Text Author: Florian Wilken

We have entered Brazilian waters ! Sailing does not get much better: halfway between French Guiana and 'Ilha dos Lencois', a small island off the Brazilian coast, we are smoothly gliding through the water with an average of about 9 knots. The current is not too strong here, just about 2 knots against us, so we are approaching our next destination with a wonderful 7 knots over ground. There are very few clouds in the sky, the moon is almost full and therefore the visibility is excellent. The warm wind allows us to sail in shorts and t-shirt even at night. This is truly barefoot-sailing. Once in a while we have to dodge a few fisher boats that trawl their long nets (up to 5000 meter long) apparently always upwind.

We left Degrad des Cannes, French Guiana on the morning of the 14th of march after spending a very exciting and enjoyable day at this unique place. Due to our broken Harken jib lead (see last log-report) and our desire to exchange our cooking-gas bottles, we decided to make a one day stop at Degrad des Cannes, as we had been told that this was the main harbor and marina in French Guiana. Once we had successfully found the marina up river, it was confirmed to us that Degrad des Cannes was the main and, more importantly, the only marina in French Guiana. After talking to some of the boat-owners - there were about 20 to 30 boats - and taking a look around, we were also confirmed that Degrad des Cannes did not offer any marina services whatsoever. There was just nothing there !

Fortunately, shortly after docking the boat, we met Joel from France and his girlfriend Maria from Brazil who live in French Guiana. Their hospitality was truly outstanding: Joel offered to pick us up the next morning with his car and help us get all our necessary items such as repair parts for the Harken jib lead, gas and some fresh provisions for the days to come.

Not only did we spend the next day with Joel in his car getting all of the items from our never-ending lists, but also were we invited by Joel and Maria to have lunch with them at their apartment. Later that day, we invited both of them onto our catamaran and showed them around. Joel was particularly interested as he is an avid sailor himself. This very exciting and interesting day ended with the local customs authorities paying us a formal visit on the boat. When it comes to customs, normally you might think of complicated procedures, endless forms to fill out and unfriendly customs officials. Not so in our case: As Joel was a customs officer himself, all of the other customs officers had a great laugh when they saw Joel on our boat. As soon as the officers had stepped on WILDLIFE, the customs procedures and forms did not seem important any more as our catamaran captured the officers' interest. So instead of 'endless customs procedures', JF gave the French Guiana customs officers another tour of our boat which they seemed to enjoy a great deal. What a pleasant way to end our short but colorful stay in French Guiana !