Spending any time at all on the island of Madeira you notice immediately that the entire island is either mountain, hill, slope, valley, gorge, or just basic lumps of solidified lava rock. So few areas are flat that the airport runway has had to be built on a huge concrete platform out over the sea! No amount of reading of guidebooks etc prepare you for the amazing terracing on virtually every vertiginous slope on the island. What a huge amount of work must have gone into that!
So far we have beem hijacked by a bunch of timeshare cowboys, that cost us a whole morning, explored the cetre of Funchal, gone up the hill from Funchal in the cable car (free, as the one perk of the timeshare experience!) and looked round a lovely garden and watched the wicker toboggan run operating. We might go on that ourselves. We spent today taking the service bus to the north-west tip of the island, a four-hour drive each way, and a totally memorable experience. To say the roads are twisty, full of zigzags and hilly, up and down steep slopes, round headlands, down into coastal towns and up into the hills again, is to put it mildly. Our bus spent most of its time roaring round blind bends on the wrong side of the road, in the hope that a concrete truck was not coming in the opposite direction at the same moment!
We noticed during our taxi ride from the marina at the east end of the island into Funchal that first day that there are loads of tunnels in the road system here. Apparently they have all come into existence since 1986, and they must have changed life on the island tremendously. Our bus yesterday followed mostly the old roads to serve the outlying communities, but the island's main traffic now belts along miles of straight or only slightly bendy tunnels, and journeys take a fraction of the time they used to.
One of the mishaps we had aboard Tamar Swallow was to one of my teeth, which shed a large lump into a Snickers bar, one night watch. I kept the piece, and found a dentist here just down the street from our excellent self-catering apartment, where a young dentist said he could bung it back in for me, and then did. Better than new, I'd say!
The city of Funchal is lovely. There is one whole street where they play classical music on loudspeakers all the time, and there is currently a vintage car event going on here, so there are a large number of vintage vehicles parked along the centre of the broad pavements, with cards beside them explaining thier age and manufacture.
The marina is small, rather cramped and full of excursion boats which go out dolphin watching, birdwatching trips to the Desereted Isles. We plan to do one of the latter on Friday, as yachts are not allowed to land on these islands as they are a protected area, and these guided tours include a professional ornithologist.
On our last day in Madeira we took a local boat trip to the Deserted Isles, some four hours travelling away from the main island, and an extremely restricted nature reserve. We were allowed ashore only if we were with an acknowledged group, and could only walk round a tiny nature trail near the wardens' headquarters. Fair enough the ecosystems on the island need protecting, and we saw some really rare birds. We had also seen a monk seal in Funchal marina before leaving, a huge creature and one of a tiny remnant of an endangered species. So we were feeling quite pleased with our 'bag' of wildlife on our approach to the islands when suddenly we saw a group of dolphins, which duly came towards us. I took dozens of pictures, of which this shot is the best. Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, they were, hence the spots! Later as we were almost back in Funchal another group of dolphins came to the boat, a smaller species, I think. And one of our companions provided us with the diversion of HOB drill (hat over board). We had been watching his smart panama trilby for a while, wondering just how long it would be before the wind removed it, as it had no strap. Us Tilley-wearers just sat there, feeling smug, as this poor guy's pride and joy sank without trace before we could figure-of-eight the boat and rescue it with a boat hook. Ah well!
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We left Lagos aboard Tamar Swallow on Sunday 14 June, with Sue Thatcher and Danni, her future daughter-in-law, bound for Porto Santo, north of Madeira, and about 450 nautical miles away. We were all pretty hyped up, as Fergie and Murray helped us leave the pontoon and get going to leave the marina. It was an OK sailing day, with lightish winds from astern, as we went through the bridge, out along the Bensafrim river, and into the bay. I was helming while Sue masterminded the stowing of fenders and ropes. This involved taking a lot of the fenders below, as we were going to be at sea for about four days, and fenders are the last thing we would need until we arrived.
The journey plan was amazingly simple, a waypoint to leave from and one to arrive at. We headed gradually around Ponta de Piedade and came on to our course for the trip, 243 degrees true. Our first job was to cross the four traffic separation zones off Cape St Vincent before nightfall, and we managed to do that, dodging quite a number of ships on the way.
