When we arrrived in Cabo Verde, they first put us bow in to the dock with our stern facing the wind. This made the boat swing quite a bit, it also made getting on and off the boat quite difficult, and we don't have a ladder . Blair put a step fender for me to use, but after trying to get on the boat from the bow and falling in the water infront of everyone, the marina finally allowed us to move our boat to the leward side of the dock. Our boat neighbors (Geronimo of Orwell) insisted that we use their boat to get on and off the dock from our boat, as they had seen me fall into the water previuosly. They turned out to be wonderful people. 

We had 5 days in Cabo Verde to do our final preperations. I cooked meals that we could just either heat up, or eat cold, and I generally feel a bit green for the first 2 to 3 days of our long passages. I also took advantage of the tours of the island to get out and expore a bit. 

Once we were settled in, Blair went directly to the repair shop and discussed getting a new boom made. They had 2 larger booms that had been left by other sail boats. One was 5 meters, the other was 7 meters long. Our mast was 3.5 meters, so Blair decided to go for the 7 meter boom, and have them cut it down and refit it to the mast. After looking at our broken boom the German owner said he repairs many boats coming through Cabo Verde on their way across the Atlantic, and that our boom was way too small. Naturally the manufacture of our boat, said that it was the perfect size, and that we should have reefed the main at 12 knots. It wasn't worth the argument, so we just paid the $4,000 for the new boom to get it done. 

Blair went daily to get the boom on. They ended up installing the boom at dusk the night before we were to leave. Talk about stressful. Luckily, this time we didn't miss any of the parties.