When we find a place in the world that looks and feels like paradise, we tend to want to explore that place in depth. After the intense shakedown sail to Brava and the associated healing and projects list, we took a little time to look around and discovered we were anchored in a totally beautiful environment. The water is clear and warm, but not too warm for swimming and making water, the people are awesome, hardworking and respectful, and the cove we are anchored in is calm and quiet. Brazil is looking less and less attractive from a cruiser’s perspective, being expensive and a long ways away with a bit of a beat south of the equator. After the debacle where we got and then lost a contract for writing a Brazil cruising guide, we’re no longer sure we want to continue on the Portuguese trade-wind route, east around the world. We had developed an entire five-year circumnavigation course and plan. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we had an itinerary or anything but we had a working plan that was cool and exciting…then it was blown to shit. We were both numb for weeks afterwards. Gradually we came out of the shock, anger, resentment and healing phases of the process and regained our excitement about what it is we are doing with our lives. And that brings us back to the island of Brava, uniquely situated in the middle of the Atlantic flow of the Earth’s one big ocean. I (James) mean, from our current perspective here in Cabo Verde, we could very easily take the fair winds back to the Caribbean for the winter then take the Gulf Stream back to the Downeast run, setting us up to do the Northwest Passage. The boat is ship-shape and[…]
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