The cruising community is a bit like a village, except that it keeps moving. In the old days we used to flow past each other, almost literally as ships which pass in the night. Now, the modern marvel of the internet keeps us in touch with one another.
This page is dedicated to our cruising friends. More specifically, it is devoted to those of our friends who have their own websites and to those folks who are currently shorebased and running businesses which might be of interest to other yotties.

• Nick Skeates globetrotting aboard Wylo II
• John Williams (Alaska John) circling the world aboard Faraway
• Shane Lavin aboard Iolair
• Luciano and Concita – Brazilian yotties who have set up camp in northeast Brazil
• Daniel and Beate circling the Atlantic aboard Galadriel
• The Benning family cruising aboard Aquamarijn
• The Cantelobre family circumnavigating family aboard Grainedo
• The Smith family aboard Cape
• Osman Atasoy and Sibyl circumnavigating via the Horn aboard Uzaklar
• James and Fede and the poco-coco-locos aboard Cocolo
• Thomas and Isabel chartering aboard Zao
• Ed Green earning a living on the sea
• Mat Mesh chartering aboard Saturn
• Vladimir aboard Kafeoli
• Mike and Bev chartering aboard Whitebird
• Andy Smelt, yotty and sailmaker in Carriacou
• Sylvain Anceau, the Ice-Cream Man of La Gomera
• The Amoako family – Ghanaians running a business in Cabo Verde
• Gigi and Marie aboard Roule ta Bille
• Lakki and Hildegunn aboard Enata
• Patrique and Elisabeth aboard Ile et Aile
• The Fox family from Germany
• Nathan and Ashley aboard Tosca
• Jessica the Eskimo

Wylo II – Built to Cope with the Reefs

Once upon a time there was a young man called Nicholas Skeates who set off from his home in southern England to sail around the world. His command was a little wooden bermudan-rigged yacht called Wylo.
Wylo carried her skipper all the way across the Atlantic and over the Pacific, and by the time they reached Fiji she evidently reckoned she could cope with just about anything. Thus it was that, while the boss was napping, she tried to cross Fiji.

After that Wylo wasn’t really up to much, and so Nick built Wylo II.

Wylo II is a gaff-rigged cutter measuring 32ft on deck, and she is built of steel. Steel is a much better boat building material for people who might find themselves doing a bit of un-planned overlanding. Bernard Moitessier, the patron saint of French yotties, lost two wooden yachts before he finally realised that steel was the answer to his problems. His third boat also ended up on the beach, albeit not through Moitessier’s own fault. She came ashore in Baja Calafornia during a hurricane, and she would up at the bottom of a pile of other boats. Her owner took one look at the crushed remains and walked away, but a younger man, having bought the wreck for a dollar, was able to beat her back into shape and take her sailing again.

Anyhow – I digress.
Nick intended that Wylo II be suitable either for single-handed liveaboard sailing or for use by a couple, and so she she has a double berth for’ard, on the port side. She also has two setee berths, one on either side of the spacious saloon. The galley is perfectly adequate; the loo is in its own ample compartment; and Nick has even managed to leave space for a workbench, an essential feature of any good cruising yacht but one which is very often overlooked.
Nick prefers sailing to working, and so – having very little money – he built the boat on a shoestring. Rumour has it that she cost him under £1,000.

Nick and Wylo have been together now for thirty years, which is more than enough time for a boat to prove her worth. The design is available for sale, and there are now plenty of Wylo IIs sailing the oceans. Several of them were built by the man himself.

Although the original Wylo II has a centreboard and a plywood deck, Nick also offers plans for a fixed keel version (which can carry a steel deck), and although he favours gaff he has also drawn up the plans for bermudan and junk-rigged versions. Likewise, you don’t have to squat on the deck to steer, as Nick does; you can have a cockpit.

Quite apart from being a very well-seasoned salt with many tens of thousands of miles under his belt, and quite apart from being the designer of a really handy little boat, Nick Skeates is also one of the nicest people we have ever met. Moreover, he happens to share this family’s views on motoring, marinas, curry, rum, sailing dinghies, flag etiquette, GPS, and the general lack of seamanship demonstrated by many modern yachtsmen.

Nick Skeates has not succumbed to the use of computers for any purpose and so anyone wishing to communicate with him must use paper and pen; or flags (which are actually his prefered medium).
Send your signal to this website and we will pass the message along.

