Cascais to Peniche
Thursdays Child
Robin & Joanna Minchin
Mon 27 Apr 2015 21:43
009:22.605W
Two words sum up today, Peniche and Fish! What a glorious difference to our first sail from Lagos. We set off around 10am and were filled with trepidation about whether to believe the weather forecast promising a gentle NW breeze, or to believe what normally happens i.e. a huge increase in N winds in the afternoon.
We took a gamble that the forecast would be right and it paid off. In fact the wind decreased so with full mainsail and jib up we continued under engine all day making excellent progress against a larger German sail training boat who left Cascais at the same time as us (in fact we tied up alongside in Peniche just before them ... which hopefully pleased Bol who was watching us on marinetraffic.com!) I was keen to arrive in the daylight as the Pilot Book warned to beware of a lot of lobster pots outside Peniche harbour, marked and unmarked, hence stopping 20 miles short of Nazare.
Once settled on our course Fred gave Hans an excellent teach-in on "sailing to the wind" and Hans then steered for hours, at one stage he was heard admitting that he was actually rather enjoying himself! The scenery along the coast a few miles east of us was really beautiful and the visibility was excellent all day.
However the highlights of the day must be the catching of TWO bonito tuna, 1.5lb and 1.7lb. Thank you to Harry for getting us organised with easy-to-use fishing gear,and thanks to Hans's inspired idea to put the hook straight back out enabled us to catch the second so we have just gorged on tuna for supper, such a treat.
We are really feeling so relieved at the progress and success of today, and are cautiously optimistic that the forecast for SW winds to blow from Wednesday still looks likely.
Tomorrow we should make it to Nazare, 20 miles around the corner.
