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Well we failed to leave La Restinga in fair weather and I failed to keep any food down for the first two days but we have arrived in the Cape Verdes, tired and caked in a thick layer of salt. We said that we would wait for a good weather window to leave La Restinga but the wind would not cooperate. We watched as it went from the high twenties to the thirties, with gusts into the forties – consistently. Day after day it blew strong and the marine forecasts didn’t show any signs of change. The forecast showed a few days that dropped down to 15 -20 knots before the wind was set to go up again and we decided to take advantage of it. We were hesitant but the alternative was to wait at least another week, possibly still have poor conditions, and be into the second week of December before we would arrive. We gritted our teeth and set out into what ended up being 30 knot winds and 10 ft waves. It was W-I-N-D-Y and the first 12 hours saw us racing downwind at breakneck speed. We had our headsail out on the whisker pole (the one that we had repaired in Horta) for several hours before the windvane lost the struggle against the waves and jibbed us (swung the sail from one side of the boat to the other) snapping the pole in two. Adam took this better than I expected and even commented that he has always wanted two whiskerpoles. Obvious lessons: 1) Be careful what you wish for, 2) never believe the weather forecast. It took us exactly six days to get to the Cape Verde’s instead of the 8 days that we had been expecting (at that rate we would have made it to the Caribbean in only 16 days!). During this time we had constant, hard wind and we saw 20 ft waves as we rolled around. We had little sun and a few squalls but not enough rain to wash away the salt from the waves that came crashing into the cockpit at regular intervals. While I was sitting watch an enormous wave hit the corner of the stern and the boat slid sideways through the water. The wave that followed crashed into the cockpit, bringing so much water that the cockpit filled (water was coming in over the top of my rubber boots!) and took several minutes to drain. A few days before making landfall the windvane broke again (the part that we just replaced in Madeira) but we are old hands now and so Adam was ready with the webbing and lashed it to the boat. We limped a bit after that but the windvane was able to continue to steer, albeit a little erratically. Eventually we grew accustomed to the conditions and it was nice not to have to make any adjustments to the sails; we spent the passage under a single sail - just a small bit of headsail unfurled. We arrived in Mindelo harbour after a sketchy game of chicken with the local ferry and now that the anchor is set we are content to float around here for a while. Adam went for a swim and came out covered in a thin layer of diesel so we’ll stick to floating around IN the boat.