We pulled up our big
hook from the deep the big lump of steel that hangs on the front of Silky, the
thing we are beginning to love and trust, Friday 12th September at
8:28AM and sailed off headed for Porto Lexios our first stop in Portugal
41:11.05N 8:42.36W
It was a fantastic
feeling to be sailing into another country, especially one that neither Fiona
or I had ever visited before. We had a whole heap of Spanish Dolphins come and see
us off which was nice and thoughtful and then once we made it into Portuguese
waters we were greeted by some Portuguese Dolphins, not sure if any of them
understood our English but we all seem to like one another.
We sailed almost 70
Miles which is pretty good going. The wind in the morning was pretty much non
excitant so we motored away until we had enough wind behind us to hoist the
Kite. The Kite being the Kite scares the pants of Fiona and I must admit it
makes me a little tense, anyhow up it went with about 8 apparent knots of wind
behind us which was great as we moved along at about 5.5 Knots. This did not
last long as we watched the wind gauge steadily climb up to about 14 Knots
which pushed us along at about 7 Knots so in total about 20 Knots of true wind
so I decided to get the thing down after only half an hour and a lucky call it
was. The wind had really decided to blow and we were now running down wind
flying towards Porto. I had set our
co-ordinate into the computer so we just sat back and hung on while we surfed
down the faces of the massive Atlantic swell, at time in excess of 8 Knots and
our instruments recorded a maximum gust of wind at 38 Knots. It all seemed to
work perfectly some how as we had traveled out into the deep in the morning to
be greeted by the afternoon gales coming from the North as we traveled back in
towards land with the NW swell.
Porto Lexios is the main
Commercial Port
in Porto. It is nothing to look from any
angle and as we did sail into town the place looked like a concrete jungle
covered with smog from the oil refinery and surrounding industry. Oh well it
did not effect our high as we dropped anchor beside a huge tanker. I tell you
we do not do it like the others the marina was about 100 meters from us on the
other side of a huge wall but we knew the wind would die off shortly after
sundown and our nights sleep would be a sound one which it was.
Special comments by
Fiona:. After seeing the dolphins yesterday, I actually dreamt
that night of dolphins swimming beside us. My dream became reality when we had
at least 20 or so Dolphins surrounding our boat. You can see from the pictures
how close they were and the leap’s they did before us. I loved it and talked
to them hoping they’d understand my English because I certainly don’t know any
Portuguese! Maybe they were from England and had traveled so far?
As for our ride into Lexios, well that’s another story. We literally flew in
to port. I’ve never seen the boat go so fast! And I loved every second of
it.
Day 52
Destination – Porto Lexios
Traveling Direction
–South
Wind Direction – North
Swell – North West and lots of
it
Average Speed – 5.6
Knots (Fast Fast Fast as ever)
Top Speed – 8.5 Knots
Through the water and about 11 Knots surfing down the waves
Total distance – 68.3
Nautical Miles
Travel Time – 12.2 Hours
Temperature – 26 degrees
Crew
- Fiona (Happy Sailing and thrilled with our dolphin friends)
Missing Work – NO
Expenses – €0
Next Destination – Porto
