joined the back of a tour group to get through the congested area and overheard the tour guide saying something to the effect of “Those kids are learning a lesson about carrying weapons that could be used against you.” I went running a few times but disliked the pressure of hoping I was in the right neighborhoods or running the gauntlet of the obvious drug users on a narrow sidewalk (don’t worry – Joe was with me that time and they looked too stoned to put up much of a fight). Around Cabadelo, there were no issues like this. I ran wherever I liked.

After passing a tempting-looking forest several times on Uber jaunts, I decided to wake up early on our last morning and take an Uber to run through the forest. I usually don’t carry my phone when I run but I needed it to get an Uber back. I also grabbed a bottle of water at the last minute because it was already quite hot. When the driver dropped me off, I was very excited. It was everything I wanted in a run – a quiet, shady dirt road leading into unknown territory. I immediately hid my phone in the bend of a tree and put my water bottle by it to mark the spot. I even covered the phone with leaves so no one would accidentally find it. Then I started running. Birds were singing, the air was scented with flowers and it was fabulous. I thought about going back to get the kids so they could enjoy it. This lasted for about 4 minutes. Then the shade ended and I was crossing the railroad tracks into what looked like a small village. No matter – it was probably the headquarters for the forest park and there would be trails ahead. Perhaps an interpretation center with bathrooms.

I poked my head into one building and saw a stern looking man behind a computer monitor. I muttered something about looking around or bathrooms and he just frowned and shook his head. I found kind of a path by an area that prohibited trespassing and followed it until it ended after about a minute of running. There were signs telling about the plant species so it was intended as a trail. The “trail” eventually paralleled a new housing development but running next to a concrete wall in the underbrush wasn’t really the experience I was after so I turned around and decided I could just run back and forth on the forest road.

On my way back, I decided to check out the other side of the nice building with the stern man to see if there was another trail. I poked around by a fence a bit and then saw that the stern man had come out and walked all the way around the building to shake his finger at me and point down the road. I was being evicted!

As I went back through what I thought was a village, I read the signs on the buildings and saw that it was a research center for primates and native birds. Interesting. There were several cars and motorcycles on the road now and I started to wonder if they were taking note of my presence, like the stern man. I stopped at my water bottle/phone location to get a drink. In order to get the water, I had to take a couple of steps into the forest. I wanted to time it in such a way that no one saw me (so as not to arouse further suspicion) but there was a blind corner right there. I decided to risk it (there really weren’t that many cars) and just as I emerged from the bushes, a police car came around the corner. Ugh. They had no interest in me and I tried to look innocent – just a random woman rummaging around in the forest. I did a few more laps, then dug out my phone and called an Uber. I felt bad for soaking his seat with sweat but was happy to have a ride in air-conditioned comfort back to the marina.

We left Brazil a few hours later and traveled down the river until we met the sea. There was a distinct line of muddy brown water meeting clear blue ocean water that was quite interesting to see. What happens at that line to keep it so distinct?

I have no answers – only questions. After that, we headed out to sea. The kids are all taking turns on watch now. Cobin has learned how to make himself comfortable and Tully is just happy to be doing what the other kids are doing.