Alaska John

John Williams is one of a kind. He’s that rare specimen of humanity who makes his plans and then doggedly goes ahead and fulfills them to the letter, surrmounting whatever odds might be placed in his path like a bulldozer coming up against a tree. In a different time and place, and with a different set of goals, he might have been the first person to trek to the north pole or the one to climb Everest; except that John would have done it for fun, rathter than in order to be the first, and he would have shunned any publicity; indeed, he wouldn’t even have bothered telling anyone that he was going.

John seems to be of about 1950 vintage and he was born and raised in a hot dry valley in Calafornia. Having done well at school he won a place at a university in San Francisco and here – inevitably – he became acquainted with the ocean. He was immediately inspired by the idea of sailing over its vast open expanse and decided to build himself a boat. Thenceforth the young man spent his days studying weapons technology (of all things!) and helping to design heat-seeking missiles, and his evenings and weekends lofting and framing and planking; and dreaming.

Knowing nothing of boats John managed, nevertheless, to buy the plans for one of the most ocean-worthy vessels available to the cruising sailor: a long-keeled Colin Archer whose lines and rig were revamped and re-drawn by xxxx Gardner.
Nowadays yacht designers choose a length and a shape and then set out to see how much accomodation they can squeeze into the mould, but in ye olde times less thought was given to bunks and the galley and more to such matters as strength and sea-kindliness. Thus John’s 38-footer is massively strong and has the sort of interior that one finds in a boat ten foot shorter. The saloon is cosy, the two-burner stove is jammed up alongside a cramped chart table, the V-berth in the focsle is also the chain locker, and the skipper’s bunk is more like a coffin than a bed.

With dreams of distant lands and seas John named his boat Faraway – and far away is where he has travelled. In the course of 40 years the two of them have girdled the world four times and visited Patagonia six times, have survived numerous gales and storms and four typhoons (off Japan), and have cruised the high latitudes at either end of the world in both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans.
Really, some one ought to give the man a medal… but he’s not much interested in that sort of thing. Instead, his head is full of thoughts about his next cruise, which will be to Antarctica.

John has long since abandoned his career in weaponary, and with it he also gave up the easy life of a Bay sailor. Faraway‘s home port is now an island off the coast of Alaska. Here, when he is not galivanting about the oceans, our hero operates his own saw mill.
The Mollymawks have been invited to spend a winter iced up in Faraway-John’s favourite nook, off his log cabin… so now we have somewhere to head for after we’ve finished in Patagonia.

Shane Delivers

Shane is a lovely Irish sailor, with a gentle accent, and gentle manners, and a beautiful yacht called Iolair. Iolair means eagle in Gaelic, but, interestingly enough, the boat had this name before she came into Shane’s possession. No, I haven’t mis-spelt it. You-know-who’s Iolaire is a female eagle; without the e at the end the word is masculine. Since boats are supposed to be female, in English lore (and seemingly, in Irish lore too) Shane is little bit troubled by this – but not so very troubled that he can be bothered to buy a tin of the gold paint and make the change.

Iolair is a 37ft Blackwatch sloop designed by the renown American racing yachtsman, Ted Hood. She was built more than 40 years ago, in the days when GRP was something of an unknown quantity. Thus her manufacturers decided to err on the safe side: the topsides are said to be 1.5″ thick… ! (As one of their employees is reputed to have said, “Nothing too strong ever broke”.) Aluminium spars were also something of a novelty at that time, and the company who supplied Iolair‘s mast evidently followed the same philosophy; Shane reckons that the walls of the extrusion are 1cm thick!

Mollymawk, Iolair, and Cherub sailed in company from the Canaries to the Cape Verdes, and after we arrived Shane took three of us out for a wonderful and highly memorable daysail. That boat is a dream! The Admiral wants to steal her.

When not messing about aboard Iolair Shane sails other people’s boats – and gets paid for it. In the course of the past 20 years he has made 25 Trans-Atlantic deliveries, has overseen a hundred more, and has ferried yachts along the Med, across the Indian Ocean, and hither, thither around the Pacific. His track-record is impeccable – so, if you happen to want a fleet of Bavarias or Beneteaus moved from A to B, he’s your man. (But if you happen to want something interesting moved across a nice stretch of ocean, such as the Pacific, let the Mollymawks know instead…!)

