Day 0 - Preparing to Leave

Today is a big day because tomorrow we want to leave to cross the Atlantic with the Tarpan. But before leaving we have to buy food, lots and lots of food, and also drinking water and things like beer and Coca Cola. There's a lot to do before we can leave. We start the day in the morning, 9:00 is meeting time on the boat and once everybody is there we go and shop vegetables and fruit on the local markets. Buying from the locals, old woman with big smiles on their faces when they see the quantities of things that we buy. 4 pumpkins, 40 eggs, 20 onions, 15 big carrots, lots of potatoes, papaya, bananas, some tomato, some bell peppers, 8 big sweet potatoes, beet roots, apples, oranges. Everything we can think of, all ordered in amounts by how quickly it rots and how much we think that we can eat. Before our little shopping spree for fresh stuff we tried to get some Cachupa, the local national dish from my favorite restaurant which is also on the veggie market in Mindelo, but they were already out of Cachupa for the day, so we went shopping hungry. But after having bought big bags worth of food we carried it back to the boat and stopped at another place to eat Cachupa and some soup there. The quality of the food there is really good too and everybody was happy with their meals.

Back on the boat we stow the things, and I go to the supermarket to buy more stuff there. Luckily I was able to pay with card there since the ATMs where hopelessly overrun that day and many out of money too. I think people were preparing for the carnival. Buying more food, lots of pasta, cheese, spices, chocolate, sugar, cereals and all that stuff. Again, with a really big backpack full of food and toilet paper and milk in hands I go back to the boat.

After that we do one last shopping trip all together to a small shop named Fragata. It's the local chain of supermarkets and we saw other sailors cart back huge loads of water with Fragata carts right to their boats. So we decided hey, if they can do that, we can to. And so we went, buying all the rest we could think of. 25, five liter canisters of drinking water, 16 bottles of Coca Cola, 60 cans of beer, 20 packs of orange juice, and all the rest of things we were able to find. All said and done we had three giant shopping baskets, filled to the brim with food that we were hurling back to the harbour accompanied by one of the Fragata employees helping us get everything there in one piece. The energy and spirit of preparing for this long journey was palpable. Adventure waiting in the air, we are really going m, my brain thought, over and over again, happily, blissfully. All said and done we had spend around 500€ that day on food. Crazy, but not so crazy if you think that it's supposed to last for around 3 weeks for 3 people. But still food in Mindelo is surprisingly expensive and there is very little choice somehow. It makes you think on how spoiled we are in Europe with giant Lidl and Kaufland at every corner where you can buy anything you could ever want to eat.

In the end of the day I go to play the piano for a little bit in the cultural center, but unfortunately they close early that day, so I couldn't play it for long. Because the piano place is closed I start calling some friends. Ole, Marc, Amit, Timo. And my smile widens with every call. I am so incredibly happy to have all these people in my life that words simply don't do it justice. Just thinking about these calls gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of happiness in my stomach that spreads out like liquid sunny warmth into the whole body. Here's were I am sitting: the floating bar.

This is the only place where I have Internet besides the hostel, I also meet some friends from Gran Canaria again, the French people have made the crossing from Canaries to Cape Verde and I am super thrilled to see them. They are just such happy people and the coincidence of it makes me so super happy. One day earlier or later and we would have missed each other.

Heck, had I been playing the piano I would have missed them, because they are on anchor and therefore on land only rarely. But talking to them amplified my happiness even more. And then I even saw a guy walking around with a chess board so I asked him if we could play a round and he was like of course and so we played a game with time limit so that my friends wouldn't have to wait for me. Because the plan for the next day was to go sailing together with a couple other boats. Two French Solo sailors, a Belgian couple, and a German solo sailor. A small fleet of fellow pirates, all of them crossing the Atlantic for the first time, together. And so before we all go, we wanted to have one night out, dining in a good restaurant in Mindelo together. Almost perfectly on time, we finish our chess game, my friends come walking down the pier and we go to the restaurant.

There we feast. Live music, good food, good company, and an adventure waiting to be started the next day. What a life. Eventually we go back to the boat, but instead of going to bed, we have a little drink, Jules plays some Reggae guitar, and we sit for way too long, before I get myself lose, and go back to the hostel through the night to get my stuff packed and ready for the next day.