38:40.56N 09:19.05W

An interesting twist to the start of this leg was the starting window (0700 to 0730) instead of a start time. With little hope of a breeze for the start, we all motored out of Nazaré in our own time and waited for the breeze to fill in. After a couple of hours we were ready to sail. Up went the Mexican with two reefs in the main and as we sailed past yachts which had started earlier than us, we were filmed and photographed. Phil (Out of the Blue) called it the “world’s most menacing cruising chute” as we crept past and it billowed like a ghost.

We tried fishing but soon realised that 7kts really was too fast for the lure, if not the fish we were trying to catch! The lure leapt out of the water and danced around a bit before being wound in. Some ten or more minutes later we had finally unravelled the cat’s cradle of line that started cocooning the lure, and decided there would be no fish for dinner.

The breeze continued to build and we were loving the sailing, surfing at up to 11.3kts SOG with half a knot of favourable current. We somehow managed to break a sheet block on a gybe (yes, it was a Selden block) and stripped the cover of the sheet at the same time. Hopefully Jono the rigger can salvage something out of what’s left.

Between the two headlands the wind was up to the high teens and we were dropping the Mexican and shaking out the reefs in the mainsail. A brisk reach after the headland brought us rapidly past Cascais and into the sanctuary of Oeiras marina. We were pleasantly surprised to find we’d finished second on corrected time. Always happy to receive a bottle of wine for our efforts!

This is a buzzing marina. Very different to the ones further north. Smart restaurants line the quay and our visit coincided with a two-day festival of loud music and dancing. No problem falling asleep though after such a fun sail.

Giles