The New Brazil—And the Old

"Pelerin" at anchor off the Convento de Santo Antonio.

Our decision to make Salvador our landfall in Brazil was due to a mix of the prosaic and the profound. In practical terms, it’s an easy port to enter, it is strategically well placed for arrivals at this time of year bound further south, and once you’re rested up after the Atlantic, the winds and currents are favourable to carry you down the coast to Rio and beyond, in the best of the Brazilian summer.

From a historic perspective, you’re sailing in the wake of Amerigo Vespucci (1501) to the original capital of Brazil (1549) and into the heartland of the Portuguese empire of sugar cane and tobacco.