The Brazilian Ribiera

Those of us who were born and bred in the Western world are apt to take for granted our right to travel, and for those of us who grew up amongst boats and boating types a yacht seems like the obvious means of transport. Still, as we wander the world and meet our fellow citizens I am often acutely aware of my own good fortune. Just supposing I’d been born to a peasant farmer… or even to a peasant fisherman – to a man who knows the sea well but who won’t ever have the means to build an ocean-worthy boat and set off to see what lies on the far side of the horizon…? How different life might be.

What is it like to grow up on the edge of the sea in a place where foreign cruising folk are part of the scene? Wouldn’t one feel jealous?
Perhaps Luciano Zinn knows the answer. Growing up in the southern-most part of Brazil, in Porto Allegre, he must have seen an endless stream of cruising boats travelling up and down the coast, and he had ample opportunity to meet with the Fortunate Ones. Inspired by stories of voyaging under sail he eventually managed to get himself a small yacht and he then set off up the coast, aiming to make the adventure last for as long as he could.

Well, this lifestyle is – or can be – a lot cheaper than most folks would believe, and Luciano managed to keep on going for longer than he had dared to hope. After ascending the coast of his home country he travelled on up to the Caribbean, and then he crossed the Atlantic and visited Europe. However, after five years of barely scraping by Luciano decided that what he really needed, in order to be able to keep on with this wonderful lifestyle, was a source of income; oh, and a woman. And so he sailed back across the Atlantic and started looking.

The first thing that Luciano found was the lovely Concita, who hails from the port of Sao Luis, on the north coast of Brazil; and the next was Ribeira, a secluded and tranquil hamlet on the banks of the Rio Paraiba. Here he has established The Ribeira Adventure Club – a marina, of sorts, with berths for up to ten yachts and all of the usual facilities (water, electricity, and internet).
At this stage in the game the jetty is a little bit rustic, but somehow this merely adds to the ambience. The place is cheap – the cheapest in the whole of Brazil, Luciano claims, with berths costing less than half the price of the ones at Jacare marina – and it has been recognised by the authorities as one where foreigners may leave their boats unattended. (Under Brazilian law a tourist may only stay for six months in any one year, but a boat may stay for 2 years – provided it is berthed in an approved location – and so many people leave their yachts and travel overland around South America.)

Eventually Luciano hopes to have a fleet of kayaks and bicycles and a couple of sailing dinghies, so that visitors – both foreign and local, he hopes – will be able to explore the river and the surrounding countryside at Ribeira.
More than anything, however, he hopes to attract a business partner who will share the expenses, the profits, and, most important of all, the running of the Ribeira Adventure Club; because, as you will recall, Luciano is a yotty himslef, and he wants to go cruising again. His ideal is to find someone who would like to spend six months of each year hanging out at Ribeira so that he and Concita can spend six months of each year cruising.

Any interested parties should visit Luciano’s website and drop him a line using the contact form.

A Man of Good Hobbits

By now you’ll have noticed something about our friends. If they have one thing in common it’s a lack of frills. Yachting is popularly percieved as a rich man’s pursuit, but it certainly doesn’t have to be, and most of our close associates are just like ourselves: ocean-going tramps, penny-piching to get by and doing things for ourselves. Daniel and Beate are no exception to this rule; they live and travel aboard a small and ancient Amel called Galadriel. Their sails are old and patched; their sprayhood, like ours, was home-made (but they did a better job than us); they don’t motor, cos (apart from anything else) motorting costs money; and rumour has it that they have a daily allowance of only three pages of loo paper per person.

Galadriel was once the abode and chariot of Daniels’s dad, who spent a couple of decades kicking around the Caribbean, and with her the new skipper seems to have aquired more than just his old man’s fishing tackle; he also seems to have inherited the sort of skill and seamanship which generally comes only from long experience.

We first encountered Galadriel three years ago in Corralejo (Fuerteventura), and we could see at a glance, as we anchored nearby, that her crew belong to the old school. To tell you the truth, that boat reminded us of us, when we were young…..
Then Daniel and Beate appeared, darting out from the inner harbour in a tiny cockleshell dinghy. Her mast was made from bamboo and her rudder was an oar. her captain was reclining across the boat, with his large and calloused bare foot protruding over the leeward gunwhale and his head, topped off with a rasta’s beret, resting on the other.
The dinghy’s name was Frodo, and she, too, belonged to Daniel’s dad.

