We got the dinghy loaded aboard, everything stowed, and made big batches of tuna salad and egg salad for easy sandwiches underway. We went to bed feeling fine but when we got up, I (Dena) didn’t feel so well. I thought it might pass, but I felt worse and worse. Finally, terrible stomach cramps turned into puking. Meanwhile, we ran out of prepaid data on the sim card we’d been using. As foreigners, we have no way to top it up without going into a store but the dinghy was already stowed and getting it in the water is no one-person job. It looked like we weren’t going to be leaving right away and we weren’t going to be able to check the weather once we could. I do a phone screen-record of the full forecast before we get out of internet range because, even though it’s swiftly out of date, it’s better than nothing. I just hoped I’d get well fast. I didn’t. I couldn’t rinse my mouth without setting off another round of retching yellow bile from somewhere deep in my torso. Finally well after dark, the stomach cramps started easing and I tried to go to sleep. James came up to kiss me better and was startled by my temperature. I had a fever that raged through the night and broke with the dawn, but I was weak and dehydrated. So we sat in Mindelo, incommunicado, until I was strong enough to take my turn raising the anchor. Not, of course, because James wouldn’t take an extra turn but because I wasn’t strong enough for the sailing if I wasn’t strong enough for anchor duty. We finally got underway on Sunday, October 20th, at 9:22am. James took us out under sail alone. The electric motor was on[…]
Read more