With Alcoutim only 3 miles away we were in no rush to leave our lovely anchorage but we forced ourselves away just before 10am.

We started to raise the chain and anchor using the electric windlass. The windlass takes all the hardship out of having to manually haul in many meters of heavy chain attached to a lumpy and heavy anchor. Unfortunately just short of 10m it came to a grinding halt and made a very strange noise. It didn't move up or down just stuck firm. After several attempts at trying to make it work and after giving it a bit of verbal abuse we concluded it wasn't going to play ball. Bruce ended up having to manually haul the remaining chain and anchor aboard. He certainly worked up a sweat. Personally I think it was good exercise!

Heading up river the heavens opened and for the first time since we can't remember when, it threw it down with torrential rain which continued until we reached Alcoutim. Originally we were going to anchor but we really needed to take a look at the windlass so we decided that if there was space on one of the pontoons then we would take it. Either Alcoutim on the Portuguese side or Sanlucar de Guadiana on the Spanish side would do - we weren't fussy.

There was space at Alcoutim in between two other yachts and as luck would have it three men were standing ready to take our ropes, two from the yachts either side of us and the harbour man so it didn't take long before we were roughly moored up. The harbour man was very enthusiastic and literally took over all the rope work. It didn't matter what we said to him, he just ignored us and continued tying us up to the pontoon... we decided that it was just easier to leave him to it and adjust the ropes later.

Total distance this season: 1226.66 miles