Our most recent encounter with these happy-go-lucky Swiss-born yotties was in the Cape Verdes, and the first thing we noticed was that they have now increased their family: they now have two near-identical dinghies.
Beate was evidently fed up with being a mere passenger; or perhaps Daniel wanted someone to race against.
Fitting two hard dinghies aboard a boat which is only around 30 foot long is not easy but where there’s a will there’s usually a way. In this case, Frodo hangs in davits at the stern and Sam rests on the foredeck.
(For those who are not Tolkein buffs – Galadriel is a one of the characters in the Lord of the Rings, and Frodo and Sam are hobbits.)

Daniel and Beate are not much into writing but they have a photo-blog which traces their travels.

Sailors in Clogs

As everyone who knows them will agree, you don’t need to keep watch for this lot: you can hear them coming from miles away!

Ton and Petra hail from Holland and are sailing their home-built steel yacht, Aquamarijn, around the world. With them are their wonderful kids: 12 year old Marijn, 10 year old Senne, and 9 year old Marjolein. Yes, there are actually only three of them – but when it comes to noise, one (particular) Aquamarijn kid equals half a dozen of the ordinary kind. (Naming no names, hey, Senne? Oops…!)

Ton and Petra used to drive a tugboat before they discovered sailing, and they spent much of their early married life hanging out in insalubrious parts of West Africa and in the oilier parts of the Caribbean. Having gained some sort of super-sized qualification in tugging and towing, Ton has found that he can cover the family’s cruising costs by making occasional trips to far flung places where his experience and signature are worth big bucks. Cruising folk employ a variety of means to earn their crust – but this must surely be unique!

I lied about the clogs. And anyway, it turns out that they’re actually called klumpen….

Seriously folks, if you come across this little lot count yourselves lucky, because they are some of the nicest, happiest, most likeable people on the entire planet.
What is more, their brand new website was built for them by Mollymawk‘s own whizz-kid, Caesar. Check it out.

Five Drops in the Ocean

Theophile is the 15 year old son of Michel and Veronique Cantelobre, the elder brother of Romnald and Gaetan, and the mate aboard Grainedo, a French-flagged catamaran. He’s also the webmaster and principal author of the family’s blog, which is why he takes precedence on this page.

We first met the Cantelobres while they were dashing through the Cape Verdes and we caught up with them again in Brazil. Their home is a fast flashy catamaran – named Grainedo, or a Drop of Water – and their philosophy and life’s experience are a million miles apart from ours: Michel is a computing boffin – a chip architect, he tells us – and young Theophile has his father’s sharp mind and his appetite for business. He plans to end the cruising adventure in four years time and train as a naval architect. Besides all this, the family’s attitude towards passage-making is quite alien to us: when their boat is making less than 4 knots they press the button and start motoring. All in all, one could hardly describe these folks as kindred spirits… and yet for all our differences we felt a great deal of affinity with this family. I guess that’s cruising for you: it’s one of the few environments where hobos can rub shoulders with business men, doctors, a weapons designer, and even a nuclear physisist, and all be on the same par.
(The nuclear physisist aforemnetioned was a German who we met in the Azores. He was sailing with two school teachers, a Russian surgeon, and a Roman Catholic priest; which, I think, says it all.)

Theophile was born in France but having spent most of his life in Calafornia – where his dad was working in silicone Valley – he is completely bilingual. This gives him a head start when it comes to producing a two-language report of the family’s travels. Anyone following the same route around the world will find much that is of interest to them here.

Escape on Cape

Dave and Sarah first got in touch with us aeons ago, when this website was in its infancy, and then – all of a sudden – they were there, before our very eyes, anchoring their boat near ours! Lots of other yotties and would-be or soon-to-be cruising folk drop us a line, but this is the first time that we’ve actually met up with any of our vast fan base…

Travelling with their parents aboard Cape are Bethany and Bryn, and these two were quickly adopted into the Las Palmas Wharf Rats Society (of which Roxanne and the Dutch kids are founder members). In the morning the harbour is peaceful and quiet as the gang remain aboard their various vessels – playing their guitars and making origami frogs, or studying Ancient Greek and algebra, according to the whims of their wise and wonderful parents – but after lunch all hell breaks loose as the Rats go on the rampage. At the last count there were eleven kids in the gang. They come from five different countries and their ages range from five to going-on 14.

