So, you’ll just have to accept that this has been written at sea, en route to Lisbon where we are due to arrive at about 2000 this evening (Friday). We are in fact three days early, having reserved a berth from the 24th, but we spent too much time in Spain and still have an awfully long way to go……….

Congratulations to Steve Arnott who has just completed the Fastnet race. He seems to have no idea where his boat finished and had I an internet connection I could have told him. On the race web site you can follow the track of every boat. I hope the race organisers haven’t looked at Steve’s because his track suggests a quick beer stop in Fowey following an inexplicable detour to the Channel Islands.

Whilst settling into the swing of being away from home - and it is taking a bit of adjustment being away from family and friends - one of the great comforts has been food. Not just the meals you may read about in Annie’s effort, but the food from home such as Rob’s honey (two jars down now of the original four), Di’s fruit cake still going strong and probably indefinitely given the amount of Spanish brandy it now has in it, Will and Willa’s biscuits and sweets, Niki’s Christmas marmalade, Jerry’s Kwells. I know I am on dangerous ground here as I may have forgotten other items as well but the point is these reminders of home have been a great comfort to us. Similarly with music. We have been listening to my iPod on random play. This gives the opportunity to listen to stuff put in long ago and never listened to until now but also the odd gems that have emotional significance from different stages of life - again very comforting and quite moving.

Right, thats enough of this touchy feely stuff and back to sailing. As I write we have the genoa goosewinged to port on the pole (the sailors will not take this the wrong way) and the full main to starboard with a boom preventer in place. As a result we are doing around 6kts over the ground in around 12kts of breeze and the boat is very stable despite the swell coming up from behind. Not bad eh?!

Yesterday we shook ourselves out of our lethargy and set the cruising chute in 10-15kts of breeze. We did this partly because the genoa flapping around behind the mainsail was driving us nuts and partly because we were closing on another probably larger yacht heading in the same direction under main and genoa also. To ensure a smug overtake with accompanying cheery wave we set the chute and waited for the action. We got to within about quarter of a mile before an extremely large red white and blue spinnaker burst into life and they pulled steadily ahead. We could see the smirks on their faces - smarmy gits. Mid afternoon and we thought our luck had changed as their spinnaker was taken down and we began to catch up rapidly. They were just tormenting us though and as soon as we were within range up went their spinnaker again and off they went. Towards dark we left the chute up longer than their spinnaker and were visibly gaining again, although by this time they were further out to sea and we would have been too far away for them to see our cheery waves as we pulled ahead.

Had it not been for Steve Arnott’s dashing tale of a spinnaker broach in the Channel in the middle of the night I might have been allowed to keep the cruising chute up under cover of darkness. However, some things are just not worth physical abuse and so down it came (lets keep these things man to man please Steve).

The proof of the pudding is in the photos below. Must go now - Annie is getting agitated about some foreign lightweight plastic that has sailed around us in a huge circle. Well, they do have a very large asymmetric set on a bowsprit but I am not rising to the challenge.

The wind has gone up to 17kts - oops, got to get that pole down! I have also noticed that the Duogen (see pic) at 7kts boat speed is now producing over 2 amps of battery charge. At 5kts the batteries were draining at -3.5 Amps. Maybe our newly ferocious fridge was on at the time………… 

Footnote - we got the pole down in next to no time and seem to have a system worked out for it that is a success. I will happily describe this at length in a later post. As we went past the headland to the west of Lisbon the wind rose to 35kts so we put two reefs in the main, furled the genoa and surfed along quite happily. By this time it was 1800hrs and we still had three hours to go so we have stopped off in Cascais. The Spanish guy who set up the Zara clothes store chain is here so we are in good company. His boat is a bit larger than ours and has no sails - boom boom…………...