39:21.13N 09:22.61W

Saturday 14th June

Decided not to go on the coach trip today. Too much culture! Spent the day sorting out some repairs, maintenance and storage issues on board. Found what appears to be the problem with the generator, in that the raw water impellor has lost most of its vanes. However the missing bits have travelled on into the heat exchanger which is underneath the body of the engine! Contacted Najad who are taking a robust line with the manufacturers (Mastervolt), so we now have to wait to see what they say.

Highlight of the day (well, night really) was a trip to the Casino to see a performance of ‘Hot Legs’ which was billed as a raunchy dance performance. Given that it started at 11.30 pm you might have expected it to be unsuitable for children, but in the event it was a moderate, end of the pier, Summer Show. Quite fun, but midnight is a bit late!

Sunday was a rest day, and so out came the hoover, chrome polish etc. Things took a turn for the worse when the crew of Bali Hai invited everyone on board for drinks at 4.00pm. It was sort of raining at the time, but this didn’t slow things down much and the evening went downhill fast. Mindful that the next day was a 55 mile race and the weather forecast was for some serious wind, we retired early and had dinner on board. However the party continue down the pontoon, transferring for a while to the yacht Vision, and finally back to Bali Hai around midnight.

Monday 16^th June

And boy did they pay for their sins.... Extracted ourselves from the very tight moorings in the marina and set off down to the river entrance for the 9.00am race start, to find a fast rising wind and a very heavy swell running up the river mouth. Some very poorly crews were discovering that you should only party on the night before a rest day, not a race day! Reports on the radio during the day were very entertaining - well they were for those who were not staring downwards at the sea.

We inherited Robbie (19 year old from Blue Beyond, who is hoping to get involved in the sailing world – Bell boys please note!) as crew for the day – definitely a lucky mascot:

Swept across the start line in third place and promptly moved into second place leaving everyone behind with a wonderful 15 to 20 knots of wind blowing across the deck. Sadly after an hour, this wind died away leaving us drifting at just 3 knots, so we started the engine and motored for an hour until the wind filled in again. Eventually all the boats gave in for a while, but when the wind freshened up, Serafina simply flew away from them all. 8 and 9 knots through the water, moderate to rough seaway, all makes for perfect Najad conditions and for hours we raced down the coast well ahead of everyone. As we approached the destination, Rally control who had driven ahead by car, tried to call up Bouzouki (Beneteau Oceanis 50) as they assumed they were the leading boat, to find where they were. We were able to put them very straight on who exactly was in the lead at this point!! However, we could see what we assumed was Bouzouki a long way behind us, but definitely getting larger all the time. It was now that the superb wind started to die away and we still had 6 miles to go with a very much faster boat hunting us down. We cleared the last headland, 2 miles from the finish, only about a mile ahead and now the wind dropped to just a few knots, directly behind us and a very lumpy sea was running. We were just able to manage 3.5 knots through the water and held on to cross the line barely 100 yards ahead.   (As everyone knows, Rob is NOT interested in getting involved in any of the racing....)   And through all this Sarah struggled with grim seasickness – what a waste of a brilliant day’s sailing.

We had been visited by a group of at least 12 dolphins in mid afternoon who were clearly impressed by our 8 knots and they were a spectacular diversion for some time. This group had some very young ones who presumably were learning how to entertain yachtsmen. It is a wonderful sight and I am only sorry that we cannot capture this in a meaningful way to show you all.

Peniche is a really lovely old town but the marina is part of what is actually a fairly major (and very busy) fishing harbour, so the wash from speeding trawlers, along with the very strong associated aromas, is distinctive.....

Had a great dinner on board Arwen (Hanse 41) who are rafted up alongside us here and discovered that Jackie’s brother lives in Oxted. Small world really as we had found out the other day, that the crew of Scott Free (Contest 43) also used to live in Oxted and both their sons had been pupils at the County School. (This is where I used to teach in an earier life.)

Rest day today, another 50+ mile race tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if the party animals have worked this out tonight.

Just had a phone call from Mastervolt in Holland (their head office) to go over the details of the problem, which they now think might be a lot more involved. But they are on the case and their Portuguese agent has been tasked to come to Lagos when we get there and sort it all out properly!! Great news and thank you Najad.