We’re going to miss them when we move on, but we’ll always know where they are.

Dave and Sarah and Bethany and Bryn are also the first people on the Friends page who fly the same flag as us – but they shouldn’t be flying it, cos they’re actually Welsh; they ought to be flying a lovely red dragon.

Osman and Sibyl are sailing Far Away

Osman Atasoy and his first wife are amongst the many sailors who set off around the world and found themselves building their crew along the way. Having completed the tour the couple, together with their baby girl, became the second Turks ever to have circumnavigated the globe under sail. In honour of this fact – and bearing in mind that the first Turkish circumnavigator is still living aboard his vessel – Osman was persuaded to give his old GRP sloop to a museum. It now resides under a splendid glass dome – and Osman and his new lady reside aboard a splendid, newly-built aluminium yacht. The new boat is called Uzaklar, which means Far Away.

For his encore Osman is sailing around South America, with Sibyl as mate and cook. You can visit his beautiful website and follow their progress – but only if you can speak Turkish.

Cocoloco

James and Federica don’t have a website – yet – so they shouldn’t really be here, on this page. However, I couldn’t resist posting a pic of the poco Cocolocos, Nina and Kimmy.
James hails from the land of the Big Grey Cloud and Fede is Italian – so she rules the roost. Their boat is a big posh one, but they can still remember what is was like to be bumming around and rummaging through the marina dustbins…

Aged only 5 years old and going-on-three, Nina and Kim are already completely bilingual. Makes y’ sick, dunnit? (Give your child a gift that will last her a lifetime: marry a foreigner.)

Zao and the Art of Making Cruising Pay

Thomas and Isabel are the nearest thing we have ever met to an ordinary cruising couple who manage to run charters aboard an ordinary cruising boat without compromising their ordinary cruising plans. Essentially, they just get on with orbiting around the Atlantic – travelling with the seasons, in the usual way, and stopping off at all the usual haunts – and their guests pay the bills. An eminently sensible and very fair arrangement.

Whereas most charter yachts are either characterless plastic tubs or sleek classics glistening with honey-coloured varnish, Zao – with her cabin trunk and her gaff sails – looks more like a traditional work boat. In reality she was designed by Laurent Giles and she dates from the 60s; and although she looks as if she is wooden she is actually built from curved steel plates.

As a rule, Thomas and Isabel tend to stick to the North Atlantic but anything goes, it seems, and when we met them they were pootling up the east coast of Brazil. Their home port is in Brittany and they sometimes spend the summer there; so if you fancy a taste of the genuine cruising life but don’t have the time to make a crossing perhaps you might like to “discover the islands of Brittany, for a weekend, a week, or longer” (as their brochure reads).
Alternatively, you might opt for a “made to measure cruise, ambling along idly, sailing, navigating and fishing, as you wish…”
Their website is in French, but Thomas and Isabel both speak very good English, so if you want to get in touch you don’t need to reach for the dictionary.

Man Go Sailing

Ed and Sam are a couple of superstar yotties who generally sail for the likes of Chay Blyth and Robin Knox Johnson, but who have decided to take some time out, aboard the Contessa Blue Juice, and see how the rest of us live.

When not pottering about in his own boat or crossing the ocean backwards in one of those big, flash, racing machines, Ed runs his own sea school called Mango Sailing.

Given his level of experience, his enthusiasm, and his charm there could hardly be a better sailing instructor than Ed – but before you rush off to join him, be warned: nobody has ever made us laugh as hard or as long as this guy, and susceptible individuals could easily die of mirth during the inevitable post-cruise pub crawl.

Special Sailing with Mat

Fancy a trip across the Atlantic? Or perhaps you’d like to cruise in the Caribbean, or in the Baltic or the Med? Every year our German friend Mateus spends the winter on the American side of the pond and the summer back home in European waters. His spacious, well-appointed 45ft catamaran is always available for day charters, weekend trips, and longer voyages – including the crossing.

Matt speaks English just about as well as you or I, cooks delicious meals, and is a very experienced mariner. He’s also a professional saxophonist… so if you want a truly memorable cruise, you could ask him to provide a bit of after-dinner entertainment!

