Jacaré, Mainland Brasil

We have now spent a full week at Jacaré, a tiny village at the river of Paraiba, close to the easternmost place of Americas. We have experienced a number of challenges this week together with positive encounters of very friendly people and a rich wildlife. The sail from Fernando de Noronha to Jacare was a bit bumpy, 240 nm crossing the equatorial currents and we had to time the tides as the Paraiba river has some unmarked parts, shifting sand banks and currents at spring tide of up to 5 knots. Everything went well and after a night at anchor we decided to get a mooring at the Jacare Yacht Village, a very relaxed and friendly marina. As we cleared in with immigration at Fernando de Noronha our admin excersise with Customs, Marine Police anf Port Captain was expected to be easy. Well, maybe not. Took 3 Hours, but probably more because of the language barrier than anything else. This part of Brasil is regarded as rather poor. Many roads are dirt roads, you see many mules carrying farm products, extreme amount of garbage everywhere etc. At the same time there is the opposite with fat SUVs, big motoryachts with noveau rich people playing music with 20kw loudspeakers as they hand over the boats to marineros for mooring.

2 meter Blue Marlin. Hardest fight so far in my (Peters) career. Filled the freezer with 8 kg prime fillets – 16 dinners for two!

Naturally we are easily detected “gringos”, as such we try to avoid wearing anything showing wealth (such as watches, expensive cameras, etc).

The weather this close to the equator is very warm, day temps around 33 degrees with daily showers, some heavy.  The marina is owned and managed by a couple of french guys, Felipe and Nicolas, who makes this small (20 places) marina more like a social function. At XMas Eve Nicolas arranged a very nice, french inspired buffet. We are the only non french speaking people in the marina but as several of the sailors do speak som English we manage to communicate.

Downwind sail. We used a small headsail on the cutter forestay to reduce rolling. Worked very well. 

Last couple of days have been spent on “projects”.

Laptop disc crash – will get a new disk on Monday

Local sim card for internet – gave up yesterday after 2 days wasted efforts

Visa and Mastercard does not work – apparently there are a few ATMs for “international cards”

We are now counting down for  Brasilian new years festivity. Lots of music and great food to look forward to:-)