39:31.59N

009:38.47W

 

1630 Wednesday 22nd October

 

We left Leixoes yesterday five minutes after the French boat Eoliane with Annie and Olivier and sailed in company most of the day and evening which was lovely.

 

However!  Six hours motoring until a blissful northerly breeze began enabling us to sail, ghosting along at 3 knots most of the night which was dark but beautiful.  I woke Isabelle for a gorgeous dolphin display in the phosphorescence.  I tried waking Harry but he was un-wakable, so deeply asleep! Hopefully he will see them sometime. Isabelle could hear them through the hull squeaking at her, very special.

 

Beautiful sunrise at 8am and the wind has risen slowly through the day, it is now 10-12 knots on the beam and we are just off the Berlenga Islands. We are still undecided about our destination which may be Cascais near Lisbon, Sines further south, or Lagos on the Algarve, around Cape St Vincent and 24 hours more sailing. We will decide when we look at the weather forecast that will be downloaded when this blog entry is uploaded.

 

But the biggest news is that Bol is feeling great, we put the Scopoderm ear patches on 22 hours before we left so that is brilliant and is building our confidence in them (they are a prescribed seasickness drug called Scopolamine which last 3 days, another patch can be worn on the other ear if necessary after that).

 

 

The other good news is that we have the two kindles on board  ~ a hair raising taxi ride into central Porto to collect them from the courier yesterday morning.

 

Harry was ecstatic that we caught two fish, the first was a smallish mackerel off the mouth of the Rio Douro, Porto, then the huge hook & squid lure that Hamish and Bol bought from Scotties in Newport caught an Atlantic Mackerel! Both were consumed at supper. Harry reckoned catching the Atlantic Mackerel was more exciting than the ten mackerel at Muros!

 

So all good on board and enjoying being underway again. It was noted that we set sail towards Cape St Vincent on 21st October, which we have learned from our school work that it is Trafalgar Day and 209 years since The Battle of Trafalgar off Cape St Vincent which is just down the coast from here.