Week 6 -29th July 2009

Nightsong
Wed 29 Jul 2009 17:26
Dear blog

After a great week with Mark and Vanessa Nicholson sailing from Lisbon
down to the Algarve, we were joined on 23rd June by Thomas and 4 friends,
Rob Wilson, Rob Igglesden (Iggy), Becky Fretten and Neil Drew and have
spent the week exploring the beautiful Algarve. We've had fantastic hot
weather 'tho not very much wind and the young 'uns have certainly enjoyed
the warm water. Actually managed to sleep 7 fairly comfortably with T in
the main cabin.

The Algarve coast mostly consists of offshore sandy islands enclosing
shallow lagoons so Nightsong with her shallow draft has come into her own.
Changeover was in Vilamoura where we spent 2 nights and which despite its
reputation of being the Benidorm of the Algarve is actually rather fun -
the marina is very noisy with thumpy music until 2am and lined with
touristy bars.But we had 2 delicious meals away from tourist alley at the
Cataplana restaurant. Nightsong had one of the few masts in the marina and
was actually unusually one of the smaller boats, most of which were
Sunseekers, Princesses and Fairlines of well over 50ft LOA.

Then we visited the lovely island of Culatra (tidied up a bit from our
last visit on Merlyn 3 years ago), Tavira (where our chartplotter did not
put us 100m inland Chris!!) and Olhao, before returning to Lagos to lay up
the boat for 3 weeks. 2 pictures attached show the crew on the foredeck
and 3 of them being towed behind Nightsong.

No damage to report except we managed to break (and lose) the flagstaff
after dragging our anchor at 3am at Tavira and hitting another boat (no
damage to them thank goodness 'tho the shouting was fun). Caused some
embarrassment subsequently with the officious Portuguese Garda Nationale
but you can't buy red ensigns in Portugal. First time we have dragged on
Nightsong (and surely will not be the last!!) but I suspect it was caused
by a fishing boat catching the anchor buoy and tripping the anchor. Does
one have an anchor buoy or not, fellow sailors?

Back in 3 weeks with the Leemings and Perrings before going on to Madeira.
Also will go inland to stay chez Leeming for a couple of days which
looking forward to. Only bad thing to say about Portugal is their great
attachment to bureaucractic paper work - but otherwise what a lovely
country.

AJB

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