Sunday 2 February 2014.

By Grant Chapman.

The northern approaches to Rio de Janeiro from as far out as 50 miles were littered with massive oil rigs together with their attendant service vessels – large bakkie-like tugs with loadbeds just above sea level as they just marked time, their engines running while they seemed to wait for something to happen. We stopped counting the rigs at 50 and realised that it had been their myriad lights that we had seen during the night and not landfall. The wind strengthened as we turned the corner into Rio de Janeiro bay with its strange monolithic islands strategically standing guard at the entrance. We had spotted the distinctive Sugar Loaf Mountain from some distance away but had seen the massive stone statue of Christ the Redeemer even earlier, lit up against the early morning sky. Several Frigate birds wheeled high up above us, opportunistically waiting for some poor sucker of a sea bird to secure a fish before they attacked it to steal its meal, as is the nature of these lazy predators. Proudly flying the big purple spinnaker with the Scout’s Fleur de Lis we thought the wind seemed to suddenly start gusting and before we knew it we had broached again, this time a right royal job with water pouring through the open portholes and flooding the saloon and aft cabin. The gybe preventer was still in place which contributed to the severity of the broach. We collapsed the spinnaker by releasing the sheet and waited for the boat to right herself before we could start bringing the bag in and getting the genoa out. Peter commented that we should have seen such a calamity coming as wind tends to channel between large mountains such as those on either side of us and that we were totally overpowered with a spinnaker up. We hadn’t been able to know the wind speed as the Tacktick instruments on the boat had been malfunctioning – we were to learn later that this was due to interference in this part of the world on the radio frequency that they used, but we should have trusted our guts feel about what the wind was doing. The gybe preventer also didn’t help matters as it didn’t allow the mainsail to swing over to the other side of the boat, but on the other hand at least it didn’t knock someone overboard. The water that filled the cockpit drained away freely and the bilge pumps set to work emptying the cabins. After initially hoping that someone might photograph Rotary Scout arriving in Rio we now wished that no-one had managed to do so.

It didn’t take us long to cross the finish line and wend our way between all the commercial vessels plying the numerous channels in the bay as we headed for the Iate Clube do Rio de Janeiro, passing between bouys that were red on the starboard side and green on the port, this being part of the B System of Buoyage that is opposite to the A System in our waters. Mooring stern-to between Vulcan and a large Cat we were greeted by very enthusiastic colleagues and friends from the Royal Cape Yacht Club who were as pleased to see us as we them as they assisted us in securing our lines. We had finally made it. Our epic voyage was over and we all breathed a sigh of bitter-sweet relief after 4 weeks at sea.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time before the prize-giving dinner which was most enjoyable and gave us a chance to catch up with all the other sailors to hear the tales of their adventure across the ocean. Rory and Ben joined us, having flown in a couple of days before from Cape Town, and Andre Torricelli, the Brazilian Sea Scouts Commissioner whom Adrian Velaers had arranged for us to meet also dropped in. Prior to the announcement of the winners of the Cape to Rio race there was a minute’s silence for Anthony Bartholemew, the Angolan sailor who lost his life during the storm at the start of the race. As everyone had suspected, the Italian boat Maserati took line and class honours with the Australians on Scarlet Runner second and the German boat Iskareen third. The oldies drifted off to bed early, leaving the youngsters to boogie the night away and misbehave themselves by dive bombing into the nearby swimming pool until the club management had a sense of humour failure and closed down the party just after 1:00pm. A story doing the rounds was that the Cape to Rio race was moved to Uruguay for a while after the Rio yacht club commodore’s wife had been thrown into the pool at a previous gala dinner such as this but those “in the know” said such a story was total manure and that it had been politics during the days of the old South Africa that had caused the move. At any rate we hoped that the commodore’s wife was safely tucked up in bed as the Rio yacht club was a superb venue with very friendly people and we were very grateful to be feted by them. The club grounds are extensive, covering several acres of prime waterfront land in one of the best parts of Rio and youth development is clearly something that is encouraged considering the numerous large warehouses dedicated to the different classes of dinghies with dozens of Optimists, Lasers, 420s, Snipes and others neatly stacked on racks, their sails on masts standing in rows to prevent them from being creased.