Well, I've now spent (wasted) nearly 4 months in Cascais. I believed
it was a good idea, at the time, but
sitting here watching boats coming and going I now don't think it was so
clever. I now believe I could have quite
easily have got to Lagos or Villamoura before last year was out. But I made
my decision and have stuck to it.
It's now about a week and a half before I move and the weather is
not all that nice with quite a strong east wind
and rather disturbed sea and to add injury the night time temperature is as
low as its been since I arrived with rain
forecast for the start of next week.
The first run I intend to do is 51 miles, which if I had a fast boat
would take between 8 and 10 hours, for me that translates into about 15
hours, so I reckon to leave here somewhere about 2100 or 2200 and spend the
night getting there.
As always I have grand ideas and have toyed with the thought of going
straight to Lagos which is 126 miles, but I suspect that I won't be on for
that.
Sitting here for 4 months has made me all lazy and out of condition,
and my get-up-and-go has gone, I think that after the first run I will be a
lot better, after all last year was the same. I had to force myself to move
at first but by the end of the year I was so much fitter I couldn't wait to
go.
Cascais, for my purposes , was a nice place to stop with a couple of
real supermarkets within a half hours walk and everything quite convenient.
I have made some changes to the boat in that I've had the engine
serviced and the anemometer replaced (second in three years) and bought a
couple of enhancements. The most impressive item I bought was a Waeco
cool/freeze box.
Before that I had a tiny 12v solid state cooler which ran continuously and
took 48 watts, the Waeco has a proper compressor system and is a freezer if
you turn it up a little, it only takes 38watts but, because of its
insulation, it only runs for about 15 minutes in an hour. This means it is
effectively taking less than 10watts, a really good saving. I now can carry
7days worth of meat and frozen veggies plus a few small things. The other
purchase was a long range WiFi aerial. Before the aerial I had to purchase a
connection from P.T. at E3.00 an hour now I can connect to someone for free
and have been using it nearly all day with few problems. Its so good that I
have set up a gateway and a few other boats are coming in via my laptop to
the same connection.
I've had one disaster, or so I thought, the laptop died completely.
The harddisc was failing to write after it had been on a couple of minutes.
This meant I lost everything on the C drive which meant all my email, all my
money stuff,all my passwords and most import of all my navigator and charts.
Fortunately I had considered this in October and bought another laptop ready
and had spent some time getting the bare bones of a system working on it.
The other laptop was, of course, out of date but I was able to restore from
my backup to early November. Money backup,C-map codes and passwords were
backed up on a memory stick, and I got the latest e-mails stuff from my ISP
who holds a copy. This was all very well but for one thing, the operating
system was changed to Vista so I had to trawl around the internet to get the
proper drivers for all my hardware, at the end of the day I managed it all
and now have only one app not working. The new laptop only takes 60watts
compared to the old ones 90watts, so I have reduce my consumption by 50watts
which in my book is a good bargain.
I am now in a fragile situation in that I have no hardware backup
for my navigator et al. This won't stop me going because I still can use
real charts which are sitting waiting.
That's about the total of the last 4 months, now we can start moving
again.
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