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Date: 12 Jul 2009 11:14:20
Title: 38 41N 009 24W
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Well we have had a few days to look around and get a feel for the Lisbon
area. Yesterday we went into Lisbon proper to find a part for our fresh
water pump and ended up buying a new pump in lieu of waiting two weeks for a
part that costs half the price of the new pump. (at least here!) A 20
minuet train ride. Took all of about 15 minutes to get it installed when we
got back to the boat and George and I the rest of the night to get most of
the leaks stopped. The radio guy is supposed to come by Monday.

After George, Matt, and I found the pump store in the berbs we were supposed
to meet Chris at the Castelo de Sao Jorge around 4:00 PM. At about 3:45 we
looked up at one monster hill/mountain and could just see the castle way up
there. We decided a set of bus tickets to get up there made sense; but, no
one listened to the part where they told us where to catch the bloody bus.
Late and lost. We then tried to walk it after walking half way there
looking for the correct bus/bus stop. Went through a host of very
interesting neighbor hoods sort of like walking Harlem. Indian, African,
etc. We never did get to meet Chris or see the castle but we did get the
pump fixed. Chris said the view was great! Last night we all went out in
search of some local entertainment and to get away from the blaring
Eurotech music they play at the places around the marina. Managed to find a
nice local place with live music and ended up getting to bed around 3.

Today it was time to take a brake from each other. Matt rented a 'free'
tourist bike and went cycling around Cascias. He is most recently from San
Francisco and was surprised at how out of shape he had become hanging around
on a boat. He is now looking for a used bike to tie on the boat. Chris
walked to a couple of museums, an equestrian competition, and a movie.
George washed the dried salt from the trip over and from the outside of the
boat and hung out at one of the several beaches. I went to the maritime
museum in Belem, a suburb of Lisbon, which had been written up in one of my
sailor books.

After a couple of hours of walking around the museum, and eating a late
lunch in the court yard I couldn't help but reflect,,, on my last extended
European trip about 30 years ago. There was a lot of old maps in
a museum dedicated to the development of modern navigation by the
Portuguese. I couldn,t help thinking of Curt Hoffman, a teacher friend of
mine who organized the
the first trip, and was an enthusiast of old maps. On that first trip I was
also lucky enough to have Buzz Berg,
European History Professor, as a traveling companion. I remember standing
in a dimly lit church some place in Italy and Buzz pointing out the tomb of
Machiavelli, I said something like I had heard the name, dah... That
triggered one of his impromptu lectures which could in a small way have
lead to a stronger interest in
politics.

I am pretty much on my own this time. The sailing is starting to take a
back seat to the fact that I am back in Europe where there is so much
history under every rock. The general theme of the exhibits depicted the
start of Portuguese ascendancy around 1434 when they started exploring south
and round Africa. Many of their instruments were there - amazing.
Magnetized needles, protractors, hour glasses, and miniaturized globes.

I just sailed across the entire ocean - but I was standing on a lot of other
guy's shoulders with my WAAS GPS accurate to 10 meters, radar seeing in the
dark showing us land features and buoys and then all I had to do was to
steer a computer generated boat to a way point that had been already written
on a satellite surveyed vector generated map of every square foot of the
planet already in the memory of this computer... and then a final thought.
At the back of the museum was the Lisbon planetarium. I went over to check
it out... and realized the presentation was mainly about recent
discoveries... by the Hubble telescope likely the biggest and best
scientific advancement of my lifetime. Wonder what the theme of the Hubble
display 500 years from now will say about us...

I like Portugal. The people are friendly, most of the young ones speak some
English and are not pretentious. The pace is not too hectic. The costs
where we are tied up are high but I am told not bad by European standards.
One of our waiters, who had been to the states, said Cascias was the
California of Portugal. Chris said there wasn't anything he did not like
which for him is a pretty high recommendation.

We are planning to leave maybe Tuesday for Gibraltar. We've worked out the
preliminary navigation and it looks like about three days of sailing with
very heavy ship traffic likely. Too soon to guess at the weather. We will
likely
have some spare parts shipped in from the states and finish fixing
everything (hah!) we can before we push on in the Med. Mary is flying to
Madrid on
the 16th of July and will likely meet up with us in Gibraltar. Then Ibiza.-
Matt really wants to go to Barcelonan so we may re-think that stop and put
it back on the itinerary. Looks like Chris may stay until then.

We seem to have good internet here so it is time to try to update the blog
and send some pictures out.

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