Position: 32:38:50N 16:54:86W

We had a slow motorsail down to Funchal, called in at the waiting dock in the harbour and flushed / filled the water tanks again, then moored alongside “Samba” and “Saefhtinge” in the Commercial dock.  The others appeared in their dinghies, and we had a lovely evening on the big Dutch boat.  It is a stunning boat – more of a ship – and it is on a different scale, with a full-size kitchen with washing machine, etc, radiators like at home, etc.  It is on a bigger scale than any boat I’ve sailed on.  They’re doing the ARC, so I look forward to seeing them in Las Palmas.

For food, we did a “pot luck” for the adults while the kids all played downstairs, watching DVDs and the younger ones colouring or playing with dolls.  Somehow we managed to melt our Cobb barbeque, so it now has a little more “character” than it did!  We had a lovely chat to all the others.  We have made some really good friends here and it has made our whole adventure a much richer experience.  However, such is the nature of yacht cruising, that there are a lot of goodbyes, but this is more than made up for by the wide range of characters that you meet, and the unexpected reunions you make in faraway ports.  I hope we meet some of these boats again in the Caribbean.

After a bouncy night, with the fishing boats roaring past us at full speed, full of booze (why is that always the way), we woke to find we’d lost a fender to the surge, and that a huge cruise liner had docked just metres in front of us in the night, without us waking!  We quickly moved off and anchored back over the other side of the harbour, & went ashore to do jobs – Sarah had to post her tax return!  I wonder if HMRC get a lot of tax returns from exotic locations – I suppose they must do.  The kids had a run around in a park, and unfortunately Millie banged her head quite badly.  She was very brave but it is going to come up into a black eye, poor girl.

My boat’s bigger than your boat…

After an ice cream to test Millie’s responses, Nurse Mummy decided she would live, and we dinghied back to the boat, made ready for sea, and at 1130 set off for the Canaries, sailing pretty-much at right angles directly away from the island.  The wind was in the West for the first two hours – a back eddy from the island – but eventually the wind settled in the NE as expected and we settled in for the 270-mile reach.