Thursday 12th November: Heading for Madeira

Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Thu 12 Nov 2015 17:54
37:34.9 N, 009:26.65 W

We ventured into town early yesterday evening to replenish fresh stores and also because it's Portugal and neither of us had set foot on mainland Portugal before. The town sits above the beach and Praia do Vaso da Gama. Here along the Praia are running and cycling tracks and an outdoor gym, and they were being used. Like the Spanish last week in La Coruña, the Portuguese seem to be heavily into jogging and cycling and rather few smoking; not an image we'd previously associated with their national stereotypes. Not so attractive was the plague of graffiti that the town suffers form - even the bins have been scrawled on. None of it is artistic either; it's all just scribble (or political statements that we can't read, not few Portuguese Language skills beyond beer, please and thank you). The beach is worth a mention: two separate individuals were doing some serious sunbathing when we arrived. So serious in fact that they refused to budge for the beach grooming tractor, despite this vehicle dragging a harrow within a metre of their heads.

We found a Spar shop with strangely packed food and a poor selection of vegetables. Obviously all locals do their shopping at the produce market wherever that is. We also found a local posh wine emporium: after selecting three bottles of mid range Portuguese wine we parted with a princely 11 euros. The bar afterwards was even better; a beer and a glass of wine for 2.60 euros (a glass of wine for just under £1 - try that in the Old Spring!). And both were palatable too. This place is cheap. Even the marina cost only 20 euros for the night. Staggering back with our stores we stopped on the boat and had a quick glass of the first bottle of local wine. This was a mistake as all plans to go out to dinner ended here. Four nights off-watch duty caught up with us both and after heating up left over curry for supper we headed for bed.

The morning dawned warm and bright so we lost no time in setting off towards the south again. It was so warm in fact that shorts and tee shirts were our sailing uniform of the day although once off the land the air became quite a bit cooler. Since then we've motored as the wind (what little there is) is coming from directly ahead (ie SW whereas the forecast is for NE). Fiona did manage to get her Iphone working to view the AIS chart plotter while on deck (thanks Peter), which will be most useful coming into strange places in the near future.

Boat life: It's really quite hard to wash long hair in a hand basin the size of a small melon. So I chickened out this time and went ashore to the marina showers. Lovely.