WE DEPART FOR THE SECOND TIME FROM MINDELO, 8 Dec

The temporary repair was done according to our own design, signed off by the surveyor from Lisbon. It took about ten hours of hard work by some brave Cape Verde mechanics, hanging on the side of the boat in howling winds and a significant marina swell. It was done in two stages. First the grind-out and filling with new GRP inside and outside, then the installation of the window plug.
The next hurdle was the weather forecast. All of a sudden there was no wind out in the Atlantic because the 'horse latitudes' had moved South into the path of the usual trade winds. We therefore had to wait at anchor with some other folk that we had met who owned a HR49. They had even changed their destination to Surinam in order to cruise south of the zero wind zone.
Anyway on the 8th December we thought it was about time and we left the anchorage and headed West. We were on out way at last.!