Lows and Highs in Cape Verde

It is with a very heavy heart that we write this post… for the past few days we have been travelling in Cape Verde.. a beautiful group of islands about 350 miles off the coast of Senegal Africa. We arrived after 5.5 days at sea from Tenerife. We checked in at customs in a small village on the north end of Isla Sal. We managed to find a bolt that we needed to replace on the main sail from a local machne shop and then anchored a bit further south at beautiful beach full of other boats. We were able to trade beer, beef and banana muffins with a couple of Danish sailors (sailingcapeverde) for a much needed impeller. We have finally figured out what has been causing our impellers to disintegrate. We left Isla Sal after a couple days & headed for Boa Vista. Another beautiful island with incredible sand dunes created by sand blown across the ocean from the Sahara. We anchored with breaking rollers nearby & watched some amazing surfers and kite boarders. Enjoyed a couple of great local meals & went on a tour of the island with one of the locals. Part of the tour was in search of a better bolt for the main sail boom… our first stop was a hardware store that didn’t have what we needed, but we met Antonio who said he probably had something that would work for us, but he was 35km on the other side of the island. So after stopping at the sand dunes we made our way to Antonio’s village where he allowed us to search his shop for bolts. It was the funniest tour our driver Nuno had done, but he was very accommodating and a gracious guide. That evening we left for Santiago, our last stop in Cape Verde. It was required that we check in with customs at the port of Praia on the south end of the island. We dropped anchor just outside the small fishing & commercial port about 6pm, made some dinner and then sat down to read, catch up on emails before departing across the Atlantic. We were excited to see some of the beautiful mountainous landscape of Santiago. Unfortunately, it was not to be…

At about 8:30pm Jason, Dave and I were sitting at our cabin table, Scott was downstairs working at his desk… we were boarded by 3 young punks and robbed at knife point. It was truly the most horrifying and scariest thing we have ever experienced. Unfortunately we did not realize that where we had anchored was notorious for boat robberies and thefts. These punks had swum from the store about 300 yards to our boat where they literally snuck on without a sound. 3 of us looked up from the table at 3 punks brandishing large knives. It took a few seconds for our brains to realize what was happening. 2 of them were obviously high on crack or cocaine.. as soon as they entered the cabin they quickly grabbed our kitchen knives that were sitting on the rack drying and started demanding that we stay quiet. Unfortunately all of our cellphones were sitting on the desk charging.. those were quickly grabbed. The ship radios were grabbed… and then they started asking for cameras, computers and anything they could see. I was forced to go downstairs and bring up Scott’s computer that was visible. They were yelling at us in Creole and we could not understand what they were saying except for the odd English word. We were scared shitless… I’ve never had my heart beat so hard. They were waving their very huge knives around and one of the guys kept stabbing it into our kitchen counter. After about 20 minutes they finally left us, taking our dingy and motor. We gave them a few minutes to make sure they were away from the boat.. we had no way of calling for help so we activated our boat SOS radio signal on both our built in radio and David’s Inreach radio that had been in his cabin below. We quickly pulled up anchor and headed toward the lights of the commercial port 300 yards away attracting the attention of security guards who called police for us. We spent the next several hours giving statements to the national police, local police, coast guard and marine police. The men working in the port were great. A group of them sat by our boat all night guarding us. Not because it was necessary, but because it made us feel better. And it sure did.

We had our dingy locked to the boat, so in the robbery we gave them the key to it. We did not have the fuel tank in it so they could not use the motor. But the steel cable threaded through fittings on the dingy and the motor gave them enough problem that they abandoned the dingy when they got to shore. It drifted a short way and washed up against one of the fishing boats in the commercial harbour where we went for help. The fisherman who found it, saw us with the police and flagged down the cops as we were going to the station – and so we were able to recover the dingy unharmed except for the loss of one paddle. We are now tied up alongside his fishing boat, and had a really nice visit with him this evening. He has offered to stand watch with us tonight.

The next day the lead investigator stopped by with a fingerprint tech and more talking with police.. moving the boat, contacting family. So basically we were robbed of 5 cell phones, 2 laptops, Scott’s wedding ring, my watch, jason’s wallet & watch, cash, miscelaneous small items and our sense of security. It has been a tough few days. But the Cape Verde people that have helped us throughout our journey have been amazing. Tonight we are rafted up to some small fishing boats in the port with one of the locals visiting with us sharing stories & lifting our spirits. Tomorrow the police inspector investigating our robbery has offered to drive us around town to buy a new sim card and groceries on his day off. This is why we choose to do what we are doing. The violent robbery has shaken us up, but it could happen anywhere..

At times like this it is easy to forget that almost everyone in the world is a good person. There could be 35 million really miserable, evil bastards out there in the world, but that is still less than 0.5% of the 7 billion people in the world. We are trying hard to make sure that this encounter with three of the 0.5% does not sour us on the 99.5%. I guess technically this is piracy, since it happened on a boat. But I think it is more like we accidentally wandered onto the wrong side of the tracks with our windows rolled down and hundred dollar bills on the dashboard.

It was a terrifying experience, but it does not change our plans except that Santiago is now soured for us, so we will just be leaving for the open Atlantic where it is safe as soon as we can. We learned a few things through this that we will be applying. Adding just a little friction makes a big difference – by this I mean that anything that makes it even just a little harder for the bandits counts. The dingy was recovered because the motor was threaded onto a cable – even though they had the key to the lock on the cable. And the only things taken were the ones in plain sight, even though the encounter lasted for 20 minutes. So there are lots of small things we will be starting to pay more attention to. One of them is going to be some kind of tripwire alarm to put at the swim ladder so it will make a bunch of noise and light if someone comes on board (if you know of such a gizmo, let us know – we have friends coming in February that can bring it with them).

Today was spent finishing provisioning and finding a replacement sim card for one of our old phones that was stashed away. The lead inspector (Inspector Brito) investigating our robbery had a day off today and spent most of the day driving us around and helping us. The language barrier here is huge.. most speak Creole and very little English. At the end of our running around he invited us to his brother’s home where there was a party this evening. We were welcomed with open arms by about 30-40 of the most wonderful people we have ever met. Most of them were soccer players that played on the same team and their wives. We had wonderful food, drink and hospitality. When they learned how it came to be that we were there, they were all very sorry to hear of our horrible experience. Their warmth and genuine compassion was wonderful… we have made some beautiful new friends and the Cape Verde people will hold a special place in our hearts for a long time. And it feels really good to be leaving Cape Verde on a high note, rather than leaving with the sour taste from the attack.

Well, I think that we will leave this as the last word on the incident in an effort to put it behind us. We lost a little bit of stuff, but we are all unharmed.

We are both still glad we are out here doing this.

Maggie & Scott