Day 14 (Monday 21 Oct)

For all of you landlubbers who have enjoyed catching up with our blogs, our apologies for the missing couple of days.  We are still all very much alive and well.

To quickly fill in, the weather has not been so kind to us recently, and we arrived in Cascais on Thursday last week after motoring through a very wet night.  Jeremy and I had joined Skyelark for the hop south as they were down to 3 persons on board, so both boats were shorter crewed than normal.   Nevertheless, we arrived in good spirits, and spent 2 lazy days in port waiting for the next weather window (how many times have I heard those words on this trip!).

We used the time in Cascais to get a few jobs done: Em (our superwoman) fixed the electrics, which had got a bit damp; Stephen fixed the 2 forward heads (toilets for you folks at home) – not the nicest of jobs – thank you Stephen – I suggest that t-shirt probably needs to go in the bin or at least a huge bucket of disinfectant!  And the girls did the laundry, some of which may well have walked to the launderette by itself!

We were all very pleased to leave Cascais on Saturday morning, feeling refreshed and clean, looking forward to some good sailing.  We were not disappointed – the wind was good, in the right direction, and the weather dry.  We cruised along at around 7 – 8 knots for most of the day and well into the night, when the wind died and the motor came on again.

The kind Portuguese fishermen had decided to spice up our sailing with an obstacle course of lobster pots and tuna nets, but we safely navigated through these.  We were rather concerned when we spied a huge unidentified object ahead, which turned out to be the largest turtle any of us had ever seen – unfortunately it was very dead and very smelly!

Not long after leaving port, we were approached by a Portuguese naval frigate, which seemed to take a lot of interest in us.  We obviously looked far too happy a crowd to be carrying out any underhand operations, so they soon got bored and left us alone.

Towards the end of the day, we were treated to a wonderful display of nature.  On our western side, we had a beautiful sunset, whilst on the eastern side, we were able to witness an impressive lightning storm over the land. This was all followed by a bright, full moon glittering across the water.  What more could we possibly ask for?  I actually had to force myself to go to bed.

We are now in Portimao on the south coast of Portugal, and it looks like we will be here for around 4 or 5 days waiting for another “weather window” to get down to our final destination – the Canaries.  Unfortunately we have lost Rob and “his” Jeremy, who have had to return home.  It is a shame to lose them as the crew on this little ship of ours has had a good time together and it’s a pity that we can’t all see it through to the end.  Safe flight home lads.

There will now be a short intermission of a few days before a further blog is posted.  We are in the hands of mother nature, waiting for the wind to come round to make for a fast, direct sail to Las Palmas.

The only thing left to say is “Happy Birthday” to Jeremy (my Jeremy) from the rest of the crew.

To all of you at home, hope you can catch up with us again in a few days time.

Bye for now, Nicole

Regards

Phil Munday

Great Escapes Yacht Charters
Prings Farmhouse
Prings Lane
Maplehurst
West Sussex
United Kingdom
RH13 6GZ
T: +44 1403 891561
M: +44 7876 648610