After our overnight sail we managed a couple of hours sleep, before getting to work tidying Lazy Dawn for the Royal visit……my (Jo) parents were coming!!  2 bottles of champagne later we finally left for lunch.  It was great to rendezvous in Portugal whilst they were there with friends John and Anne to play golf.  We did plenty of drinking and eating with them over the next couple of days, but regrettably for Chris, no golf.  Bringing golf clubs would have just been one too many things in the toy shed!  We already have kite surfing kit, power kites, scooters, body surfing boards, snorkels and flippers, tennis racquets and running kits……

Anne on the Left and Jo's mum Pat at the helm of Lazy Dawn

Once they left, we set to work on the still many needed jobs on the boat, whilst we waited for the Engine to be serviced.  Of all the stops so far, Cascais had the only decent Chandlers and Technical support, so it seemed the sensible thing to do.  Thank fully neither of us minded too much spending longer here, what better place to be than 10 mins from Portugal’s best surfing beach.  Armed with body boards, wet-suits and flippers, we headed for Praia do Guincho.  Despite it being the Atlantic, our ‘shorties’ were warm enough, and very soon even we were catching some pretty big waves J . 2 hours later, totally knackered, we retired from the waves for a well earned rest and some sunbathing. (Not something Chris usually finds easy!!).

What a pleasure it is to do the jobs in the warm Portuguese sunshine.  I managed to scrub and rinse all the teak and give it 3 coats of oil and it was actually not a chore! Vic's, you would have been proud of me, especially as your suggestion of the paint brush rather than a sponge was definitely a better option!!  She looks almost new J

The biggest job that got tackled was the fitting of the DuoGen……A state of the art wind/tow power generator.  Chris had planned to fit this in Falmouth, but thankfully too mush socializing got in the way as we’re not sure it would have survived the Gale in the Biscay!!  Chris spent hours working with tools standing on the transom to fit it, but thankfully nothing fell to the marina bottom.

On thankful recommendation from Tom and Alice, who we bumped into again in Cascais, we went into Lisbon, only half an hour by coastal train, to visit the ‘Oceanarium’.  The biggest aquarium in Europe, what a fantastic place.  The huge central tank had sharks and Manta-Rays and then smaller tanks were set up around this to depict all the different oceans of the world. They even had the areas above the tanks with coastal habitats, including penguins, sea otters and birds.

Manta-Rays in the main tank

Sharks and shoals  of ??? lets hope we don’t catch a shark on the crossing

Sea Otters from the Pacific Ocean coast of the USA

 We took a taxi back through the old part of Lisbon and had managed to find ourselves the only English speaking tourism trained taxi driver.  We didn’t take him up on his offer of a day trip inland visiting Monasteries, but we do have him to thank for a very interesting meal.  We wanted a good quality traditional Portuguese restaurant, serving good meat, having eaten fish every meal recently.  We took the waiters recommendation on everything……’Cozid de Portuguese com Tido’.  We still haven’t found the exact translation, but essentially it was a Pork stew, but not as we know it, trotters, ear, offal sausages, belly, and anything else except prime cuts……….my father would have been proud of us.  Did we eat it?  We politely tasted everything! 

Cascias light house from the marina

We thought it was time to leave Cascias and slipped our moorings and went to pay. Just as we were about to leave we noticed the Clipper 05 /06 round the world yacht race was stopping  here!! With the first boat home expected in the next 24 hours. We had to stay as RJ one of our watch leaders in the Fastnet was on Jersey and we should be their to welcome him home. A quick call home found that he was in 9th place due to having to off load a crew member after breaking an ankle on the fore deck. But we still decided to stay however we would go out and anchor in the bay by the harbour a great location to watch the boats home. It was quiet and a good place to test our anchor as it was our first night on the hook. We spent the next 40 hours waiting for RJ to arrive. During this time we started watching the first series of 24 on DVD a present from my sister Dawn. (We got really gripped and watched the first 3 CD’s in 24 hours!!). The time of arrival estimations kept going backwards due to low wind. However when they did arrive around 01.00 on Monday morning the wind had filled in and their was 30 knots of wind. This made the trip from the anchor to the harbour quite interesting in the 2.6 meter dingy.

RJ’s was first off the boat and straight into the open arms of a girly from another clipper boat!! I shouted out to RJ to put the girly down and moor his boat before… His face was a picture when he saw us standing their. We shared a few words and let him finish his celebrations and putting the boat to bed. We planned to stay and go out for a few beers. However with the wind increasing we decided it was best to retire to Lazy Dawn to monitor are anchor and ensure we still had a boat to do the ARC on. The trip back was very wet with waves coming over the bow of the dingy, we got back both socked but happy we had made the effort to see RJ. We planned to leave the next morning and get some more miles south after a great week in Cascias.

Jersey celebrating their 9th Place in Cascias

Jo, RJ and Chris once RJ put the girlie down!!