Lagos - Madeira
Trippwire
Wed 21 Oct 2009 13:49
Hi there,
Charlie
arrived at Faro and a hobbly Jen and I hired a car to pick him up. Jen was
hobbly due to a bit of a surfing incident from the day before, and by the
evening her foot had swollen up massively; it was worse the following day.
Luckily following a trip to casualty and an x-ray, it was only found to be
badly bruised and not broken.
The following
day (Friday 16th), we headed off to Madeira, which was around a 450 mile
passage. Apart from a couple of hours on the first afternoon, the first 24
hours or so were comparatively windless which meant a very boring motor,
however, given that we were passing through a couple of shipping lanes, it meant
keeping on our toes a bit on the watch front. One
interlude was a bird that came to visit us, but would not take bread or
water. For the first afternoon/evening we set the
tuna line for the first time.
Is this the Texas
elf?!
In Lagos there
was a very good fishing shop who kitted me out with some lures which I was
assured would attract tuna from miles away because they were so ravishingly
tasty...a bit like a vintage port, or a bar of dairy milk for you girls (!).
Baaaaadddddd Miles...£120 euros later and a very cool spear gun as well as the
full kit and cabodle for tuna fishing (the spear gun for spearing the fish
before bringing it back on the boat...well, that was how I justified it - I dont
think that the excuse washed). The brilliant thing being that as I came to pay
for it I realised that I was out of cash (baaaddddd Miles) and so Jennifer had
to pay for it! So, all I need now is a blue bandanna and some blue camo cream
and those fish will be toast!
So..for the
tuna....given that we were passing over the continental shelf at exactly dusk, I
could have been forgiven for thinking that we should not have bothered bringing
any fresh food. Well, we must just have been unlucky, because despite a cover to
cover read of a cruising guide to fishing (I even now know exactly how to cut a
tuna up when we catch it!), nothing turned up. Perhaps they were hungover or had already been visited
by the milk tray man, but nothing was biting. The other notable disappointment
was the demise of the stereo. The speakers vanished in a pile of rust in
Southampton and so I managed to buy a pair of bargain 160 watt (that is each)
cockpit speakers, up from the original 30 watt speakers. We had not got a chance
to test them properly, and so in time for some sundown gin and tonics Charlie
managed to find 'land of hope and glory' and 'Jerusalem' on my ipod (more about
which later) and we started pumping the tunes out. It would appear that the
Japanese stereo either does not like 'land of hope and glory', or there is
an outside possibility that the stereo cannot take a combined 320
watts of sound, and died. Perhaps I should have looked at the writing on the
front of the stereo that says '50 watt amplifier'!
Man to man tuna catching
techniques chat
Into the
Saturday and there was still no wind, and so in the afternoon we turned the
engine off and went for a swim. Mindful of stories of the boat drifting off
without us, we kept one person on board. There is something pretty amazing about
swimming when you know that there is 4000-5000 meters of sea below you...for
starters the sea was an amazing colour...and for seconds, it is amazing what
can the imagination can dream up...no one spoke of it, but I am quite sure
that I was not the only one who gave the horizon an in depth scan before jumping
over the side!...Jaws has a lot to answer for. Anyway, after a 1/2 hour swim
without any limbs being violently ripped off by a shark, we headed on our way
again.
Working those
sheets hard
If Jennifer tells you how hard this all is.....she is
lying....
This is what it is all
about
Charlotte, if Charlie tells you he was
revising all the time....well, he
waaaas.......
Is this how Moses parted the
sea?!
Does this fender look big on
me?
Just after dusk the wind
picked up and we ended up having a cracking sail for the last 36 hours, arriving
into Puerto Santo at around 5 in the morning....and off for a bit of a kip. On
getting up, Charlie sorted us out with an excellent fried brekky, and we
checked in. I guess because the Portuguese were run by a communist country till
not that long ago, but their paperwork is enough to impress the best. For
starters we had to check in with customs, give them lots of information
including type and horsepower (this time Jen was fully clued up on the
answer...in Porto, she had to come back to them after consultation because she
was pretty sure that we had no horses aboard) and whether we had radar.
Anyway, the same information was given to the marina authority as well, but
after the formalities and after a shower we were ready to hit the sights
and sounds of Puerto Santo. This consisted of a long beach, a few cafes and
a supermarket. A long lunch of Sangria later, followed by a swim and a long walk
back along the beach (either we are a little less than fit or we had a little
too much sangria (or even a bit of both), but the walk seemed surprisingly hard
work), and it was time for sundown gin and tonics! The major disappointment of
those gins was that Charlie seems to know rather more about Ipods than I and
discovered my top 25 played songs....unfortunately, a LOT of Texas seems to
be on there....(how that happened I have no idea, but I suspect that there
is some sort of Texas loving boat elf who borrows my ipod when I am
asleep). We had supper in a fantastic restaurant called 'toe in the water',
which was very kindly bought for us by Charlie, and retreated for an
early sleep (pass out?!).
Puerto Santo
An evening on Orange
Juice
Charlie was very keen to do one more
nighttime watch, and so we set off at 5am the following morning to head to
Madeira proper. A cracking sail with wind on the quarter, followed by a
beautiful sunrise, brought us into the lee of the south of Madeira. Whilst we
were having our breakfast, we spotted a pod of whales (or is that a
school?) which were so unfazed by us that we were able to motor around a
couple of times. Despite Charlie's instance on them being dolphins - as
usual with chicken, there was no disproving him, even after showing him a whale
identification leaflet picked up in Funchal (although I did later happen to
overhear him on the phone enthusing about the whales that he saw!). A couple of
hours later we arrived into Funchal, and after the usual rigorous checking in
procedure, we headed up the cable car for an (yes, you guessed it) excellent
lunch (this time a little less alcoholic, given the still remaining hangover
from the previous day).
Whale or
Dolphin......
Just as we were
heading back for our afternoon siesta and were wandering back along the quay, a
couple approached us and asked us if I was a Woodhouse...it turns out that they
were some very charming friends of friends of my parents who were out
for a couple of weeks holiday...I think that they may have thought us a little
feral after they were offered beers in slightly rusting cans of
lager (well, you are either a bitter man or a larger man, and I am
definitely of the bitter persuasion).
The following day
Charlie arranged a taxi to give us a tour of the island, which it turned out was
a brilliant idea and not something that Jen and I would have done on our own.
Half a day later and we only were able to see a fraction of the island, but
enough to realise that it was a very beautiful place. Perhaps the most
astonishing discovery of all was that Charlie is something of a botanist (very
different from a naturist)....no really.....he does actually know a bit about
trees and plants - he was even correcting our surprisingly well educated taxi
driver....I have now known Charlie for more than 15 years and worked with him
for 5 of those and had no idea that he was a bit of a flower
man!
The late afternoon
was given over to a trip around the Blandy's Madeira house; good but a
surprising disappointment given that there was very little vintage
Madeira. I suspect that Jen was secretly very pleased given Porto's
baaaaaddness! We still managed to buy a couple of bottles though. Supper was in
the old fort - a very good suggestion of my parents friends of friends, and
again very kindly (and unnecessarily) bought by Charlie.
Thursday was time to
say goodbye to Charlie...we thoroughly enjoyed seeing him for the week - you
could not ask for a better person to have on a boat - and thank you Charlie
for all of your help and your dinners (although I suspect that given that you
have not read any of our blog so far, that you may never get these thanks!!).
The great benefit of sending Charlie home is that we can now allow our livers to
repair themselves.
Anyway, I will sign
off here and go on a search for that wretched Texas loving
boat elf.......
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