Porto Santo 33:03.01N 16:20.01W
Lotus
Sun 4 Oct 2009 12:10
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It has taken 4 long days and 4 very long nights to
reach the first of the Madiera Islands Porto Santo. When we left Cascais
the sky was blue, the sea was calm and the wind was in the right direction, if
not a little light. Within the first few hours we managed to mess up our
autopilot - lesson number 1 - do not meddle with instrument settings whilst
embarking on a 500mile crossing. We called John's brother Guy, who
thankfully was able to e-mal us the contact details of an NKE (instruments
concerned) engineer. By this time, late evening the wind was non
existent and we had to motor with the prospect of hand steering all through the
night - Grim! Luckily, John had a brainwave and remembered that the
autopilot had a feature which will control the steering, kind of!
(you still had to push left and right buttons to correct the
course). In the morning we phoned the french engineer using the
sat phone. With John's french we were able to get the problem
fixed.
The wind had now picked up and we were able to try
out the wind pilot having made a few modifictions to the windvane (John
drilled some holes in it). We were full of hope but not much
confidence. We should be ashamed of ourselves because the windvane steerer
held us on a steady course with virtually no intervention by us for the next 200
miles or so. By this time the wind had come round even more
onto the nose and the swell was making it quite uncomfortable as we were
permanently heeled over to the starboard side and pitching constantly. We
had a choice of either motoring more or less directly for Porto Santo or tacking
(which would add another 100 miles). For us motoring was the only
answer.
The nights were very tiring, but thankfullly we did
have our cooking timer which allowed us to have 20min kips in between jumping up
to make sure no other boats were about. The only wildlife we saw were
a few Shearwater Shearwaters and a little bird that looked like a meadow
pippet which circled the boat twice as if it were about to land.
Unfortunately I stood up and scared it way, perhaps hastening the tired things
death, we were 200 miles from land.
Our first view of Porto Santo was when we were 20
miles out, it looked most uninspiring through cloud and mist, but as we closed
devils island and the spectacular rocky coast of this small volcanic
island there was some natural beauty.
 We moored up in the harbour which is about 30mins
walk from the town but only 2 mins from the start of the 6km long
beach. After lunch I discovered that John had metamorphasized into a
lobster (see pic of typical brit abroad).
 After completing customs formalities at the
marina, we had very welcomed showers . We hitched into town, note we only
got picked up oncre John stood behind me! We had a wander round the small town
and settled for pizza at a nice little restaurant.
After a night of constant rocking and heat, the
morning brought a rain shower which has now continued for 4 1/2 hours hence the
length of the entry to the blog. We keep making moves to leave the boat
but the torrential downpour has us trapped.
When and if the rain stops we intend to explore the
island on a couple of hire bikes.
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