Life here is plush at the Iate Clube do Rio de Janeiro (ICRJ). We've got a couple of swimming pools to choose from, excellent shower facilities, a water taxi service gets us to and from the boat, the restaurant serves delicious traditional Brazilian fare, and the snug location in the morning shadow of Pão de Açúcar is centrally located in relation to all the Cidade Maravilhosa offers.
My seaman skills were put to the test the day after Skipper John and Admiral Patricia flew home to Estados Unidos to visit family and friends for about six weeks. After venturing out for the day to explore the city I returned to the boat and the nice water taxi driver informed me we've drug our two anchors. It was a windy day, more than usual, but nothing strong enough to alert me to any potential problems.
Where before there were a few boats furthest away from the club, Kehaulani now held that honor after dragging a couple hundred feet. Careful inspection for damage returned no evidence of her making acquaintance with other boats. A remarkable feat of solo navigation.
The taxi guy told me he wants to move us to a mooring buoy (large block of concrete resting on the bottom with a line attached) and to call him on the radio when I'm ready. After releasing the remaining anchor chain (in hopes the extra weight would keep us from dragging any further) and eating dinner I called the taxi guy over. I informed him that I would prefer to move the next morning to have the advantage of daylight and hopefully the wind would calm. Waiting for daylight provides an additional advantage; before moving the boat I would visit the Clube and recruit a helping hand. I was in for a long night of anchor watch.
However, this was not necessary as included in the water taxi came another member of the Clube, Pedro. Pedro speaks English and helped communicate my plan to Pingo, the taxi driver. Hah hah! Pingo and Pedro! I'm sure it's just coincidental...
Anyways, Pedro said he would assist me in raising the anchor and moving to the buoy. Pedro, as it turns out, is a professional skipper. He spends his days here at the yacht club repairing his antique Rio-built sailboat. But I didn't know that until after we successfully moved the girl to her new home closer to the channel and on a mooring buoy. Great location, she'll love it.
I had Pedro at the bow and myself at helm. We began on the secondary anchor. At first the ball on the end of the chain came easy. However, once taking aboard any slack the ball became an even larger headache. Dragging an anchor along 200 feet of bay within a metropolis brings up interesting things: mud, sea weed, fishing line, ancient ropes, even the rode for the primary anchor.
Pingo played a particularly important part (say that five times fast) clearing off the primary anchor chain, however I was called in to assist in removing the rest. The anchor then lifted snugly into her roller. The primary anchor was less of a fuss with the electric windless, however, I forgot to tell Pedro to flake the chain as it returns to the anchor well under the windless. It then piled up too high and jammed, stopping the electrically assisted action. This caused Pedro to believe the anchor got stuck on something resting on the bottom (rocks, stumps, old mooring buoy foundations, chain, cables, pipes, engine blocks, airplanes, human corpses, you name it).
After that was figured out we brought up the anchor with no problems and I motored over to the mooring buoy while managing to avoid several others. We found one closer to the main channel and in the row furthest from the yacht club. A nice location with easy outs in the event the mooring buoy drags!
This was my first real solo experience in harbor navigation and I´m happy to say it was a success. Kehaulani now has a safe and more permanent home and Pedro and I have become friends.
This passage to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil provided us with many opportunities to try different sail combinations. Here we´re stretching out our full mainsail, full staysail, and full Genoa. For about a week or so we had a strong low pressure weather system to the south of us which gave us variable winds and often times winds coming from exactly the direction we needed to go.
It got so bad that we were even thinking about changing our plan to catch better wind by sailing to Salvador da Bahia in the northeast of Brazil. One particularly depressing day our distance made good was three nautical miles. In another twelve hour period we actually had a negative distance made good of one nautical mile! Another morning that was particularly frustrating I found on my morning watch that our tack was so off course we were actually sailing towards the sunrise! We´re supposed to be sailing west, not east!
Here we´re exercising the spinnaker, she sure is a pretty sail (Go Ducks!). We use this sail when trying to squeeze out as much speed as possible from light winds behind us.
Winds calmed to almost nothing about three days out from Rio so we had to resort to the Iron Genoa (and old sailor's nickname for the diesel engine). This method of travel isn't preferred because it's loud, smelly, polluting, expensive, and makes a hot boat even warmer. Sailing is much more peaceful. However, without wind comes calm seas and for some reason this amazing sunset. Trained sailors´ eyes can spot our first sight of land in almost three weeks; Cabo Frio is in the right third of this picture at the horizon.
The view entering Baia da Guanabara. Copacabana is the beach in the center backed by buildings that make up the neighborhood of the same name. Corcovado is the mountain that is home to Cristo Redentor and can be seen above the center of Copacabana. Pão de Açúcar is the tall hill on the right of this photo.
We crept past a large and extremely slow moving turtle that guards the entrance of the bay.
Sugar Loaf with Christ the Redeemer in the background. How many tourists get this photo?
A view of Rio from across the bay in Rio's sister city, Niteroi. Kehaulani is in the center of the photo with all the other little toy boats. We kept her here for two weeks because the facilities here have water and electricity on the dock and it's a walk-on/off stern-to mooring which makes things a little easier. Although this Clube had very nice facilities as well, the distance across the bay to all that Rio de Janeiro offers wasn't as attractive, so we moved the boat to the ICRJ.
Me on my birthday in front of the famous statue. Clearly it was cloudy that day so we weren't able to get decent photos. I'll return on a clear day for the view and photo opportunities.
Sunset from Pão de Açúcar. Kehaulani is now in the midst of the boats below. She'll be the star of thousands of tourist photos! Okay, okay, an extra.
Myself on the summit of Pão de Açúcar with the winter sun setting in the background.
Discussing bamboo bicycles with bamboo.
The whimsical face of the bonde that for R$.60 will take passengers up to the neighborhood of Santa Teresa. If one is willing to brave scraped ankles and knees then it's free to ride if you hang on off the side.
I visited an art installation at the ruins of an old colonial home in Santa Teresa. This message is especially accurate in this stage of my life.
Two cool looking "buildings." I write "buildings" because they're actually Transformers. In the lower right corner the happy yellow bonde is crossing the aqueduct.
Holding on for my life on the side of the bonde. Seriously folks, this thing is old but quite fast and if someone isn't paying attention -- like a tourist taking a picture of himself -- he could get seriously injured by passing street signs.
A mico! Cute little monkey's that look like tiny old men.
That's all for now! I've got about another month in Rio before Skipper John returns on July 22nd and then it's a quick overnight sail to Ilha Grande, Parati, and Angra Dos Reis where we plan to hang out until August 19th when Admiral Patricia returns. Supposedly there are 365 tropical islands and thousands of anchorages in this area.
After that we'll come back to Rio for a couple days to stock up on food and supplies and then the plan is to visit the following Brazilian attractions as we make our way north to the Caribbean by November:
Cabo Frio
Buzios
Vitoria
Abrolhos Islands
Iheus
Salvador
Recife
Fernando de Noronha Archipelago
Fortaleza
Many good times to come!
