Ilhas Desertas

We arrived at the Anchorage, Choa da Do a at 2030 after the day sail from Porto Santo a distance of some 35 miles.

The place is like a scene from the Tolkien films sheer rock cliffs rising vertically from the sea apart from one tiny area of flatish land and a rocky spit sticking out into the sea that provides the required shelter from the prevailing swell from the north. There's no real shelter from the wind unless in the north east (actually that was wrong see next post) but the winds were reasonably light and without the swell we were pretty well protected anyway.

We were guided to pick up a mooring by the warden. There was one other yacht in the anchorage and two local boats (from Madeira I would guess) that were out fishing.

Tony cooked an amazing beef stew which we both enjoyed to the full. The night was cloudy with a good moon so not a good one for star gazing unfortunately.

Both the fishing boats had gone in the morning followed by the other yacht and apart from a brief visit by a whale watching schooner we had the anchorage to ourselves.

We got the dinghy out for the first time and rowed the 50 Metres to the rocky beach. The warden met us and explained it was change over day with the boat due in within the hour and could we therefore come back later for the information session (which we were not expecting anyway). We were free to walk around the designated pathways and explore. These amounted to no more than perhaps half a mile with precious other semi flat land available anyway. 

Previously there was a step way hacked into the cliffs that apparently provided access to the plateaus 400 metres above. Rock slides had done for it though so everyone was restricted to an area of no more than a couple of acres.

We had two brief sitings of the endangered monk seal which of course disappeared as soon as the cameras were out, then in the afternoon a dove landed on the boom, then hopped down onto the companionway steps then flew through the boat out the fore hatch and perched on the pulpIt.

With the dinghy out it seemed like a good opportunity to test out the "new" outboard motor from eBay for £150. I'd had it serviced by Jimmy one leg at Hoo via Tony, but had not attempted to use it until now. As expected the first few pulls produced not a spark of life. However, once I turned the fuel on it started first pull! I therefore went for a little spin and took some photos and got told off politely by the wardens - "you're not allowed to navigate in these waters, except from your boat to the landing beach." Fair enough, I'd tested the outboard and got the photos anyway.

Went ashore again this afternoon for our guided tour and information session by the two wardens. From their reactions when we told them of our sightings of the monk seals we were clearly lucky to see them at all. The "Dove" that visited us earlier, was were told, an African Pigeon. Bizarrely, the pigeons we are all too familiar with were around too.

We also saw some of the Ferrell goats which amazingly are able to scale the almost vertical cliffs around the anchorage. They are a pest that eat anything and so the wardens have to cull them when they can. Now that the sun had warmed the ground up there were numerous small lizards darting here and there. They and purple flowering plants and a number of the other plants and sea birds are indigenous to the island.

Tony performed more magic in the galley and russled up a great Roshti dinner from our dwindling food supplies (we had only planned on being here one night originally. Whilst I was washing up I heard a tremendous splash and looked round towards the cliffs and no more than 10  metres away the surface of the water was churning. Either a very big lump of rock had fallen into the sea that close to us or a very big monk seal had leapt out and splashed back. I hoped it was the latter! Minutes lsyety I  glanced upwards which at that particular momemt meant up the cliffs towering above us and caught site of a family of Ferrell goats traversing the near vertical slopes. Perhaps they had precipitated a rock fall?!

Whoops and more photos from Porto Santo

Priority for today was to make modifications to wind vane. Replacing one type of string that was stretching and therefore reducing the amount the tiller could be pulled, with another that hopefully will not stretch). Whilst doing that I also changed the pushpit blocks (one having previously broken) so that they were both the same type. That meant taking one off the fore deck. In the course of doing that I noticed that one of the bolts holding the roller reefing mechanism together had fallen out. Managed to replace that and sorted out the wind vane including making another couple of adjustments.

Explored Porto Santo more this evening after completing my jobs. It's really a very pleasant town that has been sensitively developed into a tourist resort which hopefully the photos below demonstrate. The most astonishing aspect are the miles and miles of sandy beach without a hotel in site. It's a shame the same policy wasn't adopted in the Algarve.

Photos from Porto Santo and update

Still not seen a lot yet and we only on Porto Santo which is a small volcanic and fairly barren but with a great beach. It's still VERY quite here. There are only 4 other visiting yachts and 3 are all Swedish! The other not sure. Only a couple of local yachts in the water. We took a taxi into the (only) "town" yesterday evening.  Attractive and been developed sympathetically but the original town no bigger than a small village. Columbus apparently lived here so hope to get back into town later to see the museum and Church after doing various odd jobs, mainly on the wind vane.

