Peniche - surprise!
St Barbara's Web Diary
Peter & Sue Goldsmith
Sun 14 Jun 2009 20:17
18.00 14th June
We find ourselves in Peniche - where's that you ask - well it is about 45
miles north of Cascais.
Up relatively late at 0700, we bemoaned the fact that we had to stay here
for a few days until the intense low just up the coast had cleared. So what
to do - a bit of maintenance on the propeller seal. For those in the know,
the prop seal stops the nasty stuff i.e water, entering the boat and us
eventually sinking. Having mended the bilge pump, we thought we would check
that the prop shaft was securely connected to the gearbox - if it isn't, it
has a tendency to fall out of the back of the boat. There are two outcomes
to this event a) we have no propulsion and b) we sink! So we tightened it up
and marked it so for future reference.
Skipper downloaded a daily weather which showed that the expected low had
disappeared overnight - so let's go!
Cautionary tale coming up!!
By way of a diversion, we had spent a couple of hours yesterday watching the
antics of a neighbouring power boat and rafted up friend's sailing yacht.
They had some problems with their anchor line and one of the crew donned a
scuba outfit, dived down and eventually fixed it because they then left. So
off we go except that we had a problem with our anchor line - it had pulled
up a very large old fisherman type anchor and it was firmly wrapped around
our anchor chain. A few brilliant ideas later, we were clear.
A long day's sail (motor) of 10 hours rewarded us with anchoring up within a
boat's length of where St B had anchored 5-6 years earlier in Peniche. The
wind had blown at 15-20 kts all day virtually on the nose with a rolling
sea. Not much to see all day- lots of cloud ad little sunshine. A boring
sail in some senses but satisfying that we had been able to get out of
Cascais and on our way north.
For those of our readers who are interested in culinary aspects, the menu so
far has been:
Friday evening: Steak Diane a la Portuguese
Saturday evening: Chicken Portuguese ( a la Basque)
Sunday evening: Pasta Peniche ( a la Bolognese)
Monday evening: a restaurant in either Nazare or Figuera da Foz!
First Mate ( and all other positions inc anchor chain flaker) signing off
and goodnight.
Skipper says: First Mate has had a good first day at sea and shows promise
and he can only hope it will continue.
Sleep tight shipmates zzzzzzzzzz