May
From Florianopolis
02/06/08 14:52
27th May 2008
Florianopolis is an island (50kms long) beach resort area connected to the mainland by bridge in south eastern Brazil. Its fame includes many kms of white sand ocean beaches, many known for their surf and also more protected beaches on the sheltered mainland coastal side. Tourists flock to the area over the summer; many people from Argentina, Uruguay as well as Brazilians fill the thousands of rooms in apartment complexes, hotels backpackers etc. Internet cafes abound indicating the number of seasonal travellers, in fact here they out numbered the women’s shoe shops and chemist shops (and maybe bars) that have to be the most abundant shops in Brazil. Women are particularly well dressed from the feet upwards and the beauty aids display their effectiveness. I am told that a woman’s image is very important, but not to attract men, but to compete with other female beauties (have I been slow to realise this?).
Sea fish run northward up the coast as the waters to the south cool. This is all very good for the local fishing industry (commercial) or the locals getting a feed off the beaches. I was a haul of 69 very edible fish netted by a group of locals within just 15 minutes. (There is much more time off the water preparing the net and boat, relaxing playing a local board game something like drafts (I suspect much more complex) and having a good social time with mates). No women fishing but I am sure they will relish the catch when brought home.
It’s a truly delightful view on the beach on a warm and sunny day. There’s are few yachts and launches in marinas, but nothing like that in Auckland. In summer it’s likely to be congested everywhere, on the water, roads and beaches. Beach life is very civilised here, restaurants and bars, tables and sun umbrellas on the sands edge. Waiters see that a thirst of any type is well quenched and a seafood delight satisfies the taste buds and stomach. An occasional wander down to the surf is the hardest part of the day!
I was here as part of the support team for the lone Kiwi doing the Brazilian Ironman. Finishing 81st in his first Ironman from over 1200 competitors was great, as were the conditions on the day (Sunday), the crowd and organisation. The water temperature was like that in NZ in the summer, air temperature reaching about 25 degrees before cooling off to the low teens at night. It will cool off a little more in the coming weeks.
So much for my little excursion, now I must go 2000 kms back inland to the farm and start insemination a bunch of heifers, for the objective next year is to fill a milk tanker each day!
Ross Wrenn
Florianopolis is an island (50kms long) beach resort area connected to the mainland by bridge in south eastern Brazil. Its fame includes many kms of white sand ocean beaches, many known for their surf and also more protected beaches on the sheltered mainland coastal side. Tourists flock to the area over the summer; many people from Argentina, Uruguay as well as Brazilians fill the thousands of rooms in apartment complexes, hotels backpackers etc. Internet cafes abound indicating the number of seasonal travellers, in fact here they out numbered the women’s shoe shops and chemist shops (and maybe bars) that have to be the most abundant shops in Brazil. Women are particularly well dressed from the feet upwards and the beauty aids display their effectiveness. I am told that a woman’s image is very important, but not to attract men, but to compete with other female beauties (have I been slow to realise this?).
Sea fish run northward up the coast as the waters to the south cool. This is all very good for the local fishing industry (commercial) or the locals getting a feed off the beaches. I was a haul of 69 very edible fish netted by a group of locals within just 15 minutes. (There is much more time off the water preparing the net and boat, relaxing playing a local board game something like drafts (I suspect much more complex) and having a good social time with mates). No women fishing but I am sure they will relish the catch when brought home.
It’s a truly delightful view on the beach on a warm and sunny day. There’s are few yachts and launches in marinas, but nothing like that in Auckland. In summer it’s likely to be congested everywhere, on the water, roads and beaches. Beach life is very civilised here, restaurants and bars, tables and sun umbrellas on the sands edge. Waiters see that a thirst of any type is well quenched and a seafood delight satisfies the taste buds and stomach. An occasional wander down to the surf is the hardest part of the day!
I was here as part of the support team for the lone Kiwi doing the Brazilian Ironman. Finishing 81st in his first Ironman from over 1200 competitors was great, as were the conditions on the day (Sunday), the crowd and organisation. The water temperature was like that in NZ in the summer, air temperature reaching about 25 degrees before cooling off to the low teens at night. It will cool off a little more in the coming weeks.
So much for my little excursion, now I must go 2000 kms back inland to the farm and start insemination a bunch of heifers, for the objective next year is to fill a milk tanker each day!