Okko Productions

Vladimir is captain and – since Celine jumped ship – cook, too, and bottle-washer, aboard the big, bulky steel yacht Kafeoli.
A sailmaker by trade, this Frenchman (yes, you jumped to the wrong conclusion there, didn’t you?) was born aboard a boat in Martinique. His parents have since gone ashore again, but Vladimir reckons that terra firma is unfit for human habitation and he has lived his whole life afloat.

An example of Vladimir’s handiwork now forms part of Tidely-Idely’s wardrobe. It’s not his best work – we would have liked quite a bit more peak – but there are not many ship’s dinghies which sport a kevlar lugsail, so we’re proud of it.
Besides making dinghy sails, mending big sails, and making dodgers and biminis, Vladimir has now started production of a range of chic and classy shoulder bags and mini-rucksacks which are especially designed for image-conscious, trend-setting, and eco-aware yachtsmen. They are made by recycling kevlar and carbon fibre sails, and they are marketed under the name of Okko.
So, if you want to get ahead of the fleet take a look at Vladimir’s website.

Whitebird

Mike and Bev are typical liveaboard yotties: determined to prolong the cruising adventure by any means necessary and, in consequence, always on the look out for ways to “make it pay”.
Mike is actually a professional TV camera man by trade, and when we first met the couple, three years ago in southern Spain, he was making it pay by doing photo-shoots from his catamaran.

Now based at the southern end of the Caribbean, in the Windward Islands, Mike and Bev are earning their keep by offering cut-price charter holidays aboard Whitebird.

If you want some fun in the sun without the millionaire price tag, or if you would like to sample the liveaboard lifestyle and see whether it suits you, check out their website and drop them a line.
Don’t forget to tell them we sent you!

Andy is In Stitches

If you arrive in the Caribbean with torn sails, or if you find that you need a sun-awning or a rain catcher, drop into Tyrrel Bay (Carriacou) and visit Andy in his seafront loft. It’s called In Stitches.

Andy hails originally from Chichester Harbour, which is our own home port, but although we know all of the same haunts and many of the same people we never actually met each other there. It was thirty years ago that Andy escaped from those cold and miry waters and set off to sail around the world, but like many others setting out before him and after, he crossed the pond and then got no further. If the Caribbean is not paradise on earth it’s a pretty close thing.

Before finding his niche in Carriacou Andy tried his hand at various other exploits, such as treasure hunting and piracy (the former for real – on a famous wreck – the latter, only on film, so far as we know…) and he has lived and worked on several of the islands. Indeed, at the time when Caesar and Xoë were entering the world via the island of Antigua, Andy was living there too – he knows all of the same people, and he remembers all of the same incidents and excitements that we recall – but, again, so far as we can remember we never actually met each other. Makes you wonder who else may be criss-crossing our wake as we journey across the ocean of life without ever quite coming into sight…

Although his business keeps him tied to the shore Andy still lives aboard his boat, Yellowbird. He shares his home with a cat called Seesee, and the loft is inhabited by two other felines called Gollum and Timmy – but they have never met each other. Sharing an owner and never meeting up… now that’s even more weird than sharing a harbour and an island without bumping into each other!

Sylvain, the Ice-Cream Man

Sylvain is a crazy French guy who first set foot on a boat the day he bought one. Having successfully navigated as far as La Gomera (Canary Islands) he decided to take some time out from his voyage and spend a few years running an ice cream shop. For reasons which are not entirely clear, the shop is called “El Sueño de Yanini” (a sueño being a dream, and Yanini being the village drunk).

If you happen to find yourself in Valle Gran Rey be sure to drop in and sample Sylvain’s home-made chocolate or strawberry ice-cream, or try the passion-fruit and mango sorbets which are made from the fruit of his own trees.
Sylvain is keen to keep in contact with other cruising folk, and to encourage us to drop by he has installed a wifi antenna. So, if you pop the laptop in a bag and take it with you, you can sit on the terrace enjoying a raspberry ripple, and keep in touch with the rest of the world.

Made in Ghana

A funny thing happened while we were in Sao Vicente (Cape Verde).

