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 12^th 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