Location: 25° 30S, 48° 06W
Saturday 02.23.2008

At noon today the Schooner Maggie B was at 25° 30S, 48° 06W, motoring NE in just a whisper of a southerly wind. The day is nice, with a thin overcast diminishing somewhat the power of the sun, which is just about overhead. We are headed to Ilhabela on the Ilha do Sao Sebastiao, which is just 173 NM away. We have come 983 from Buenos Aires and have 2661 NM to go to Antigua.

We spent the last two nights at Ilha do Mel, Honey Island, at 25deg32S/48deg18W. We were off the lovely Praia (beach) da Fortaleza, guarded at one end by the Fortaleza de NS dos Prazeres (Fort of Our Lady of the Pleasures!) dating to 1760, and at the other end by the Farol das Concas, a lighthouse which was ordered up by King Dom Pedro II from Scotland and shipped out and assembled in 1872.

Ilha do Mel has marvelously remained undeveloped. No cars, motorcycles, street lights, horses or donkeys are allowed on the island. As the guidebooks say, accommodations on the island range from rustic to extremely rustic. We found it marvelous. The surf is quite good on two of the beaches and it is very much of a surfer/beach/shacks culture. We had a fabulous dinner last night at a restaurant called Mar & Sol (Sea & Sun). The dish was a “moqueca com tudo dentro” - moqueca with everything in it. The dish is a seafood casserole cooked in a big clay pot, with every sort of local fish and shell fish layered up with a layer of sliced tomatoes on top, all cooked in a broth. It comes to the table with the broth steaming away on the sides.

We ran aground getting into the anchorage. It was horrible. We arrived just at dark, having spent too much time in Sao Francisco do Sul, and the full moon was hidden behind a cloud and no help. We were trying to stay clear of a fishing boat which was motoring in the same direction with only one white light showing — no running lights. We were just coming up to the Farol das Concas point in what the chart showed as 22 feet of water. We went from 20 feet on the depth sounder to three feet and an awful crunch in less than a boat length. We spun around and after two more ugly crunches, were lifted off by a swell and returned to deep water. Amazingly, two other fishing boats were following close behind us and almost hit us when we were spun around. We anchored at the far edge of perhaps 40 small fishing boats, who probably talked and laughed about the gringo boat through the night.

This was our third time running aground (but who’s counting?). Mauritius in the main harbor and the Greville Harbor boulder bank in Marlborough Sound were one and two.

In the morning, a careful inspection of the hull and rudder using our “hookah” (air compressor with 20 meters of tubing to a diving mouthpiece), showed only missing paint and a slight crack in the very bottom flat piece of the keel, and no damage to the rudder. Whew!

We knew not to arrive at dark because we had had trouble, though less of it the previous night. After leaving our friends just north of Florianopolis, we made for the town of Sao Francisco do Sul to clear Customs. We didn’t want to arrive in a complicated port at night, so we stopped at Ilha da Paz, just offshore, which seemed to afford a nice protected anchorage. The chart showed a buoy for pilot ships, but we only saw a few plastic jugs floating as mooring markers. At about 0100 the wind shifted and we swung around and were hit by the mostly submerged mooring buoy, which was made of steel and about six feet in diameter. Only the ring was visible above water. The plastic jugs we had spotted were supporting the thick mooring pendant. We got only cosmetic damage, though it sounded at first as if a giant was using a battering ram to break through the hull. We moved our anchor to another spot and stood anchor watches through the rest of the night.

In the morning we motored into Sao Francisco do Sul, stunned to see a 500 foot coastal freighter partially sunk upside down just off a turn in the entrance channel. It was surrounded by perhaps 40 boats, all scampering at different tasks, mostly oil clear up. When we enquired in town, we were told that the wreck had taken place only two weeks previously - they had loaded a fairly heavy load relatively high. It was poorly secured and shifted as they made the corner in the channel and the ship turned turtle just like that.

The town of SF do Sul is interesting. The site was discovered by the Frenchman de Gonneville in 1504, and the Portuguese developed it in the early 1600’s. It is the third oldest city in Brazil. We were able to clear Customs quickly, pleasantly and with nice wishes for our travels. No one cared that we had been in Brazil for two weeks and could have unloaded Chinese stowaways, smuggled cigarettes or whatever long since. But now we have (I hope!) all the right papers and stamps!

All is well.