37:55:98N 008:52:74W
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Wandering Dream
Steve Litson
Mon 4 Aug 2014 14:44
Penny’s turn to blog!
So...Salty Sea Dog Steve arrived at Lisbon airport to collect me, (I felt
relieved and slightly surprised to have actually made it in the tiny wind up
plane from Toulouse! Thank goodness for flying business class, I got a window
seat, but so did everyone else actually! and free wine which reduced my sense of
inevitable doom.)
We took the metro and train to Cascais where Wandering Dream was moored, a
2 hour trip, with Steve getting stuck in the barriers twice as he tried to get
himself and my monstrous bag through. As we arrived on the pontoon, at 11.30pm,
hundreds of flickering lanterns drifted into the dark night sky – beautiful and
very welcoming. The pulsating music from the same location, playing loudly until
3.00am, was not quite so welcoming!
It was lovey to see Steve, chilled, relaxed and very happy, living
his dream, and totally in his element.
Our cabin is very very cosy and unpacking into the allocated cupboard space
made me feel excessively overpacked!
Cascais is very pretty with cobbled streets that could make you feel very
disorientated after a few alcoholic beverages! We had a superb lunch in “World
of Wonders” vegetarian tapas restaurant, and awaited Sheryl and Peters arrival.
They swept down the hill in a taxi, exhausted and hot, but it was great to see
them.
After a bony fish supper, and some sleep we set off on our maiden voyage
together to Sines. We almost left Peter standing on the quay, but that’s another
story!
It was surprisingly windy...very quickly all ideas of lounging stretched
out on the deck in my bikini evaporated. Sat in the bows, with the boat going up
and down, up and down, up and down...was quite therapeutic for the first hour.
Not so much for Sheryl, who quickly built up a close relationship with the
stantion posts as she had need of hanging her head out of the boat alot. This
became even more necessary as a toilet malfunction meant the only option
available for Sheryl and I to wee, was to use a bucket. Fortunately, there are a
number of functional green buckets on Wandering Dream, the one we used had a
useful rope on it too! Dignity out of the port hole...you try balancing on a
bucket in a rocky sea with wind speeds of 35 knots (that’s alot of wind!) then
trying to get said bucket and contents up on deck and over the leeward side
without spillage! But, we kept smiling, cheerily, for hour after rocky, tippy,
rolling hour!
My smile finally faltered at about hour 8, as Steve and his very
adept and useful First Mate Peter, had to take down the flappy, flappy mainsail.
We had our life jackets on, and clipped onto the boat whenever we moved, but it
was terrifiying seeing them both up on deck, with the wind blowing a hooley, the
boat tipping dangerously, and the alarm on the monitor that I was watching
sounding; “Make sure the boat stays facing into the wind, Penny.” well, it
wasn’t but there was nothing I could do about it, and I again felt an impending
sense of doom, and that we were inevitably all going to drown. Clearly, we
didn’t drown and I should have more faith in my trusty captain, however, I did
insist on a lesson in how to use the radio for May day calls, and a
revision of man overboard drill before we set sail again!
Cold, wet, tired, shivery, dehydrated because I didn’t want to drink, then
have to use the bucket, exhausted, and with Sheryl having been sick the whole 9
hours, we were more than pleased to moor up, find a real toilet and a wonderful
restaurant in Sines! Quite a day!
Tuesday was toilet sorting day. Peter and Steve spent the best part of the
day trying to fix it, scraping out built up scale, and attempting to source
parts to eradicate the problem....all, sadly to no avail, and the problem
persisted. It became a balance between drinking enough not to dehydrate, but not
have to take too many trips to the marina toilet block! The restaurant waitress
quickly grew to love us, as we returned for a second visit on Tuesday evening
and drank much cognac!
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