who was heading for the African port of Sofala. Mission The objective of the Third Armada was wholly commercial. Its mission was to go to India, load up with spices, and return home. The journey was expected to be uneventful. The journey's destination was Calicut (known as Calecute in some sources, now Kozhikode), the principal spice hub in the state of Kerala and the dominant city-state on the Malabar coast of India. The Third Armada expected – or hoped – that the well-equipped Second India Armada of Pedro Álvares Cabral, which had departed in the previous year (1500), had succeeded in its ambassadorial mission to secure a treaty with Calicut and set up a factory (feitoria, a trading hub) there. The armada was unaware that Cabral's Second Armada had not only failed in its mission, but it also began hostilities between Portugal and Calicut. João da Nova's Third Armada was sailing into a war that it did not expect and for which it was not equipped. The Third Armada also seems to have had a planned intermediary destination at Sofala, where Cabral had been instructed to set up a factory. According to Correia, the crown ship of Francisco de Novais was designated to trade for gold in Sofala and leave the factor Álvaro de Braga, the clerk Diogo Barbosa (same name as captain) and an additional twenty-two men. Cabral's Second Armada had also already failed that mission: there was no Portuguese factory in Sofala. The armada could not have delayed its departure until the arrival of the news of the Second Armada. The seasonal monsoon wind patterns of the Indian Ocean forced India-bound expeditions to leave Lisbon by April at the latest in order to find favorable southeasterly summer winds from Africa to India. Those same wind patterns determined that returning fleets could only arrive in Europe in the summer, June at the earliest. Although the difference between one fleet's departure and another fleet's arrival was only a few months, outbound fleets could not delay their departure until the previous year's fleet returned; if they did, an entire year would be lost. Therefore, both the crown and the private consortiums were willing to equip and launch the Third Armada in March 1501 before they received any news of the outcome of the Second Armada. The first ship of the Second Armada to arrive only did so in late June. Nova's