It’s been 2 days now since we left Lagos and are about half way to Porto Santos, a small island just 20 Nm NE of Madeira. We didn’t spend much time in Lagos so we thought it might be nice to make an extra stop over at Porto Santos. Just after we left Lagos, we were visited by the Portuguese Coastguard. They called me over the radio and soon after they came over in a dinghy. It was just a routine inspection and they were very polite and friendly. They didn’t search the boat or anything, but checked all the documents, licenses, safety equipment and then left again. Over the radio the skipper told me I had to report to the maritime police at Porto Santos or Madeira to buy a tax? I had no idea what kind of tax he was referring to, I’ll see it when we get there. Some time later we were taken over by a cruise ship of ferry, obviously heading for Madeira too.

There is a bit more wind so we had a good sail so far. The weather is great, sunny and the nights full of stars until sunrise.  The storm that was forecasted did seem to move NE after all, but still, I don’t want to take any risk. The forecast in general could be a bit more specific. On the navtex there was a gale warning for the area between 25° and 7° W and parallels 35 and 45; that is a huge area, about 600 by 600 Nm… Anyway, we’re at the far south of this area and lows always move to the North, so we’ll be fine. It’s very quiet and peaceful in this part of the ocean. Occasionally a freighter or tanker passes, but in general we have no pings on the sea-me. So we can actually switch the sound of. What a difference with before, if we turned on the sound then it sometimes looked like as if morse code messages were coming in.