The plan is to leave tomorrow for Ilhas Desert as - small islands off the south coast of Madeira itself and which being a nature reserve we need a special permit to visit. It looks beautiful and only has one secluded anchorage which given it is so quiet hopefully will be just that. As long as weather is ok we'll stay there overnight and probably try out the "new" outboard to get ashore. Then we'll go over to Funchal the day after.

Cascais to Madeira...(Porto Santo)

Porto Santo landfall

...was tough going for the second half of the first day and the first of the second. It all started benignly enough in the sun in Cascais bay on Saturday morning in a gentle westerly breeze. The forecast did include strong winds F6-7 for a spell later in the day with 4 Meter waves but Portuguese meters seem pretty big to me, or perhaps they don't count the swell the waves are on and when the swell came from more than one direction, a F6/7 in the Atlantic felt a different proposition to one at home. Our first reef went in at 1330 with Angus beginning to struggle on abeam reach. The second an hour later. Two hours later reef number three after one of the blocks in Angus's system shattered under the strain. During this period I had been progressively tightening up the cross bolts on Angus's deck mount to stop him kicking up in the ever growing seas. Around the same time one of the eye splices I had made unravelled and I had to tie another bit of line in place that restricted Angus's movement. One of his outriggers was also wearing down which messed up the angles of the tiller lines and reduced his movement still further. Over the next couple of hours I tried a couple of temporary fixes and ended up tying a bit of rubber in place to stop the outrigger moving so much. Tony went down with a bad attack of sea sickness during this period aggravated by an existing tummy issue and so I stood two watches back to back. Come 0800 on Sunday it was still blowing a stinker and Tony still out of commission after he gamely struggled to operate. We therefore hove too for 4 hours to try and get some rest. I had still not adjusted to the rhythm of the sea and so sleep was impossible but the rest did help.

Up to this point AS had been storming along a 7 + knots. I had never experienced her sailing at that speed sustained hour after hour and was secretly keen to better our estimated 5 days for the 500 mile passage. I really should have hove too earlier to give Tony a break earlier (from the fairly vigorous motion of the boat).

Anyway by midday Sunday the conditions began to moderate and with Tony feeling a bit better we got underway again. At 1530 we shook out a reef. After a couple of hours we were a little under canvassed but still making 5 knots so kept our reefs in to give us an easier ride.

0700 on Monday saw us at the same Latitude as Cape Trafalgar - 36°08' and so we liberated Trevor the Duck to mark the historic sea battle. By 1100 we conditions had eased further and so shake out the remaining two reefs and due to a wind shift to pole out the Genoa. I did this on my own to get the practise in. It took me an hour!

By midday we had covered 247 miles over the ground towards Madeira.

The rest of the trip was pretty much plain sailing with slight wind shifts requiring the Genoa to be successively set normally then to be poled out. By this time we were both able to sleep when off watch which was a blessed relief. I had even mm managed to make a Shepherds Pie which lasted two dinners and on Tuesday Tony woke hungry for the first time in the morning and cooked scrambled eggs for breakfast which we then chased around the still heaving cabin for fun.

At 0035 on Wednesday I sighted lights on Porto Santo and as the dawn broke the Island emerged from the still gloomy dawn. It seemed a much more significant landfall than the others despite this being a passage two days shorter than our crossing of Biscay.

The Pilot book warns yachtsmen that the ferry from Madeira arrives daily at 1030 and that yachts should keep clear at time. Guess what time we were approaching the harbour?

At 1100 we had avoided the ferry and were moored up in the marina. 4 days to the minute from weighing Anchor in Cascais bay!

Lisbon 20/5/1

Spent a very enjoyable Monday evening out to dinner with Charles and Zoe from Valindra a 37 foot Kim Holman sloop. They have just started their round the world cruise having left the UK south coast a little after us.

They have also been very helpful with the loan of their digital scales needed to measure the weight of the counter balance weight of the wind vane, and with a gift of some lead flashing that we needed to adjust the weight of same.

We have now completed the various adjustments to the wind vane suggested by John and Chris, barring a couple that may need to be made whilst under way.

Also did a couple of other jobs on the boat - rigging a permanent preventer line for the mainsail and a downhaul on the spinnaker pole. Both lead back to the cockpit and should make setting up the sails for running much easier.

Now we need the wind to calm down a little which has been howling here for the last few days (and to do our laundry) before we set of on yet another trial of the wind vane. That will probably be to Cascais on Friday, weather permitting. Hopefully, we'll then be ready to head off on the longer haul to the Azore, possibly via Madeira.