South until the butter melts, then west. That's the old instruction, and it still works, though these days the butter is in a fridge and the melting is a metaphor. We left Sines on the first of February with two crew, a broken autopilot we didn't yet know was broken, and a hundred litres of water that was gone by day eleven.
The trade winds are a rumour until they aren't. For a week it was headwinds and hand steering in four-hour watches, the sails reefed, the boat slamming, everything wet. Then one morning off the Canaries the wind went round behind us and stayed there for nine days and the boat ran downhill like a dog let off a lead.
Nights are the thing I'd keep. No moon for the middle week. Stars to the horizon in every direction and the wake glowing green behind us, and every two hours someone comes up with tea and you hand over the boat and go below and fall asleep before your head lands.
Mindelo came up out of the haze on day nineteen, brown mountains and a bay full of masts, and Cesária Évora on the radio of the first fishing boat we passed, which is the kind of thing that only happens when nobody's there to write it down. I've written it down.
