Monday 14^th October – Arrived in Lagos on the southern (Algarve) coast of Portugal so Liv’s first bit is over, apart from the holidayfying at the end and celebrating that birthday.  Leaving Cascais was again like being part of a shoal of fish, everyone moving at once.  The forecast wasn’t specially good – inadequate wind and from the wrong direction – but everyone seemed simultaneously to have had enough and the thunderstorms of previous days didn’t help.  The ‘pack’ had been moving pretty well together, so that we all met up with at least some of the others in various ports, with much boozy gettings-together in consequence,   Cascais, though, was the parting of the ways; some were going straight to Madeira or the Canaries, others were off to join the ARC fleet, while others had simply found a cheap place to leave their boats over the winter and were hanging up their sailing boots until next year.  We shall miss them; they were all great company (and usually had great cheeses as well as good wine!)

The trip here took 24 hours.  As luck would have it, I got the boring but reassuringly controllable donking along under engine while Tony got some wind and moonlit dolphin – such is life!  I took some pictures on the way into Lagos of the spectacularly cave-y cliffs in the hope that it will bring back happy memories for Marian and John! So now we’re back to being tourists for a bit, based here as the marina is spectacularly cheap for stays of over a week.