We are in Forteleza, our last stop in Brazil. We are up over the bump, hooray, and on our way westward once again.  We have some beating once we left Salvador, but we used  wind to our best advantage.  The wind would shift in the late afternoon and we would be about 10 miles out to sea so we could sail in towards land.  In the early hours the wind would shift again towards the land and then we would motor sail out to sea, motor sailing so we would make a better heading and be going north east instead of straight east.  We made the  800 miles in seven days. As soon as we passed the top of the bump it was downwind sailing once again and we were rollicking along at 6, 7 and 8 knots when the current was good, now that is sailing, we hope we are done with the beating stuff for awhile!!

We have not explored Forteleza much, there was some kind of concert by the hotel that we are moored by, it was 180 realis a ticket, or about 90 dollars, so we declined to go and instead sat on Mr. Curly and had a lovely pot luck supper and danced on their back deck late into the evening.  (Remember I said they had a 60 foot boat, well they store rigid dinghy under the floor at the back of the boat and the deck overtop of it makes a wonderful dance floor).  Yesterday Barry was busy getting fuel and water. I cleaned up the boat.  Today he did laundry, since the last time I did it I ended up with back spasms the next day and I cleaned the barnacles off the bottom of the boat.  We have this supposedly terrific anti-foul on so I was very unhappy that there was so much growth on the bottom but I guess it has been 4 months since we put it on and all the other boats had lots from sitting in the anchorages outside of big cities here in Brazil.  

We will check into the state tomorrow and out of the country and hopefully leave in the afternoon.  It is a 1800 nm journey to Trinidad or Tobago and it should take us about 16 days.  We are already feeling the effects of the ITCZ or the inter tropical convergence zone.  There were squalls and thunderstorms as we approached Fortelelza, our last  night at sea was very busy with 100 degree wind shifts and 30 knots squalls, as well as dodging fishing  boats.  Enough to keep you on your toes!!  I hope to convince Barry to stop at Devil’s Island in French Guyana  to see the ruin of the prison there, but it will depend on how our time is.  I must look up more info on the internet later this afternoon.  Just over a month until we will be back in Canada, wish us luck on this last passage.