Position:  40:08.85N 08:51.58W

Figuiera da Foz, Portugal

Another day, another 65M sail down the coast – and another day without wind!  So much for the Portuguese Trades.  We pressed our 40 horses into service instead and rocked and rolled our way down the coast in a 1.5m swell.  A bit different to the motorsail to Leixos where it was so calm I was able to have all my tools out on the foredeck, fitting the preventers.

No dolphins today, but something new to keep us amused – fog!  Suddenly the visibility dropped to 50m and we were all alone in a small grey world.  We put lifejackets on the kids, watched the radar and carried on, and Sarah cooked the most amazing lemon & orange sponge cake.  The fog cleared just as we were heading into the harbour, fortunately, and we followed Saeftinge, our friends on a 76ft Dutch ketch, into the marina.

Figuiera was a fairly non-descript town but rather than push on we decided to try to do a “routine” day to try to give some order to the kids, who have started to be a bit naughty.  In retrospect, I think Jemima was perhaps a bit poorly as her behaviour improved the next day.  90% of the time they are just superb and their ability to improvise in their play appears to know no bounds.  Their role-play is a joy to watch and has involved all sorts of scenarios taken from the boat and sailing, family at home, playschool memories and various others.  One of the tragicomic ones is when they pretend that their dolls are seasick and they get the bucket out and go through all the actions!

The girls have found a large number of places to play in on the boat, from the “den” under the forecabin bunks, to a new one they have discovered in the last few days, which is the “treehouse” on the aft cabin top.  They climb up, inside the cockpit canopy, and make a den on the top of the hatch with cushions and various toys.

So, following our “routine” perfectly, we were just about to put the kids to bed at 1900 when our friends on the four Dutch boats arrived into the marina, along with Zita who had just flown back from England where she had been at her brother’s wedding.  Of course, with the Dutch kids to play with, there was no chance of getting our two into bed (to be fair, they were still dressed up as princesses) and very soon they were onboard “Tyche” watching a Barbie video sitting on the laps of the older children.  There were 5 kids sitting at the nav station on each other’s lap – very sweet!

The adults joined on the pontoon for an impromptu party and we had a really nice evening chatting to the others.  Zita very sweetly brought us the Sunday Times from the UK – how kind.  Although reading about the financial markets it all sounds pretty nasty back in the real world. I am very glad we are doing what we are doing right now rather than sitting at work worrying about jobs and money.  It is ironic that the last time we took a year off, the economy tanked with the dot com crash!