I’d been trying to buy an Amilcar Cabral T-shirt, and I saw one hanging in a souvenir shop. It was an interesting sort of a shop, stuffed full of African wood carvings, and bead necklaces, and drums, and tie-dyed cloth, and as we peered in, through the window, I found myself thinking about a Ghanaian fellow who we met, here in Mindelo, some 17 years earlier. That young man used to stand on the street selling souvenirs which he brought from his homeland and from Senegal.
“Whatever became of David Amoako?” I wondered. The last time we saw him he was back in Ghana and we bumped into him purely by chance. We were in the market in Tema and some lunatic suddenly flung himself at me. It was a couple of seconds before he began crying, “It is me! It is David!”
That was 15 years ago. Now… well, now he could be anywhere in the world.

We wandered into the shop and were greeted by a man who was sitting just inside the door. “Ca va?” he said cheerfully.
So we ca va-ed back, but in a manner which made it clear that we were not actually French.
“Ah,” said the shop-keeper. “I should have taken a better look. I always try to guess where my visitors are from, and now I see that you are from England.”
“Yes,” I said. “And you are from Ghana. I recognise your voice. You remind me of someone – a good friend; a lovely man – who we met here.”
Well, the fellow just sat there staring up at me with his mouth hanging open. He seemed not to have understood my words. I noticed that there was an Asante stool in ther window, just behind him.
I said, “We’ve been to Ghana, actually; and we bought a stool like that one.”
And suddenly the little man flew up out of his chair and hurled himself at us – thew his arms around us both and hugged us tightly – yelling, “It’s David here!”

David is married now – to a Cabo Verdean – and he has four kids. He also has two shops – one for himself and one for his wife – and a tall thin house which he built with his own hands in a suburb of the sprawling town.
David’s niece, Abigail, has come to join her uncle – in accordance with Ghanaian tradition – and although they may be half-Cape Verdean and born in the islands the four children appear to see themselves primarily as Africans and, indeed, as members of the great Asante tribe.

David’s shops are stuffed full of interesting things. Besides African masks and statuettes he also sells African-print clothing, which is designed and made by his wife and Abigail, and he sells colourful leather sandals, Ghanaian baskets, bags of all sorts ansd sizes, batik paintings, bracelets, and – from the Cape Verde islands – eartenware pots, baskets, and a collection of rather tacky items which includes clocks shaped like Sao Vicente, model boats made from goat’s horns, miniature pestle and mortars emblazoned with A Present from Cabo Verde, and collages made from sugar cane trash. These are not the most attractive objects, in my view… but it seems that they are just about the only kinds of handicraft that the locals pursue.

Besides all this (and much, much more) David also has the biggest and best stock of souvenir T-shirts… which is where we came in; quite literally.

If you are passing through Mindelo and want to pick up a present for the folks at home this is the place to look.
David’s delightfully chaotic shop is on the main street – the second one back from the beach – which leads from the high street to the Praca Nova.
His wife’s much more organised and orderly emporium is right beside the said praca, on the road leading inland and up the hill.

Gigi et Marie, abord de Roule ta Bille

According to Gigi, he was just an ordinary guy, living in an ordinary apartment block and doing an ordinary job – and then Marie rocked up. Marie is a performance artiste who hails from Quebec, but at the time when the couple met she was travelling around Europe with her three year old son and a circus. As the man says, “You can’t let something like that just pass you by”, and so he abandoned his job and his flat (and his wife), grabbed his guitar, and joined her.
The couple now have an amazing routine – involving a large red ball and a small trapeze – which they perform in schools and small theatres. Marie does the clever circus tricks, dressed up as a doll, and Gigi does some equally wonderful strumming and singing.

Having decided to up-sticks and move to Quebec, Gigi and Marie didn’t just get on a plane; they bought a boat, put the big red ball aboard, and arranged an itinerary which will take them and their performance to children in Senegal, French Guyana, Martinique, and America.

To make ends meet along the way Marie is performing her routine on the street. Gigi, meanwhile, performs wherever the wine flows freely – and since this includes the good ship Mollymawk, we and our friends have been treated to some wonderful entertainment.

When they reach their destination Gigi plans to build a tree house in the Canadian forest, and then, having created a home, he will knock up a float plane. Yes, this man dreams BIG!… but in fact he has done it all before – or, at any rate, he has built his own aircraft – and that “ordinary job” that he was doing when Marie turned up was teaching people to fly.

If you can speak French you can keep tabs on this amazing family by visiting the Roule ta Bille website. If you can’t speak French, go there anyway and enjoy the wacky artwork and the video clips.

