To Gib and beyond
Skyclad
The Vinces (and a Spouse)
Tue 7 Sep 2010 23:42
Been a busy 24 hours or so.
We got to Cascias, in Portugal, late Monday night, our second landfall of the trip.
I plotted the route down and in on the GPS, my first time at that. And we entered in the dark, looking carefully for nav lights and other features (like bloody lobster pots - which are everywhere).
Night vision goggle came in handy for that. And it was a really useful experience.
Got there no drama and then had to dribble our way round the marina itself to park - good test for Sam (first park of the trip) and he did good.
After we tied up and stuff we went and found a fab pizza place - so pizza and beer finally happened. Followed by the now obligatory brandy........
We had what they called 'old' Portuguese stuff and it was really good. They warm the glasses by putting a little in and lighting it, not seen that before.
We all had one and as they dished out the glasses they produced a quite big one for Mike and said 'for the Boss' - then a second big one for me ' for the second Boss' - no idea what that was all about, lovely people though.
Next morning saw me and Mike sat in a coffee shop, the bloke there wouldn't let us pay for coffee (wouldn't let anyone) - as he'd (not personally) just had a baby. Really sweet.
We fuelled up while Dane and Sam went to shop for the next leg and bumped into our first officialdom when we tried to pay for the berth to leave.
Before we could leave we had to first check in it seems, and produce all sorts of documents, most of which we had - but not all......
We were missing rhe insurance certificate (it's probably sat at home....), but a swift call to the broker got it faxed to the Marina office, problem solved and we now have a copy for next time.
All this delayed our departure a bit and we finally legged it early in the afternoon.
First thing it did was rain, but second thing was wind, big wind..... 20+ knotts. That gave us a pretty excviting hour or so, pressed hard over, followed by many more hours of less wind but good boat speeds. We were flying down the coast of Portugal.
Mike whipped up spaghetti for tea - awesome. And the wind finally dropped off about 9:00 PM - motoring since then.
We're about 20 miles off Cabot Sao Vicente, a big bit of Portuguese headland, at which point we make a left and head stright down to the straights of Gibraltar.
Current plan is to bypass Gib and press on instead deep into the Balaerics for our next landfall - three or four more days at sea maybe,
We need to eat up some miles, being missed back home.....:)
That's it 12:40 AM on Wed as I write this - all good, sailing among the stars.
Cheers.