At Ilha Grande

The night played out more or less how I expected it to. At about 9PM I began passing a string of 6 or 7 fishing boats 3 miles off my port side. I was getting past them nicely on a NE course when I spotted a large radar blip to the east. For the next hour I tracked it, and it seemed to be moving fast in my direction. My guess that it was the first ship during this passage. Eventually I saw its lights and indeed it was a ship, with its lead lights and port red light indicating that it would pass to my north. When the ship got within 5 miles I was trying to figure out why I could not see it on AIS. Then I realized that although I had cleverly set up the chart plotter for AIS before departing, I had forgotten to turn on the transponder, meaning that the chart plotter had not been getting any AIS data. I don't think that I'll be making the same mistake again. Anyway, it was a cargo ship headed toward the Ubatuba area. By the time I identified the ship I had shut down the engine to see where the blip was headed. Shutting down was wise because the ship passed only 1.6 miles to the north of me. However, with the engine shut down and the string of fishing boats to my north I decided that I was close enough to my objective (about 25 miles) to lie ahull until dawn. I did this and by first light we had drifted south two miles.

The new day brought another problem: a headwind of 15 knots apparent. I had to run the engine at 2000 rpm to eke out 3 knots. I selected a different anchorage on the southern end of Ilha Grande only 20 miles away. The anchorage would give me good protection from all but SW winds, and best of all it shoaled up nicely, giving me the prospect of dropping anchor in less than 10 meters of water.

The wind picked up again and I found ourselves doing 2.8 kt so I kicked up the rpm's to 2300. That turned out to be the turning point and after that the wind and sea gradually eased, no doubt because I was getting some protection from Ilha Grande. I got to less than 7 miles from Ilha Grande before I saw it through the heavy haze and the sun beating from that direction. At about this time AIS reported 3 tankers at anchor to the NW of the island in the Baia da Ilha Grande, which surprised me because I would have expected this area to be a well protected sanctuary.

I had selected Praia de Proveta on the southwest corner of Ilha Grande, a bay over a mile long and narrowing to 0.3 miles wide, ending in a gentle slope coming to a white beach. It proved to be a good choice and everything worked out as well as I could have asked for. I rounded tiny Ilha dos Meros and swung 25 degrees to starboard and entered the bay doing 5 kt. The bay was hardly deserted. There were houses all around, and there were what I later counted to be 20 fishing boats mercifully all on moorings to the left shore of the bay, leaving the middle of the bay in front of the beach clear of moorings and boats. It appeared from how the fishing boats rode their moorings that the gentle wind was from the south, behind me. I crept to 300 meters from the beach to a depth of 7 meters, swung the boat around, put the engine in reverse to make way aft, then at 12.15 PM gently payed out the anchor and rode. At the end I had 30 meters of chain out in 7.1 meters of water just under 300 meters from the beach. The position of the boat was 23S10.939S, 044W20.615W. The wind was registering less than 1 kt even though I could see some roughness in the sea outside of the bay. This was going to be a good anchorage. There were 285.5 hours on the engine clock, meaning that the relatively short passage (70 sea miles) had required 18.2 hours of motoring, compared with the 30 hours of motoring (mostly to charge the batteries) during the much longer 11 day passage from MdP to Ilha Bella.

I then had a beer in the cockpit while I got a good look at the place. There must have been over 100 houses of various sizes and standards. Some of the houses were up on the hills on both sides of the bay. Regardless of the quality of the houses, they all had million dollar views. On the beach were children squealing as they enjoyed the water. To the right I could hear someone practicing the trumpet. (Keep practicing, mate.) Ahead I could hear an angle grinder going. A dog barked from the left. I was amidst a small community.

I was extraordinary tired after the tensions of the overnight passage. After my second glass of beer I had a quick lunch then hit the sack for a deep sleep until 4 PM. I then got up and did a couple of useful things before nightfall. I put on three anchor alarms from the Raymarine chart plotter and the laptop MarinePlotter and OpenCPN navigation systems, not because I felt insecure but because I wanted use to the anchor alarm systems from the latest version of MarinPlotter and OpenCPN for the first time. (Heaven help me if I drag anchor and all three alarms go off.) I raised the lazy jacks and zipped up the mainsail, which I had not used during the entire passage. I then removed the 80 meters of rope from the top layer of the chain locker and reached down and managed to grasp the windlass winch that had fallen through to the bottom. After tidying the cockpit I settled down for the evening. Twilight was nice, with the boat now facing the beach with shore lights on three sides. There was a refreshing coolness in the air, and I would sleep with the sound of the gentle waves lapping the beach.

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