Cabedelo

The trip from Saint Helena to Cabedelo in Brazil was another easy passage. Cabedelo, or rather the village or suburb of Jacare further up the Paraiba river where the marinas are, is not the unspoilt romantic traditional place promised by my sailing guide, but neither is it the noisy playground of the rich which is the impression that Noonsite gives you. I liked it.

Saint Helena to Cabedelo, 14/03/17 – 30/03/17

Marina Jacare Village, 30/03/17 – 08/04/17

The only problem with the passage from Saint Helena to Cabedelo was that the wind tended to be right on my stern. Westward doesn't like to sail with the wind at more than 165 degrees from the bow so I had to gybe now and then. Apart from that it was painless. I started out with two reefs in the main with the wind hovering around force 5 but the wind dropped to force 3-4 and I gradually let out more and more reefs as it became evident that no terrible things were going to happen until I was sailing with full sail most of the time.

The wind died off just as I arrived within sight of the mouth of the estuary and I motored in. The outermost green buoy has disappeared and has been replaced with three oil drums tied together and painted yellow (no green paint? faded?) but apart from that, the entry to the Paraiba River and the four miles up the river to Jacare are easy. The tide runs quite strongly across the entrance but after that was harmless. The marina had kindly sent me a set of way points from the outermost buoy to the marina but these were only useful for reassurance. The river is wide and my Garmin charts were very good with the true depths being almost exactly as represented on the charts. I was entering in broad daylight on a sunny day with a rising tide which helped.

The town of Cabedelo is on the left bank as you enter. The port looks in good repair but after that there is a huddle of rough brick houses with red tiled roofs on the shore with fishing boats at anchor or pulled up on the beach. This is described as 'the favela' in the stuff sent by the marina and you are advised not to anchor off it. I would like to know when in Brazil a collection of houses is classed as a favela and when it is a village or a suburb. A double ended ferry full of cars and people left the right bank just as I arrived and crossed in front of me to a slip on the left bank.

From there to Jacare the banks of the river are more or less untouched by civilisation on both sides. I met a couple of small boats fishing but the long tail outboard seems to have replaced the sail completely. The fishermen waved cheerfully as I passed.

The banks at Jacare are lined with piers and marinas of one sort or another. The Marina Village Jacare is advertised by a big painted sign on the concrete wall reinforcing the river bank. It has two floating pontoons. Mooring is by your own lines to the pontoon and your own lines to invisible mooring lines fastened, I assume, to concrete blocks on the bottom. The fact that the mooring lines are invisible means you can't moor, or leave for that matter, without help from the marina guys. I tried to contact the marina by VHF as I arrived but got no reply. One of the boats I had met in South Africa was on one of the T heads, and advised me to tie up to the next one which I noticed was marked 'welcome berth' or words to that effect. As I gingerly approached it a guy appeared and took my lines which he did a very good job of handling. Just as well as the current was running at about 2 knots.

The marina is well organised with good toilets and showers, a bar cum restaurant with eccentric opening times, an expensive laundry service which I nevertheless used, a very small chandlery and various rooms and spaces arranged round a covered courtyard with a collection of tables, chairs and sofas in it. In all quite a nice comfortable place. There is a yard behind the marina with boats on hard stands. Boats are hauled out up a ramp using a slightly alarming trailer.

The office which is only open during the week can help with clearing in from telling you how to do it yourself to doing it all for you (at a price). This is just as well because clearing in in Cabedelo is possibly the most complicated I have come across anywhere in the world. The information in my sailing guide and on Noonsite proved to be out of date.

I opted for the middle way. I filled out the form for the Policia Federal which the marina office gave me and filled in the form on the Receita Federal website for which the marina office have a guide as to how to reply to each question. Then they called me a taxi who took me to all of the offices and accompanied me round them and told me what to do (in Portuguese but the guy has a gift for communicating). He picked me up at the marina and took me first to the Policia Federal which is where you do immigration. This proved to be only about 2 kilometres from the marina in a recent but slightly dilapidated two story concrete building. I waited in the lobby which has got a desk, rows of seats and two television screens to help pass the time. Police officers and various other official looking people came and went incomprehensibly, shaking the hands of the police officers at the desk (who were armed and wearing body armour). After about half an hour two people from another boat came out. They had been there since eight in the morning. It was now half past ten. They told me that the immigration official would call me when he was ready. I asked if there was a queue. They told me I was it.