We were set to do night watches only, each of the three of us doing three hours on, with Danni buddying each of us in turn, over three nights, if she wanted to, as this was her first ever sailing trip! Sunday night was reasonably OK, with the watches passing uneventfully. Monday however the wind began to build, and Ju had the 9 - 12 watch. The wind began to increase and the sea to get much more swelly. She handed over to Sue at 12, with 2 reefs in the main and a staysail, no yankee. The wind was getting stronger and soon my bunk up in the forward cabin became untenable. I watched through the forward hatch as seawater threw itself over the bow and on to the foredeck, and I had to fight off the large spinnaker sail in its bag, as it seemed determined to bury me. I realised that conditions were getting very difficult, and I went up to the cockpit dressed in full oilies and lifejacket, where Sue and I put in a third reef in the main. Danni was sitting on the companionway cover, and said that she could not sleep. She was obviuously somewhat concerned, but gamely said nothing about that until the next day. Then she admitted that Guy had told her that the time to worry was when his mother fitted up the running backstay, only used in heavy weather. Sue did that around 1.30am, so Danni was drawing her own conclusions!
We were travelling in just any direction that was comfortable, which at one point was due east, towards Africa! However, as dawn came up it got a lot easier, and we got back on to course. Not what we bargained for, although we knew there would be strong winds at some point on our journey, the forecast had always said they would be northerlies. These were anything but!
On Wednesday conditions were much nicer, and our main concern was to steer clear of the two seamounts on the route between Lagos and Porto Santo, which cause bad sea conditions in bad weather. We were taking no chances, after Monday night We passed the first, then we gybed towards the south to avoid the second. This took us not much nearer to our destination, which we wanted to reach by early evening on Thursday, so we augmented the speed of the sails with the engine through Wednesday night, and found ourselves within a manageable distance of the marina in the morning. The wind was not strong, so we motored on.
On our trip we were surprised by the lack of dolphins. We saw plenty of turtles, strangely enough, and we had a visit from four squid on to the deck in the night. One landed on me while I was on watch so I carefully put it back in the water. The other three I couldn't see so they perished and were returned to the sea dead in the morning.
While I was not on watch the others apparently saw four dolphins, so we were pleased for Danni, as it was her first sailing trip ever, and we all thought dolphins would be plentiful. We were wrong!
Our first sighting of Porto Santo was quite emotional, as we hadn't seen land since late on Sunday when Cape St VIncent disappeared. We motored towards it in a glassy calm, and arrived in the large harbour and small marina around five pm. We came in to a very short finger, and Sue successfully requested that we be allowed to warp ourselves across to a longer one. Being four women aboard a yacht, with no obvious bloke in evidence, the marina chaps and other gongoozlers decided we needed help to fire up the engine, pull back and drive back in. Imagine their surprise when we simply set to and warped her across, in fine style. No need for engine or fuss, simply a few well-placed ropes, pulled in in an orderly fashion!
We put the boat to bed, decided Sue was too tired to cook, and set off for the marina restaurant, bifanas and salad and chips, and an early night. Bifanas are thingly sliced fillets of pork, grilled, and are a Portuguese favourite, like salt cod with rice or potatoes julienne. Terrific. We set off back for the boaqt, immediately went to bed, and all slept for about 12 hours. We were very much in need of a long uninterrupted sleep, with no watches to worry about.
On Friday we woke up and gradually took in our surroundings. Porto Santo is a lovely island, volcanic but with a huge sandy beach on the south side. We decided Sue would stay aboard while the three of us went into town to get some supplies. We noticed a Dutch couple on board a boat across one finger from us, who seemed to be washing every stitch of clothing and bedding aboard. Mrs Dutch came on deck at one point and berated Mr Dutch for putting out too few clothes pegs . At that point we dubbed her Mrs Clothespeg.
There was one space between us and the Clothespegs' boat. It was to prove very useful.
