Passage to Recife:
Dream or Nightmare?

Many people like to dream about sailing away and enjoy reading about the adventures of other people who have actually taken the plunge. But sometimes that dream can be more of a nightmare, such as enduring storm force winds, a breakdown of essential equipment, or personal injury. Sailing is not always idyllic, if it were it would be boring. It is in conquering the bad times that experience and a sense of achievement are gained. Our recent dream turned nightmare occurred trying to return to Recife from Salvador, Brazil in March 2006.

Was it coincidence that a friend had just emailed us to say he would prefer to continue to dream for a while as long as it was not a nightmare? It is 372 miles from Salvador to Recife in a north-easterly direction, against the Brazilian Current which flows along the coast. The straight coastline has dangerous reefs all along its length, and there is just one intermediate harbour a yacht can use, Maceió, about three-quarters of the way. It had taken under four days to sail the other way in late January. We had waited until March for the return journey when the predominantly north-east winds of summer normally give way to the south-east trade winds, allowing a pleasant reach along the coast.

On the first day we motored out of Salvador in beautiful conditions, until we were well clear of the reefs. To our surprise the wind was still in the north-east against us, though quite light. We set sail and began tacking. That day we made good 50 miles – barely half what we expected. Then on the second day the wind strengthened, and what was worse, the adverse current grew stronger, up to 1½ knots. We tacked, partly motor-sailing, back and forth but hardly making any progress. By the morning of the third day we had achieved only 80 miles towards our target. And there we stuck. The wind, now force 5-6, and the current were like a brick wall. Just look at the arithmetic. Sentinel tacks through a hundred degrees in strong wind and if the current knocks another forty degrees either way, we end up going backwards and forwards along the same line! Finally, we tried taking the sails down and motoring flat out directly into the wind and current. After 3 hours of desperately uncomfortable motoring into big seas, we had made good a mere 4 miles. It looked impossible – if we continued like this we didn’t carry enough fuel even to reach Maceió.

We seemed to be doomed. Lyn had never expected the trip to take more than four days; Andrew had considered at most perhaps six. The hard sailing was exhausting; but with the engine hammering and the boat on an extreme heel we were unable to sleep properly. We were getting knocked around. In the course of tacking, the genny sheet had momentarily slipped, sending Lyn flying across the cockpit smashing her elbow. While she was nursing that, her foot slipped on the sloping cabin sole, cracking her ankle against the table leg. Andrew was struggling with his bandaged right hand, from which the stitches had just been removed. Lyn was all out of fight and the tears welled up as Andrew explained the frustrating situation. He thought there were two options. Either we could sail south-east, perhaps 200 miles, away from Recife out into the Atlantic until we got clear of the Brazilian Current, or we could go back to Salvador. Lyn was unwilling to give up the 80 miles for which we had fought so hard; and perhaps having to repeat the whole effort again. We were well stocked and would not run short of food or water. So on the third day we opted to continue by motor-sailing out into the Atlantic.

Having made the decision we settled down for a long passage south-eastwards, making no further progress towards Recife. Slowly the conditions improved; the winds and the big seas died down a little. 50 miles out we tacked and found at last we could make some progress. 20 miles made good on the third day, then 40 on the fourth.

But the nightmare was by no means finished. Two nights in a row, when Lyn was on watch in the early hours, she was deluged under a thunder-cloud with lightning flashing around. Then, perhaps from the strain of all the motoring into big seas, we started to have technical problems. One end of the manifold came loose from the engine block, filling the boat with fumes and covering everything in the engine compartment with a sticky layer of carbonised diesel. Having discovered where the smoke was coming from, Andrew returned black after retightening the nuts. At least the engine was still running. But then the depth sounder, critical for ensuring we didn’t get near the reefs on our tacks, started playing up, the readings going up and down like a yo-yo. We had to head further offshore to avoid any risk.

Then, when lifting the cabin floor to get some of our stored food, Lyn found the bilges completely full of water. The water that had swept over the decks when we ploughed into the big seas had gone down the chain pipe into the anchor well, which is a separate compartment for the anchor chain right at the front of the yacht. From there the water should have fed through a drainage pipe into the yacht’s sump, where there is a pump to send it back overboard. But the drainage pipe had become blocked by thick mud when we had raised anchor in Salvador, and the water in the anchor well had found other routes to seep into the yacht cabin and down into the bilges. Worse still, the limber hole that, just in case, allows the bilges to drain directly into the sump, had also become blocked. Twenty-five days’ supplies of tinned food wrapped and sealed in plastic sacks stored in the bilges, were lying in seawater. We had to unpack all the sacks and stand the tins in the cockpit to dry off. The cockpit was littered with soggy tins with unreadable labels, showing signs of going rusty, leaving hardly any room to steer the yacht. We bailed and sponged out the bilges, then poked around to free the limber hole. Then Lyn blew back through the drainage pipe from the anchor well, freeing the blockage and allowing the remaining water in the well to drain into the sump.

Now, with the sump near full, to cap it all for the first time ever the pump would not work. It had been fouled by a stray J-cloth. It was a filthy job reaching down into the oily, murky water to clear the strum box, and the mess spread throughout the cabin. None of this would have happened if we had not taken mud in on the anchor chain, had we blocked off the chain pipe (which we normally do if we set off expecting bad weather), had the drainage pipe from the anchor well and the bilge limber hole not both blocked, and had the plastic sacks not been holed. A lot of extra messy work to do while the boat is in motion, a lot of cleaning up to be done later, and a lot of worry.

But at least by now it was getting easier. The current was weaker after we passed Maceió. Our course was becoming more northerly, and with the north-east wind we could make progress with long tacks inshore, losing only a little on the short tack out the other way. The eighth and final day was perfect. At last we came onto a reach, no more tacking, and our speed doubled. The sun shone, the sea flattened out and the current was no longer against us. We picked up a mooring buoy in Recife harbour at ten that evening, and even the torrential downpour waited until after we had tidied everything away and were snugly inside having a celebratory drink. After all the frustrations, problems and worries Andrew said it had been quite a pleasant trip at the end. We had logged 675 miles, taken eight days and used 35 gallons of diesel. What had made it such a nightmare was not that we had ever been frightened or that the conditions had been bad, but the effect on our morale as the trip became so difficult when we were geared up to expect an easy ride. At least we had the consolation of knowing that the worst passages make for the best stories afterwards.

Recife Harbour from the north.