The winter's over?

Lera(hen3ry)
Malcolm Cann
Sat 16 Feb 2008 17:09
Well, I've now spent (wasted) nearly 4 months in Cascais. I believed it was a good idea, at the time, but
sitting here watching boats coming and going I now don't think it was so clever. I now believe I could have quite
easily have got to Lagos or Villamoura before last year was out. But I made my decision and have stuck to it.
It's now about a week and a half before I move and the weather is not all that nice with quite a strong east wind
and rather disturbed sea and to add injury the night time temperature is as low as its been since I arrived with rain
forecast for the start of next week.
The first run I intend to do is 51 miles, which if I had a fast boat would take between 8 and 10 hours, for me that translates into about 15 hours, so I reckon to leave here somewhere about 2100 or 2200 and spend the night getting there.
As always I have grand ideas and have toyed with the thought of going straight to Lagos which is 126 miles, but I suspect that I won't be on for that.
Sitting here for 4 months has made me all lazy and out of condition, and my get-up-and-go has gone, I think that after the first run I will be a lot better, after all last year was the same. I had to force myself to move at first but by the end of the year I was so much fitter I couldn't wait to go.

Cascais, for my purposes , was a nice place to stop with a couple of real supermarkets within a half hours walk and everything quite convenient.
I have made some changes to the boat in that I've had the engine serviced and the anemometer replaced (second in three years) and bought a couple of enhancements. The most impressive item I bought was a Waeco cool/freeze box.
Before that I had a tiny 12v solid state cooler which ran continuously and took 48 watts, the Waeco has a proper compressor system and is a freezer if you turn it up a little, it only takes 38watts but, because of its insulation, it only runs for about 15 minutes in an hour. This means it is effectively taking less than 10watts, a really good saving. I now can carry 7days worth of meat and frozen veggies plus a few small things. The other purchase was a long range WiFi aerial. Before the aerial I had to purchase a connection from P.T. at E3.00 an hour now I can connect to someone for free and have been using it nearly all day with few problems. Its so good that I have set up a gateway and a few other boats are coming in via my laptop to the same connection.
I've had one disaster, or so I thought, the laptop died completely. The harddisc was failing to write after it had been on a couple of minutes. This meant I lost everything on the C drive which meant all my email, all my money stuff,all my passwords and most import of all my navigator and charts. Fortunately I had considered this in October and bought another laptop ready and had spent some time getting the bare bones of a system working on it. The other laptop was, of course, out of date but I was able to restore from my backup to early November. Money backup,C-map codes and passwords were backed up on a memory stick, and I got the latest e-mails stuff from my ISP who holds a copy. This was all very well but for one thing, the operating system was changed to Vista so I had to trawl around the internet to get the proper drivers for all my hardware, at the end of the day I managed it all and now have only one app not working. The new laptop only takes 60watts compared to the old ones 90watts, so I have reduce my consumption by 50watts which in my book is a good bargain.
I am now in a fragile situation in that I have no hardware backup for my navigator et al. This won't stop me going because I still can use real charts which are sitting waiting.
That's about the total of the last 4 months, now we can start moving again.