We lifted the anchor, accompanied by a glorious sunrise, and waved goodbye to Susie and John from 'Casamara' (we will be catching up with them later...).  

The weather is not very typical for these parts at the moment, no sign of the Portuguese Trade Winds.  We motored for the first half of our trip before some wind arrived around lunchtime, then sailed steadily for the rest of the way.  Our big blue North Sails G1 is coming in very handy at the moment!  It is super easy to use on the furler and gets us ghosting along in the lightest of winds.

Now here is an interesting fact...  we have quite a lot of kit on board!  One we weren't convinced about to start with is a proper front loading automatic washing machine.  But we are already loving the convenience!! 

We have an inverter on board, which means we can produce 240V from our 12V batteries.  So on this journey we did a bit of a trial.  As the engine was running and the sun was out, we were making lots of electricity.  So we put the watermaker on to top up the water tanks (this runs on 12V or 240V, but we just ran it on 12V, straight off the batteries).  Then we switched on the inverter and started the washing machine.  40 minutes later - clean clothes!! Fantastic! Hopefully we won't need to do too many trips to launderettes when in port.

They say the cruisers lifestyle is all about doing boat maintenance in exotic places! We had our first taste of that today with a loud knocking coming from the aft locker (lazarette)! Investigations showed an exhaust bracket had shaken free, requiring an on-passage-fix. Where would we be without cable ties??! 

As we sailed out of Spanish and into Portuguese waters, it was time to change our courtesy flag and enjoy a cuppa and delicious homemade carrot cake kindly given to us by Lucy and Jeff Lancaster! Xx thank you.