Mir, Mandy & Me

  Mandy arrived back to Oseirus marina with Nick & Jen, we had a blowy, squeaky, rolly night in the marina and the next day went for a walk around Lisbon.  Lovely meal in a dead trendy bar. We then left Oeiras marina, Lisbon and headed towards Setubal. The day started with the cook not tying a fender correctly and it dropping into the sea, half a mile out of the marina. So we had to go back for that. We were having an amazing sail when all of a sudden we were stopped dead by a giant piece of plastic which got caught in the rudder and was attached to something in the sea.  I had to jump in to cut it free and untangle it from the rudder, not easy in a rolly sea with a big boat bouncing around on top of me. There was lots of plastic, it was twisted into thick rope. We pulled it all on board and stored it in the dinghy to dispose of when we got to shore. That only delayed us by one hour would you believe. Shortly after we started sailing again we were visited by a pod of ...

 If you were to ask me what my specialised subject is these day I would have to say Sea toilets. I hate them, the most disgusting job on a boat, especially when people clog them with toilet paper. You know who you are. The reason they are so bad is that the ammonia reacts with salt water and creates a crystal like growth that furs up the pipes and clogs them up. I'll say no more except one of our toilets is now working like a dream after a day of dismantling, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and pulling really ugly faces. The other outstanding job, a little more pleasant, is finishing off the installation of our water maker. With this, our sails and solar panels we are nearly completely off grid. We just have to get rid of our beautiful, 20 year old, Yanmar 4LH-TE 110hp smelly, noisy diesel engine. (My other specialised subject.) When the cook starts earning squillions he has promised us an electric engine. Then I will have 100 percent less boat jobs and can leave my Harry Potter home....

  Anchorages are one of my favourite parts of sailing. Besides being free they are all wildly different. Big, small, quiet, busy, deep, shallow, mad tides, mad sailors, flat calm and rolly polly. So we've settled down in a lovely big, busy, shallow, flat calm, safe anchorage off the seaside town of Cascais, just a little west of Lisbon. It was a public holiday when we arrived and the bay was crowded and loads going on. So many boats.  The deliveroo guy delivers to the sailing boats on his hover board - so cool. I saw him answering his phone to take an order whilst on his board. Some people parked a little to close. Look how close this guy anchored by us -  good job it was calm.  In the mornings we are visited by a pod of enormous dolphins. We were also entertained by the kite boarders. This guy was amazing. I'm going to get one of these but first need to learn to stand up on a paddleboard without falling off. One of the reasons to stop here was to meet our mates Tim ...

  We left Porto at sunrise to a beautiful setting moon and shot out of the river Douro with 3 knots of tidal assistance. The only issues with our journey were we had to burn load of diesel because there was no wind and I broke my poor toe leaving Porto. Didn't hurt at all just made a horrible cracking noise - first injury, not a bad one. Besides that we had a wonderful journey. The coast from Porto to Lisbon is basically one gigantic beach with only 3 or 4 places to moor if you are day sailing to avoid orcas. First stop was in a cool marina in Figueira de Foz where we left the cook on board and went for a lovely jug of sangria in a really trendy bar. We scoffed all the fruit as it was so delicious. Next we passed Nazare where they have the biggest surfing waves in the world, (you can see why in the contours of the nav chart)  Then we dropped anchor for the night in a very protected little cove,  Baia de sao Martinho do Porto,  which was a bit scary getting into becau...