“37:06.4N 8:40.44W”

1,424 Miles since leaving Sandwich

Now we are stuck in Lagos – Freezer repairs and the Fosters go home 17-October 2022

It has been 8 days in Lagos now and we are beginning to go a bit stir crazy. The scary thing about this place is that some of the more permanent yachty residents refer to it as a Velcro port. We met one English couple who have been here for 10 years!! With this in mind I am forming an escape committee and we are burning cork to blacken our faces when we go over the wire. But before you start sending red cross parcels and contacting the UN on our behalf a light has been switched on at the end of the tunnel and we have made progress on the freezer front. Lagos is gifted with a large repair facility and Sopromar the largest chandlers in Portugal meaning you can get just about anything fixed here. The problem is how long will it take. I eventually found the part numbers via the manufacturer’s website in Italy for the part numbers that I will need in order to make the freezer work again. They also gave me the contact details of the dealership in Spain that I would have to go through. I wrote to the dealership who after two days directed me to go to you guessed it Sopromar in the Lagos marina so full circle there then. Tommy and myself took a walk over to Sopromar and very impressive it is. We soon made contact with Ricardo their project manager who was super helpful. He took all of the details and sent mails out requesting prices and timelines for delivery. Three days later he updated us with the results. The cooling plate and thermostat could be delivered 6 weeks after payment had been made and the hull fitting sometime after February, not his fault but bloody ridiculous all the same. A plan B was needed. We wasted a day measuring Spectra to see if a two-drawer unit they had in stock would fit, it would fit the hole but wouldn’t go down the hatch so that was a non-starter. Eventually I found a new air-cooled unit in an online chandler in Germany (SVB) that is a direct replacement for our old freezer and I can fit it myself. This also means that we will not need a lift out at €1000 or the €750 hull fitting.  Having the water cooled through hull fitting would be more efficient but as I can’t hang about until February we will go without and see how we get on. We can always retrofit it later if we need to. As I sit here on Monday morning that is as far as I have got. The part has been ordered and I am awaiting a delivery time, over the next few days I will rip out the old freezer in preparation while I am waiting. Ricardo has said that we can use his address for delivery, we did buy a chart of Morocco from Sopromar which may go some way towards repaying them for their efforts.

Two of my broken freezer components

I have started to jog again; well, I have been for one run but it’s a start. On this run I went down to the beach at the end of the canal leading into Lagos which was a bit of a revelation. After passing by the train station and through an industrial estate you top a line of dunes, and a beautiful golden beach opens up in front of you. It also has three or four beach restaurants along the dunes and so without much ado we all ventured down there for a swim and lunch on the next day. Norma paddled up to her knees Tommy went for a quick swim, I went for a slightly longer one and Sue stayed very high and dry. To be honest it is still the Atlantic ocean and pretty cold.

Lagos Beach

The report that I wrote regarding the Orca meeting was sent to the Iberian Orca watch, the Cruising Association, this blog, plus Norma posted it on Facebook and Instagram. The media platforms have gained quite a lot of interest with over 300 hundred views and likes so far which makes Norma an official Influenza (I’m sure that’s the correct terminology). The exciting bit is that we have also been contacted by journalists from Newsweek and TV2 Norway who both want to run articles on the incident. So far, we have answered a bunch of questions and Newsweek have published a short article which mentions Norma the Influenza and completely ignores both mine and the Fosters heroic efforts. We have had a request for more information and apparently, they are going to produce a more in-depth article soon. We did ask them to publish a link to the Blog and the, Share the Dream book which will be a nice bit of advertising if they do.

. We jumped onto the train on Friday morning for a short journey to Portimão. Bad planning all round resulted in us getting off the train to find it was a 5km walk to the marina beach. Taxi to the rescue and we were deposited in the marina. Portimão marina is a bit of a toy town but it does have a very, very, big beach which was sectioned off into 12 pitches including a grandstand for the European and World ultimate championship (Frisbee). Now that is a good sport to watch, I have looked it up and 1200 competitors were taking part from 16 countries. All of the teams although taking it very seriously seemed to be having good fun in a very friendly atmosphere. We weren’t too sure of the rules to start with, but it seemed to be a mixture of netball and American football, no physical contact but you scored by catching the frisbee in the end zone and when you held the frisbee one foot stayed fixed to the sand. We found a nice restaurant by the beach with a good view of the events and had an excellent meal as the sun went down. The friendly waiter ordered us a cab which we took all of the way back to Lagos for the princely sum of €28. We finished the night by sampling my recently brough bottle of Cinja (cherry brandy) back on-board Spectra. In fact, we sampled that bottle to death and a bottle of wine or two for good measure.  

Ultimate Frisbee

Tommy and Sue have flown the nest and headed back to good old blighty on Sunday morning leaving Spectra floating about an inch higher in the water after the cases were winched overboard. It has been really nice having them onboard and sharing some of the adventure and there are strong rumours that they will be joining us again in Morocco when we start moving again.

Looking forward to that and the next leg of our adventure.