Fender Step Bunny
Juno
Paul and Caroline Frew
Mon 29 Aug 2011 19:49
Today the water is smooth, the sun is high in a cloudless sky and we are
making a gentle 6 knots in a light westerly breeze. We are sailing along the
south coast of Portugal heading east towards the Med.
On Jamie's birthday we went for dinner at Don Sebastiao in Lagos where they
managed to rustle up a cake which was delivered to our table to the strains
of happy birthday played over the PA system and accompanied by a round of
applause from our fellow diners. After dinner Beth and Jamie went off to
explore the bars of Lagos, and Tom, Caroline and I returned to Juno. I felt
completely exhausted. I think the effect of early mornings, long days in the
hot sun and fitful sleeping for the past three weeks had finally caught up
with me and the next morning i awoke with a thumping headache from a mild
dose of sunstroke. Outside it was a scorching hot day on the Algarve and we
regretted having taken down our bimini sun shade a few days earlier when the
wind was howling on the Atlantic coast. So we turned on the air
conditioning, closed the hatches and spent most of the day just reading and
catching up with sleep. It was the first day of rest in the past three weeks
since we left Ipswich and it was delicious just to potter around the boat
and look forward to a leisurely day and the blissful prospect of a lie-in.
Beth and Jamie surfaced at midday having gone to bed at 6am and then it was
time for Beth to catch her taxi to the airport to get back to the UK to
prepare for her first term at university. She has been great company and we
shall miss her quirky sense of humour as well as her duties as fender step
bunny. Juno has very high freeboard which means that it's a long way down to
the pontoon. To accommodate the short legs of some of our crew we have a
Fender Step. This is a small fender in the shape of a step which is
suspended from the guard rails and provides an intermediate level between
boat and dock. It soon became Beths responsibility to deploy this vital
piece of apparatus prior to docking - which she did with great aplomb.
Refreshed after another night in the marina at Lagos, we leave for Vilamoura
serenaded by Tom on the guitar. We hope to catch up with Sophie in Vilamoura
and Mat joins us on Thursday for the leg to Gibraltar and on to the Costa
del Sol.
