37:06.612N 8:40.477W

Today Anne’s shoulder was a bit stiff from all the bending over cutting out and sewing so she decided no curtain work today.

Bev gave us the recipe for her superb fudge yesterday evening. Hence this morning we went to the supermarket and bought the required ingredients. After much simmering over the stove, and chilling in the fridge, we are now ready for the fudge pontoon party.  

We then belatedly fitted our smoke and carbon monoxide alarms – we decided they wouldn’t work too well in their boxes.

Later we wandered into town. We haven’t quite got the hang of Portuguese opening hours so some of the shops hadn’t opened for the afternoon (they open at 3pm). Anne wanted a pair of Croc shoes and the shop was still closed. She managed to bribe Stephen into staying in town with an Ice Cream. Anne is now the proud owner of a dark silver pair of Crocs complete with penguin accessories.

Whilst we were in town we wandered around some of the hotels looking for places for people to stay at. Most seem to close for some of the winter although one hotel offered to open up if we wanted to stay!

On our way back we saw Karen and Richard in the Marina office. They offered us a lift back in their tender. So the four of us headed back to Pyxis on water. We were impressed by how well it coped with a fully laden boat – we don’t think Richard needs to upgrade to a 10HP motor. This message was sponsored by Karen.

Not wanting to be accused of spending all our time partying, we went out for an “intellectual” evening to a seminar on weather at sea and ways of finding the appropriate information from the internet or HF radio. It was a really useful meeting and we made plenty of notes. Unfortunately the meeting was held in a bar…