Saint Helena to Fernando de Noronha

Saturday 13^th April, leave Saint Helena.

Back into the rhythm at sea.  We eat “really” well – baked bread, homemade sausage rolls, muffins, cakes, pies, thai curries, pastas etc etc.  With two freezers and two fridges we are able to carry a lot of fresh/frozen goods.  EVEN icecream – what a luxury at sea!

No wind for the first few days.  We stopped motoring midday Sunday serviced the generator, then went for another swim.  Motored again, then finally Monday we were sailing again – screecher up!

22^nd April – clocks back another hour.  At night we have 6 Brown Noddies (birds) who hitch a ride.  They arrive about 2100 and leave about 0600 the next morning.

25^th April – a school of dolphins come to say “Hi”

Friday 26^th April – we arrive Fernando De Noronha – an island off Brazil (yahoo we are in South American waters).  We did not have a courtesy country flag, so I drew one with watercolor pencils, which we lamenated and flew, along with our “Q” quarantine flag.  As we neared, we begun radioing port control – no response…  we then motored around the moored local boats to see where we could anchor – quite a swell there – some local tour operators were helpful when we yelled out to them.  We found a good spot and anchored.  We still had no response from port control, so decided to take all our documents and go ashore.  We lowered the tender, put on the outboard (for the first time since leaving) and headed ashore.  Port control was at the end of the pier.  We found the reason we had no response on the radio was due to the fact that no one spoke English.  Our clearing in experience though was delightful – Port control, Customs, Immigration all came to us at the small (airconditioned – thank goodness over 30 degrees) office.  They brought “google translate” up on their computer so that we could communicate – Portugese to English.

It is a Eco Status Island and Reserve.  We had to pay USD$110 per day just to anchor and go ashore.  Needless to say, we were only there for 2 nights.

Richard went for a dive with local operators.  The island is for tourists, predominantly from Brazil – I loved how they were all so very confident with themselves – all shapes and sizes in “G-String/Thong” Bikinis (Richard and Marks eyes were neally popping out of their heads) and Men in very skimpy “speedo” style.  I am very sorry to say we didn’t get any photos as we had left our cameras onboard, then the day we cleared out it was raining.