UPDATE: Gigi and Marie and the kids have now reached their destination and have embarked on a new adventure. They sold the boat to someone who promptly sailed it out and sunk it in a storm…!

Lakki and Hildegunn and their Amigos

Lakki and Hildegunn are a couple of Viking nomads with a beautiful little daughter called Mayni and a great big catamaran called Enata.

Cruising is a new venture for Lakki and Hildegunn. Previously they travelled the world in a camper van or on foot. Having been on the road for around 30 years, Lakki finds his nationality to be somewhat irrelevant and considers himself to be a citizen of the world. I think it would be fair to say that most of us feel much the same way after we have been homeless for a few years – but Lakki works rather harder at it than most. In keeping with his multi-national identity he is fluent in half a dozen languages, and as an off-shoot of this linguistic ability he has created a game which, he hopes, will enable others to learn a foreign tongue.

New Amigos is currently available in various combinations, including German-and-Italian, and English-and-Spanish, and it will soon be available in Chinese…!

Lakki is also an accomplished guitarist who has recorded his own CD with a couple of Cuban guys. He and Hildegunn have recently begun working together – they made their first public peformance at the admiral’s birthday party – and you can find them playing and singing on YouTube.

UPDATE: Lakki and Hildegunn have now sold the boat and bought themselves a finca (farm) in Ibiza. Old cruisers sometimes throw out the anchor for good, but they seldom return to the old nine-to-five routine.

Ile et Aile

At last! We have found another family who are even crazier than us!

Patrique and Elisabeth have opted out of the French fast lane and are taking Neige, Ambre, and Ocean on a voyage of self-discovery. The kids are obliged to spend all morning doing their schoolwork – in the usual French fashion – but the younger girl and her brother then spend most of the afternoon swimming and fishing. The older girl is a talented musician who plays the guitar and the tenor recorder, and mum is the author of “an anti-religious science fiction novel”. It explains how Jesus came down from another planet and walked on water using anti-gravity boots.
The family live on sunshine and weever fish, and their boat is even more untidy than ours.

UPDATE: The Barry family have now decided that cruising is not for them and they have returned to the old terrestrial life. As a point of interest, one of the things that Patrique and Elisabeth liked least was having to push the kids, every day, to keep up with their lessons. France expects its young overseas-citizens to follow the same curriculum as those who attend school and to this end they provide a free correspondence curriculum, known as the Cned. In all our years of cruising we have only ever met one French family who were not putting their kids through this semi-compulsory mill. (The offspring of that unconventional family lived a wholly unfettered life – during which one of them failed even to learn to read in his native tongue – and yet they are now flying high.)

Hermann Heinrich

Another family cruising aboard a home-built yacht. Hermann Heinrich is a plywood catamaran constructed according to a set of plans devised by her owner, Frank.

One-off designs reflect the opinions and ideas of their creators, and they almost invariably contain a good few idiosyncrasies – but in this case the differences are radical. Hermann Heinrich‘s hulls are 8ft high – because that’s the width of a sheet of ply – and they are completely straight “because this makes it easier to build the interior”.
The boat is about 30 feet long but weighs less than 3 tons. Besides the sails, her only means of propulsion is a solar-powered motor, and the family also cooks on solar-generated electricity. Yes, this machine is just about as clean and green as they come!

Cruising with Frank are his wife, Angela, and their two teenaged sons, Felix and Marvin. If you speak German you can find out more about them all by visiting Frank’s website.

UPDATE: After various exciting adventures – including a collision at the outset of their attempted Atlantic crossing, and the near loss of the boat when Frank dozed off and hit the Azores – our German friends decided to give up cruising. They have now sold the boat and are living on a mountainside in Austria. Knowing them, their house is probably powered by a mountain stream…

The Toscas

Ashley and Nathan are a charming and very beautiful couple who never drink too much or stay out late. And their little doggy is a saint.

Jessica the Eskimo

Jessica is a genuine Eskimo who is sailing the world with her New Zealander boyfriend. She tells me that genuine Eskimos don’t like being called Inuit… so, ya-boo-blzzzoop to the Politically Correct sect.

The younger members of Mollymawk’s crew were disappointed to learn that Jessica has never lived in an igloo… She grew up travelling along the Aleutian chain while her dad fished for salmon from his big steel purse-seiner.
Thanks for taking us spearfishing, Jessica. We’ll see you again one day, on Kodiak Island.