Free of its history

Today, Ilha Grande ranks among the top destinations on the continent for yachting. “My beloved bay, my adoptive land,’’ wrote Amyr Klink, a Brazilian yachtsman, on returning to the island after sailing solo around Antarctica in 1998. “Of all the treats in the world, none would be more special than sailing across the bay of Ilha Grande.’’

The island is covered almost entirely by pristine Atlantic rain forest, cited by UNESCO as one of South America’s most biodiverse — yet endangered — ecosystems. It’s possible to walk around the island in five days, but dozens of shorter trails are laced through the jungle to cascading waterfalls, jagged peaks, and steep ravines, most of which are protected by a state park. More than a hundred beaches, sickle-shaped, palm-fringed, and with startlingly white sand, are scattered around the coast.

In the 18th century, coffee and sugar barons came to Ilha Grande to make their fortunes on its coastal flats; slave traders, too, used the shoreline as a staging area for their human cargo. Today, the complex interweaving of this ethnic and social mix is evident in the islanders’ caiçara fishing culture, which blends indigenous, African, and European elements.

What draws the amateur sailor is the island’s ban on motor vehicles. In their place, the primary form of transport is the boat.

Along the beach at Abraão, the island’s only town, dozens of dinghies, yachts, fishing smacks, and schooners are available for casual hire. Vacationers spend their days puttering between coves, beaches, and tiny hamlets, exploring rocky headlands, sand banks, and mangrove lagoons, and returning each night to Abraão by boat or on foot. “Getting a boat is like hailing a taxi,’’ said Rodrigo Pereira, a guide I had engaged to show me around. “You just stroll along the beach and call out to the sailors.’’