40:08.85N 08:51.59W

Wednesday Evening.

Prize giving and buffet dinner turned into another marathon session, but showing astonishing maturity, we retired around midnight, which was a good move according to reports the next morning! However, before we left the dinner, we did have a long chat with the owners of a couple of cruising yachts that were staying in the same marina, both of whom are on their way to the Caribbean. Ria (from Salcombe) and Indian Summer.

Thursday 12th June.

Trip to Porto mainly to have a tour of the Taylor’s Wine lodge. Actually very interesting and the tasting was no hardship.

Sarah, who is a veteran of Port Wine Lodge tours, having spent a week cruising up and down the river here with her mother a few years ago, went off to visit the city centre and met up with the rest of us when we were dropped off to spend a few hours wandering/eating/drinking.

Worried about the oil leak that seems to have developed in the engine during the last leg, but a phone call to the ever reliable and wise Robert Forsdike resolved the issue and as it has turned out all is well. Have yet to fix the generator and see what happens with the Chart plotter tomorrow.

Early night for us as the 70 mile race to Figueira de Foz tomorrow starts at 7.00am.

Friday 13^th  June.

Yes, well if something is going to go badly wrong then today has to be the day!

6.00am and not a breath of wind (and a forecast for less later!!) so the race start was abandoned and we all motored off together just like a good old fashioned flotilla. Chart plotter immediately started playing up, but we discovered over the VHF that two others were having the exact same problem. 15/20 miles later all three plotters recovered and has been fine since. No shortage of theories (16 boats, so roughly 17 theories!) but no answers yet.

Mid morning the weather started to get misty, by 1100 we were in a thick fog bank – visibility 20 m or less.   Good news: we have a radar so could pick up other boats (although one boat did not register a large trawler that suddenly loomed out of the gloom);  bad news: it does not pick up the hundreds of fishing pots laid everywhere – so very good lookout required.   The weirdest part of the whole thing was that the boat was in sunshine, in that there was blue sky above us.   The side of you facing into the sun was warm, the other side was wet and very cold with the mist – hence elegant hairdo in the photo – and Sarah’s sunglasses on one lens constantly completely misted over.   Finally we motored out of the fog after 1 ½ hours and continued with what is optimistically called motorsailing.  Every day that we have been in port has been breezy (good for the washing – and yes the washing machine is working very nicely, thank you!), but as soon as we poke our bow out of a harbour the Atlantic becomes glassy smooth.

Arrived in Figueira da Foz and all squeezed ourselves into some fairly interesting corners in the marina, who then treated us to a fantastic sardine supper.   Rob was incredibly brave and finally overcame his childhood horror of small fish bones in the light of the equal disaster of no other food being available – and ate at least a dozen! Somehow the endless free wine was replaced around 11.00pm by bottles of port (where does all this stuff come from?) and things deteriorated from there.

A Yacht just 25 metres away!