Portugal here we come

August 18^th

We departed St. Peter Port, Guernsey at 3:25pm, and are heading out to Lisbon, Portugal. We will end up mooring in Cascais, a nice marina near Lisbon. We carried out a deck check to make sure everything is secure as we will eventually cross the Bay of Biscay and don’t want anything to break on the voyage!

This Bay could give us some rough passage making. We got a bit of rain, and mainly motored as initially we had very little wind that was blowing in the opposite direction to the way we needed to go. We started our shifts of 3 hours on, 4.5 hours this time. Oh what joy!

August 19^th

Same day as yesterday except that we are now entering the famed  Bay of Biscay, and sailing over the Abyssal Plain which is over 4,800 feet deep (not that it matters much to us really, as we are not going down for a swim anytime soon).  We witnessed a beautiful sunrise, later followed by numerous pods of dolphins who would spot us and make a bee line to us, leaping in joy with perfect synchronicity. They would come across our bow and then dart quickly underneath Josie Maria, come along our side and take a quick peek or two as they follow along, until another pod would spot us and do the same thing.  It was magical!! This pretty much kept on happening for most of the day. The water was very clear and John took some good photos.

August 20^th

We started the day rather well, with good 20Kts of wind and good beam reach sailing across the Bay of Biscay. Hey, its not as bad as some have made it out to be. But things could always change. We got buzzed by a twin-engine prop plane that flew probably a few hundred metres above us. I guess the pilot wanted to take a look at us. No markings so not military.

We are enjoying the sailing and the winds are starting to pick up so its getting fun.

Famous last words, because by about 8pm it was the start of what proved to be a gale with winds of 38Kts and by 11pm, gusts up to 45knots – this went on for several hours through the night. John’s had to check out from the land of the awake, and lie down on his bed as he was not feeling too well with swells of 2-3 m waves. I guess the Bay is living up to its name after all.

Josie Maria coped really well with the gale.  We had a reefed mainsail and genoa (reef 3), and auto-pilot on – so that we could shelter from the spray coming over the bow.  It was really comforting to know that Josie Maria managed the strong winds so well.  By 3am the winds dropped, the sky was clear all night and the moon nearly full so it was beautiful with the moons reflection on the water – it also meant that during the gale we could see the swell and waves rushing at us!!

August 21^st

As John hit his bed holding onto the contents of his stomach,  Rory had to put in a few more furls on the Genoa, but we are making good time at 8-9 kts.  Vicki who noted that the winds continued to pick up and they hit 45Kts. John tried to sleep, as its one of his most effective ways to stop seasickness.- the basic theory is that dead men cant feel anything.

However he can recall waking up suddenly as he was air-lifted from his bed and slammed with vicious force into the lee cloths on the side of the bed. His theory that fat men can’t fly was put to the test –he was proved wrong again.

Lee cloths are large strong pieces of cloth rigged on the side of your bed to help prevent you from falling out of your bed when the boat keels over during rough seas. What a good invention. They looked rather stupid pathetic anti-cuddle things, but we now can appreciate their practical nautical value. 10 points to the inventor ! 

John also had another moment of clarity, as he finally understood why Vicki purchased so many pillows, having to put several all around him to wedge himself into bed to reduce the force of impact as he was slammed about his side of our double bed. He eventually managed to fall asleep and get over his sea sickness. Resolving that this night is the first of many of such rocking and rolling nights.

In the morning we experienced our first fog – we learnt fog signals and later learnt how to send them automatically through our VHF radio via our intercom system!!

After this the day brought about a much calmer sea as we started to leave the Bay. However we kept on getting a ‘Pan Pan’ with lat/long co-ordinates of a fishing vessel many hundred of nautical miles from us who was reporting a man overboard in Spanish, probably a fishing vessel. We are days away from rendering assistance, and it was frustrating for me knowing that  someone was in that stormy ocean. I truly hoped they were found. It's a reminder that we cannot take any chances. We made sure we were tied to the boat at all times and had out life vests on, as well as not to go to the front and back of the boat where the waves would just roll over.

August 22^nd

A perfect state of bliss. A lovely lazy day, out in the sun, and no strong wind to be found.

John is kind of happy and kind of sad really. His stomach feels normal again so that makes him happy, and the ocean feels like a lake.

….But he is a bit sad because we are not sailing.  We are motoring at 8 Knots with our mainsail up with one reef to give us some stability. Our engine is so quiet you could almost believe we are actually sailing but we better not mention this as we could get strange stares from the rest of the crew. Unfortunately we have 10kts of wind and we need quite a bit more wind to our sails before we can turn off the engines. We need to get to Lisbon and the motor is the only way. One moment we are complaining about too much wind, and the next we are complaining that there is not enough. Someone up “there” needs to get their plan together. Please send us just enough wind to sail.

Everyone is taking advantage of the calm seas and sunny day. After the last 24 hours, it's a relief.  We are all working away – Vicki working on her charts and passage making plans to Cannes, Rory trying to figure out why our showers wont pump out water automatically and Mike is mesmerised by the plotter, checking out nearby container ships on AIS.  David is quietly reading a novel and is rather happy. He has just found out that he is the proud grandfather of Louis David, who was born a few hours ago. I noticed a tear in his eye and a wide brim of a smile. I’m glad we got the VSAT phone working so he could make a call to his son to find out news of the birth.  Congratulations!!

We are making good waves to Lisbon. On John’s menu, so as to ensure that he gains more weight so that he cannot get airborne again (Sue wont be pleased), we aim to eat Portuguese tarts (do they really have these in Portugal ?), Portuguese Chicken and some tasty hamon salted meat (Equivalent to prosciutto, an Italian delicacy) . John is also wondering why he is thinking of food when that was the last thing on his mind the night before ?

We (Vicki and I) worked together to create some piloting plans, which basically means a series of waypoints in Lat/Long on charts before we enter them on the chart plotter and figure out the route we will take to the Strait of Gibraltar and then onto Palma de Mallorca after we leave Lisbon. Mike (our instructor ensuring that we have all bases covered – so we will be save passage makers post Cannes!!). We plan to sort out some maintenance work at Palma and catch some Mediterranean sun. Talking about sun, it's getting rather hot now. We both are starting to like the idea of an endless summer.

We have arrived at Marina Cascais as the sun was setting. This was the first time Vicki had the opportunity to park the boat into a marina under the careful guidance of Rory, our skipper. As we arrived the town was in party mode, with a rock concert occurring near the marina. The whole town was out enjoying things, so we decided to join them. We all found out that beers here are 0.7% alcohol. Enough said. It took us a while to rise the following day.

Time to depart

Lee Cloths on the side of our beds

At the main square in Lisbon

John and David enjoying a coffee and a portuguese tart in Lisbon