from Herne Hill to Cape Verde

So here is a 'dry dive' into my first blog as a way of sharing my waterly adventures.
All started on 29th November in Herne Hill - no better place to start. And a mad pirate themed send off from fellow icicles of Brockwell lido.
Here are some of them including the bravest of them all - John (the one with summery shorts on) from the cafe  - his first sub 10 degree swim of the season....

 dive into the beautiful waters of the lido ...

and then coffee at the cafe...

all perfectly sane..

Pirate Pete

..and even a cake from absent Icicle candy

All in all a GREAT send off with some really special presents, captured beautifully in Katie's blog

Then packed and ready for the Atlantic adventure and fondly waved off from the platform by Charlie, Kaz Valentina and Mike (taking the photo).  LSHTM friends will note the yellow dry bag - an invaluable present as was the ipad cover and hat! Many thanks. And new sailing jacket thanks to Mum and Dad who know that I am not keen on jackets but how glad I was to have this one.

Off to Gatwick, flight to Amsterdam and then onto Cape Verde.  

With 4 hour delay and time to meet the crew the extraordinary captain John and the exceptional Ryan aboard the obliging, resilient and indefatigable 39ft yacht Oystergo (yes that really is her name) moored up in Mindelo marina on the island of Sao Vicente.

After a few days, John and I took a quick but amazing few days in the neighbouring island of San Antao... to see this set of photos with music added click here cape verde video

...where we pottered about in fishing villages ...and found unusual places to sleep....

and take in the gorgeous scenary

take photos of flowers...

and bugs and other bugs..

spiders ( just for you Katie!).

We walked up most of the way up a road that went up to the top of the mountain to view the volcano crater

which filled with a magical misty cloud as we stood and watched.

Very fortunately, as time was quickly running out we were offered a lift down the mountain by three delightfully and increasingly drunk (on local grog) Portuguese mobile phone engineers one of whom had fallen for a local girl and had been adopted by the family (below) with whom we were given more grog and a piece of fish before... 

..heading to the port ferry with split second timing and to then back to Mindelo and its delightful bars with constant music.

Next few days we continued with the final preparations for the Atlantic voyage.