We walked the commercial harbour perimeter to reach the entrance road, lined with different businesses, shipping agents -not the authorities

Due to the light breeze, our SOW had dropped drastically to just 4.5 knots, whilst the SOG remained at 7 knots, sometimes more!

When going to the village for our daily internet fix we really needed to wait for the high tide to avoid sinking in the soft mud and sand.

With the flop of our previous day with the anchorage in Alcântara and now in São Luis with waves breaking violently on our stern

Our SOG getting lower and lower, as we were just past the middle of the bay we were doing only 2 knots and shortly after our speed was betwe

We were inside but noticed the jet ski looked like it had Coast Guard signs, so I came to the cockpit to see what it was all about.

the view was incredible, we could see the mangrove forest and river extending to our right and several dunes with fresh water pools

A very nervous 1h as we made our way through the narrow passage, but we did cross it without any hiccups.

But no, they had not mentioned this small detail of the use period matching our original visas, and now we had 3 days to avoid having to pay

We powered up the radar that was on standby since morning and saw it, the big pink stain indicating that we were right, a Pirajá

For hours that day, the wind would blow nearly nothing (up to 4 knots) or it would be 15-18 knots whenever we got hit by squalls

They called the supervisor that came in and gave us a big lecture that Camamu was part of the Salvador harbourmaster territory…

Between the suitcase and the new autopilot, I was already close to my weight allowance leaving only room for some clothes I could use to pad

After having our spirits crushed again when the autopilot blew the fuse after a couple of hours of use, we decided, we had nothing to loose

There were a few narrow passages where we would be way closer to shore than comfortable, at the lowest point of our navigation we found 3.4m

big Araras (Macaws) visit the boats on the mooring field looking for snacks and are quite friendly, resting on people’s heads, on the boats

The dark cloud had rolled back over our heads, and we knew we had an urgent problem to be solved before we could start exploring the country

We were just doing a huge circle around the boat when we saw a day tripper boat approach our boat a bit without care grabbing the stanchions

Despite being back at steering with the Hydrovane quite successfully, the failure of the autopilot presented a huge problem.

Distractedly we followed Google directions, and all of a sudden, we found ourselves in a favela (slum).