The official came and fetched me at about eleven o'clock. The taxi driver had a bit worryingly disappeared to take the other boat to customs in Cabedelo. The official spoke some English (usually after long periods of reflection) which was just as well because my Portuguese is very limited. It took about half an hour to to enter all the data which he did himself on the computer from the form I had earlier filled out at the marina.

The immigration guy was quite pleasant, He asked me various inconsequential questions after long pauses. I don't know if he was happy with my replies.

There was one very important question though. He had asked me how long I was going to stay in Brazil. I said two weeks as, unfortunately, I didn't have more time. After a few more taps on the keyboard and pauses for further reflection he said,

“You are entitled to a three month visa. If you need to stay longer than two weeks you will have to reapply. Don't you think it would be a good idea to ask for more time?”

In all other countries they automatically give you the maximum. This guy was going to give me a two week visa? I assured him I would like the full three months.

He printed off various forms then he very carefully checked all of them. He stamped my passport with a three month visa, shook my hand and I left.

To my relief the taxi driver had returned and was waiting in the lobby. He drove me to Cabedelo (very fast in order to get there before they closed for lunch). The road is a straight four lane highway with vans parked at the side where you can buy or drink on the spot the liquid pressed from sugar cane. The peninsula is flat and sandy and there is lots of building going on both of small rough brick or concrete houses with red tiled roofs in cramped suburbs and small quite attractive looking modern apartment blocks. There are even some rich looking detached houses. It's a very mixed up place with lots of scruffy vacant lots and damp sandy areas behind high walls or barbed wire fences. The town of Cabedelo is low and nondescript with shops of various types and restaurants. You could be anywhere.

Receita Federal is in the port area. You have to go through a security checkpoint with a metal detector and sign your name and show your passport. The Receita is in a building just behind the entry behind an unevident door.

The customs guy spoke even less English but I had my copy of the form I had filled in on the website (very important to have a copy). He took copies of my passport and boat papers and printed out other forms, then checked carefully that all the details on the forms and the papers matched, then took one of those fluorescent felt tip pens and highlighted my name, my passport number, the boat's name and the boat's registration number on all the forms. Then he carefully took each of the originals and put them with the copies then checked them all over one last time. Then he asked me if I spoke Portuguese. I said no. Spanish? I said “pocito” and he said something in Spanish about his “hefe” which I supposed meant he had to give the forms to his boss, He went off. He came back and sat behind the desk and fiddled with a piece of paper which (reading upside down) I saw had a series of phrases on it in English. But, as they had no phrases in Portuguese beside them and the English was so terrifically bad, I couldn't see what use it might be.

Then he asked me if I had seen the Port Captain. I said no. He gave me a worried look and sucked air through his teeth. Then he got up and paced up and down the room. Had I made a mistake? Should I have seen the Port Captain first?

Finally his hefe came out with my TECAT, the temporary importation document for my boat. He was a large blond bearded guy, very un-latin looking. He was very polite and welcomed me to Brazil in English and shook my hand.

The taxi guy drove me back to Jacare. I think it cost 60 Real, about 20 dollars, which considering he had spent nearly the entire morning with me I thought was OK.

I still hadn't been to the Capitania dos Portos but as it was in Joao Pessao (the main town, about ten kilometres from Jacare) and I had been told that they were closed on Friday, I planned to go there myself by train on Monday.

I went to the market at Cabedelo on Saturday morning with Evelyn from Papa Djo. The little train on its disused looking single track line takes about 15 minutes to get to Cabedelo. The station is hidden in the back streets of Cabedelo behind the market and difficult to find your way back to. The market is big and good with good cheap fresh food. Except strangely for the potatoes which mostly ended up going rotten before I could use them.

When I got back there was a large catamaran where my boat had been parked. The marina have a rule that they only move boats in and out of the marina at slack water. The catamaran would only fit on the T head and I wasn't there, so they moved Westward themselves by hand.

At the recommendation of Papa Djo, I took my seized outboard to Brian Stevens at Jacare Marine. Brian is an English yachtsman who sailed across the Atlantic in a very old wooden sailing boat and got as far as Jacare where the boat sank. He has been here ever since. He can haul boats out, do all sorts of mechanical and boat-building work, fill gas bottles, sell you a rigid dinghy and even build you a whole new boat as far as I can see. Added to which he is a very nice guy.