Ross Wrenn
Delta 26 Regatta
21/05/08 15:02
Lago Paranoa, Brasilia, 17th and 18th May 2008
Perfect weather prevailed over the weekend for the regatta, temperatures in the mid twenties, a lovely 10-knot breeze and the sun not so burning. I arrived a little late to get on a yacht on Saturday, but not a worry. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon at the “Comodoro’s” table, red wine (a little Cachaca, a car could run on that stuff), cheese, salami, bread, and some slices of very well prepared beefsteaks cooked to the point of perfection. The company too, some sailors, some social members, a lot of Portuguese and a little English spoken (they could have spoken Italian and Japanese too), it all added to the atmosphere on shore.
A NZ designed launch was moored at the wharf; a Brazilian had spent some years in Auckland in the boat building industry before returning and building boats in Brazil. This launch was used by a family for cruising the lake, over night stays in a most relaxing environment. An invitation aboard was eagerly taken up.
Sunday morning, I made sure I arrived early so not to miss getting on board a yacht, racing started a little before 10.00am. The club staff put the fleet of patrol boats in the water and set the course for the sailors to enjoy the day. A windward-leeward course with the startfinish line about a quarter the way up the leg was completed twice in each race. A short broad reach followed a port rounding at the top mark; spinnakers were hoisted before heading down wind gibing several times before rounding the bottom mark and heading back up wind. Three races, back to back, each taking about an hour and a half were sailed.
So how did we do? We made 4th place in the first race (after being 6th for most of the race), a good feeling at the finish. We suffered from some bad shifts in the next two races (I am sticking to that) and finished three or four places further back despite our polished crew work! Still a good weekends sailing, a tropical fresh water paradise with the city of Brasilia as the backdrop. Twelve yachts competed each with a crew of up to six; I spotted an all female crew who would have been delighted in winning the final race. The sailors eagerly downed a few ice cold drinks at days end in the shade of the clubhouse while the staff pulled the yachts from the water and parked them orderly on the hard. A hard days fun!
There’s a lot of alcohol (alcool) in Brazil. It is produced by the fermentation of sugar cane grown in large areas wherever there is a refnery (the nearest one to us is about 50kms away). It’s cheaper than petrol and the power loss is minimal. Brazil is certainly doing its bit in saving on petrol; it’s nations fleets of small cars (most being in the 1 to 1.5 litre range) mostly are fuelled by alcohol. Brazil has many thousands on kms of motorways all helping with fuel economy. Unfortunately traffic accidents are all too common, some road surfaces are poor (some secondary roads don’t have much of a developed surface at all), traffic drives very fast especially for the size of the cars and driver skills appear not so high. Over the weekend I saw two traffic accidents on the open roads, pretty typical. Still imagine that Brazil does better than countries that have many big gas sucking autos!
PS. The yachts motor was not started at all during the weekend.
Ross Wrenn
Brazil
Perfect weather prevailed over the weekend for the regatta, temperatures in the mid twenties, a lovely 10-knot breeze and the sun not so burning. I arrived a little late to get on a yacht on Saturday, but not a worry. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon at the “Comodoro’s” table, red wine (a little Cachaca, a car could run on that stuff), cheese, salami, bread, and some slices of very well prepared beefsteaks cooked to the point of perfection. The company too, some sailors, some social members, a lot of Portuguese and a little English spoken (they could have spoken Italian and Japanese too), it all added to the atmosphere on shore.
A NZ designed launch was moored at the wharf; a Brazilian had spent some years in Auckland in the boat building industry before returning and building boats in Brazil. This launch was used by a family for cruising the lake, over night stays in a most relaxing environment. An invitation aboard was eagerly taken up.
Sunday morning, I made sure I arrived early so not to miss getting on board a yacht, racing started a little before 10.00am. The club staff put the fleet of patrol boats in the water and set the course for the sailors to enjoy the day. A windward-leeward course with the startfinish line about a quarter the way up the leg was completed twice in each race. A short broad reach followed a port rounding at the top mark; spinnakers were hoisted before heading down wind gibing several times before rounding the bottom mark and heading back up wind. Three races, back to back, each taking about an hour and a half were sailed.
So how did we do? We made 4th place in the first race (after being 6th for most of the race), a good feeling at the finish. We suffered from some bad shifts in the next two races (I am sticking to that) and finished three or four places further back despite our polished crew work! Still a good weekends sailing, a tropical fresh water paradise with the city of Brasilia as the backdrop. Twelve yachts competed each with a crew of up to six; I spotted an all female crew who would have been delighted in winning the final race. The sailors eagerly downed a few ice cold drinks at days end in the shade of the clubhouse while the staff pulled the yachts from the water and parked them orderly on the hard. A hard days fun!
