Location: 20° 35S, 39° 58W
Tuesday 03.04.2008

At noon on March 4th, the Schooner Maggie B was at 20° 35S, 39° 58W. We are motoring NE in very light or calm winds. It is hot and sunny and quite humid. If we weren’t making our own wind and had the full sunshade up, we would perish. Our only sail handling is tacking up and down the sides of the awning from morning to evening. We have even put the sail covers on the fore and main due to no prospect for wind. We all can imagine the crews of square riggers going mad.

We have come 1610 NM from Buenos Aires, have 171 NM to go to the Parque Nacional Marinho do Abrolhos, Salvador is 465 NM and Antigua 2585.

We have been stopping around noon each day to take a brief dip in mid ocean. Recently we have been seeing Portuguese Man-of-war, Physalia physalis. (Those Portuguese sure do get around). They are also know as “blue bottles” as they resemble plastic trash more than anything. Physalia are really, really interesting beyond offering a swimmer very serious, possibly fatal stings. They are not a single organism, but a colony of different individuals, one being the float, another the mouth and stomach, another the sexual organs. The colony doesn’t just float, it has a sail. The really cool part is that there are two
basic types, one with a left-handed and one with a right handed sail, set so that they “sail out” and scatter, depending on the winds and current rotation of the area they are in.

The Physalia has a fish, the Man-of-War fish, that lives unharmed among the tentacles. Physalia are eaten by “purple bubble raft snails.” Really!

We have been motoring about 20 miles off shore and have had the unusual night time view of vast oil fields out to sea from us. It looks as if there are towns twenty miles away on each side of us, which is sort of true. During one regular radar check we discovered a target moving very fast towards us, perhaps 70 knots. After a short period of panic about military action, we realized that it was the return of a low-flying helicopter servicing the oil fields. I had not previously known that basic ship navigation radar would pick up aircraft.

One guidebook recommends something called the Passarela do Alcool (alcohol walkway) in Porto Seguro. One section is dominated by fresh fruit cocktail stands making the infamous “capeta,” which is made from guarana, cocoa powder, cinnamon, sweetened condensed milk and vodka. Capeta means “the devil” in Portuguese. I think that as Captain, I need to keep the crew away from such temptations.

We had a mystery last night. We have consistently run about seven liters (two gallons) an hour at our cruising speed. The left tank was filled at Paraty, and took the right amount of fuel given hours run. It should have run for 60 hours, but ran out after 45. We don’t know if 1) the tank wasn’t really full, 2) the
engine has significantly changed its fuel consumption, or 3) something in the Paraty fuel made it last less long (it is rather cloudy to the eye from what I drain out of the filters). We thought that we had plenty of fuel to get to Salvador, but with this uncertainty, we will get a refill somewhere along the
way to be safe, though probably not in Porto Seguro (see above).

All is well.