On Saturday evening there was some sort of musical event on the shore near the marina. It appeared to be organised by the fisherman's cooperative. Young musicians playing and singing and people dancing. The musicians were mainly percussion with only a small guitar like instrument providing the melody. The music became slightly monotonous after a while but it was lively and fun in small doses and the local people danced enthusiastically and I tended my vitamin C deficiency with Caipirinhas which is crushed limes, sugar, the local white alcohol and lots of ice. Yum.

On Sunday Brian had invited me and the crew of Papa Djo to his “granga' in the country south of Joao Pessao (don't trust my spelling; for Portuguese town names I tend to add a random array of 'o's and 'a's at the end in any order and hope for the best). Brian drove us down and we spent a lovely day eating and drinking by the pool with him, his wife and his daughter, their aged beagle and some English friends also resident in Brazil surrounded by several hectares of land with fruit trees and a small river. The house is a beautiful single story building with a deep veranda all round with the rooms opening out on to it and no glazing in any of the windows. It seemed perfectly fitted to the country and the climate.

I went to Joao Pessao on Monday to finish clearing in and do some tourism. The little train takes about half an hour to do the trip and costs 1,50 reals; about 50 cents. Clearing in at the Capitania de Porto which is a military establishment was easy and fast. A relief. The town is rather like one in southern Spain or Portugal. Not particularly attractive and rather poor looking. There is a historical centre with some nice old houses and several churches and monasteries in the massive Portuguese colonial style which I really like. I had lunch in a self service restaurant which is the most common kind of cheap eatery. The food is a bit monotonous too but quite tasty and very cheap; ten real for an all-you-can-heap-onto-it plate and a glass of fruit juice; about three dollars.

I didn't do much else in Cabedelo. I decided that I didn't have enough time to visit San Salvador de Bahia which had been one of my objectives and there was worrying news about a planned civil service strike which would close the customs and immigration. The strike was planned for the week when the Easter holiday would fall. The government employees get two days at Easter and I was worried that many of them would take advantage of the coincidence and have a week off work.

I spent a whole morning getting some more money. The nearest cash machine is in Intermares, about half an hour's walk from the marina in a petrol station on the main road. The first time I went there I had to wait for an hour while they reloaded the machines from an armoured car and four alert guards stood around with pump action shot guns at the ready. The next time I went, the guards were there again but there was no armoured car and one of the machines was open with a guy kneeling in front of it. The next day the same. I suspect someone had robbed the machines so I caught the train to Cabedelo and queued for half an hour in a pharmacy to use the machine there.

Other than that, I enjoyed the sunshine and the heat. It was very hot. I ate lunch in a little self service restaurant in the main street of Jacare. I spent nearly a whole afternoon sending a letter (because the 'impots' in France wouldn't accept an online payment for my late Tax d'Habitation). Stuff takes time in Brazil (and France).

I left on the Saturday. I cleared out on Friday. The same taxi driver took me round but this time he also took me to the Capitania de Porto in Joao Pessao. Theoretically the Capitania is shut to the public on Friday but the taxi driver knows somebody so I was able to clear out completely in one day. A tour de force.

I liked what little I saw of Brazil. Everything to do with administration and government was a pain but everything else I did was easy if sometimes slow. I didn't have any problems with violence except being scared by the guards at the cash machines. On the drive back from the country on Sunday there was a minor traffic accident on the road and one of the drivers was holding the other at gunpoint spread-eagled on his car. One German boat who were anchored in the river had been robbed at gunpoint in the anchorage at Salvador de Bahia then, on the little train from Jacare to Joao Pessao, a guy produced a knife and began robbing the passengers. They had a young child with them, around three or four years old and I heard they decided to give up their cruise at that point.

I'd still like to go back.

Full sail between Saint Helena and Cabedelo

The "favela" at the entrance to the river

The most popular activity at Jacare; sunset cruises. Slightly dodgy looking double deck catamarans. People dancing what I assume are Portuguese folk dances on both decks. Animation by guys dressed as pirates or alternatively George Washington. Is this Portuguese national dress?

Brian Stevens from Jacare Marine and Herve from Papa Djo at Brian's granga.

Interior of one of the monasteries in Joao Pessao. Don't know what the door at the bottom is for. Suicide?

View from another monastery. Cue music from The Mission.

Amazing trompe l'oeil ceiling at the same monastery. I love the priests sitting on the railings with their legs dangling. Eat your heart out M.C. Escher.