There’s a lot of alcohol (alcool) in Brazil. It is produced by the fermentation of sugar cane grown in large areas wherever there is a refnery (the nearest one to us is about 50kms away). It’s cheaper than petrol and the power loss is minimal. Brazil is certainly doing its bit in saving on petrol; it’s nations fleets of small cars (most being in the 1 to 1.5 litre range) mostly are fuelled by alcohol. Brazil has many thousands on kms of motorways all helping with fuel economy. Unfortunately traffic accidents are all too common, some road surfaces are poor (some secondary roads don’t have much of a developed surface at all), traffic drives very fast especially for the size of the cars and driver skills appear not so high. Over the weekend I saw two traffic accidents on the open roads, pretty typical. Still imagine that Brazil does better than countries that have many big gas sucking autos!
PS. The yachts motor was not started at all during the weekend.
Ross Wrenn
Brazil
It's winter - and thirty degrees!
13/05/08 18:00
For me it was an afternoon out on the committee boat
to oversee two races in the Snipe Class (they are a
double handed centreboard yacht about 15 feet long).
Each yacht had The starts were an evenly contested
affair, the sailors having a good sense of time and
an adult and a junior sailor, the adult helming the
first race and the junior the second. distance. The
first race consisted of one up wind leg of about 4
kms in a light breeze that occasionally saw the need
for hiking. The 15 yachts finished at a mark in the
centre of Lago Paranoa. (Lago Paranoa has a surface
area of 40 square kms with a depth of around 20m over
much of the area. It’s a hydro lake, one arm with a
dam and hydro-power generation).
From the water there’s a great view over to the city of Brasilia, tall buildings in the background, hotels, lavish sports clubs and houses around the shoreline and the president’s residence occupying one peninsular. Up to US $3.5 million is paid for the top end houses with all the facilities (water slides, gyms, entertainment areas, tennis court, wharf etc.) on the waters edge.
The committee boat was an older but well kept launch especially fitted with the necessaries for the job; a chilly bin full of bottles of iced cold water for the officials and sailors ranked high on the list, a radio to call up the three (50HP) support boats and of course plenty of flags and a horn to run the standard international start system. A professional photographer was on board too. The language was Portuguese, not a word of English today.
The finish of race one was tight with some fickled winds keeping the sailors alert. After a quick stop for drinking water and a skipper/crew rotation they were under the starters orders for a second time. Again upwind towards the dam, around the channel mark and all the way back down wind to the yacht club and the finishing line at around 5 pm. Hard work in the hot sunshine in Brasilia (it’s “winter” here and still close to 30 degrees during the day)!
Mother’s Day was celebrated in Brazil on Sunday and I was very kindly invited to a family get together. A very enjoyable affair, two hours of pre lunch nibbles (all sorts of meats and hot breads off the “BBQ” (Brazilian style) and drinks, followed by lunch proper and desert, finishing at 4.30pm. (There was no doubt that my hosts could do real justice to the hospitality at a regatta at Lake Ngaroto). It was then time for us rural people to drive the 150 kms back to the farm for another week’s work.
Ross Wrenn
From the water there’s a great view over to the city of Brasilia, tall buildings in the background, hotels, lavish sports clubs and houses around the shoreline and the president’s residence occupying one peninsular. Up to US $3.5 million is paid for the top end houses with all the facilities (water slides, gyms, entertainment areas, tennis court, wharf etc.) on the waters edge.
The committee boat was an older but well kept launch especially fitted with the necessaries for the job; a chilly bin full of bottles of iced cold water for the officials and sailors ranked high on the list, a radio to call up the three (50HP) support boats and of course plenty of flags and a horn to run the standard international start system. A professional photographer was on board too. The language was Portuguese, not a word of English today.
The finish of race one was tight with some fickled winds keeping the sailors alert. After a quick stop for drinking water and a skipper/crew rotation they were under the starters orders for a second time. Again upwind towards the dam, around the channel mark and all the way back down wind to the yacht club and the finishing line at around 5 pm. Hard work in the hot sunshine in Brasilia (it’s “winter” here and still close to 30 degrees during the day)!
Mother’s Day was celebrated in Brazil on Sunday and I was very kindly invited to a family get together. A very enjoyable affair, two hours of pre lunch nibbles (all sorts of meats and hot breads off the “BBQ” (Brazilian style) and drinks, followed by lunch proper and desert, finishing at 4.30pm. (There was no doubt that my hosts could do real justice to the hospitality at a regatta at Lake Ngaroto). It was then time for us rural people to drive the 150 kms back to the farm for another week’s work.
Ross Wrenn