Across on the pontoon behind us was a German boat, which we were idly watching. I was on the pontoon for some reason, when it cast off from the dock, intent on some manoeuvre or other, when I suddenly noticed it was trailing warps. I called to the others who were in the cockpit to get ready to fend off. The boat kept coming towards us, obviously not under command. The owner called out to Sue -My rudder is stuck, you have to help me!. We all swung into action. Fenders were fetched from the front of the boat to protect the stern, and I started using my German to shout at the owner to throw us a line. Eventually he managed to do this, and I grabbed it from Sue., who had caught it, and popped it under the cleat on the end of the very wobbly and very unstable pontoon finger. The owner was then persuaded to tie the other end to his boat, from which point we could momentarily relax. But that was without all the French and Belgian people on our pontoon, who shot onto this wobbly finger to offer help, only it wasn't help. I nearly fell off the finger trying to get the rope back to someone, anyone, who would understand that it needed to be taken back onto the pontoon proper to help pull the boat into the space. A French woman immediately behind me was holding a dolly fender, and it was useful in helping the boat's hull round the end of the finger woithout damage. But her weight and the weight of the people behind her nearly did for all of us.
Finally we tied off the lines and springs and talked to the owner. It turned out that as he had set off from the pontoon, intent only on turning his boat round so he could work on the windpilot at the stern, only to realise that he could not turn the wheel/rudder. It was because his autopilot had turned itself on and locked the rudder into a central position. The problems of an autopilot with a wheel steering boat. Couldn't happen on Little Else, we have to fit our autopilot physically!
So we went shopping, and discovered that there was about to be a three-day festival on the island, starting with a fireworks display and an all-night disco. Oh joy!
We went back to the boat, and had a quiet evening aboard, then went to bed early trying to get some sleep in before a 6 o'clock start on Saturday.
Well, the whole island began to throb around midnight with the noise of the beach disco half a mile or so from the marina. We all woke up early after a bad night's insomnia, and lit out of the marina by 8.30am, the rock beat still throbbing away behind us.
We coiuld see Madeira from Porto Santo, and we were faced with a WSW wind, which meant we could beat rather the endless gybe of the long journey from Lagos. Beating was fantastic, good progress, frequent tacking, heading for the east point of Madeira.
It was about mid afternoon when Ju called 'Whale, whale' and we all looked where she was pointing, barely a boat-length away, as Sue rushed up from below. It was a whale, idling along in the opposite direction from ours, blowing a couple of times, and showing the area of back with a rounded fin. Theories were that it was a MInke, but I wasn't sure, so I looked at the chart from the HWDT. I quickly saw that there was only one whale with that shape of fin, the sperm whale. It was my first sperm whale! Ju wasn't sure, but the angle of his blow clinched it - he blew forward, from a blowhole in the left side of his head. Wow!
We arrived in the overfalls and shallows off the eastern islands of Madeira which were reminiscent of the Dorus Mor at its worst, then turned into the new marina of Quinta da Lorde, where they sent out a marinero in a launch to assist us, then lead us into the marina. Magic! Journey's end for us. Time to get a taxi to Funchal and enjoy
a week of holiday from liveaboarding! This is a pic of our entry into Quinta da Lorde.
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06/21/2009 | Erika (echarlier att btinternet dott com)
Hey nerves of steel! Just reading the blog had heart pounding! xx
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06/22/2009 | Don (don att dykefoot dott net)
Brilliant post, gripping stories.
All the best for your stay in Funchal. |
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06/23/2009 | Tom (tommccardel att hotmail)
Eigg Rhum, Madeira...has a certain ring to it. Well done!
Tom & Sus |
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06/24/2009 | Balchis (trevor dott woods att yahoo dott co dott uk)
Well done you lot... Just got a chance to catch up on email & blog things. Great reading, enjoy the stay on Madeira m'dears.
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06/29/2009 | ali jarvis (alijarvis att btinternet dott com)
Keep the tales of derring-do coming - helps give inspiration to us land-lubbers
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This is my grandson Edmund's ninth birthday. I wish I could give him big hugs today, before he gets too old to like granny hugs!
Here's a recent school photograph for which he apparently operated the shutter himself - changed days in school photography. I think you will agree that the result is spectacular.
Nine years ago today Ju and I were aboard Little Else in Tobermory Bay when we got a phone call about the baby's arrival. There followed a 'dash' back to Ardfern so I could travel to London to help out and see the new member of the family. Fast nine years!
We're off to Portimao today in a hire car with Sue to get fresh provisions for our sailing trip to Madeira, which starts on Sunday.
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06/11/2009 | Abby (eruiohye att yahoo dott com)
It is a nice picture. I keep meaning to put our one in a frame. He loves his presents. Thanks.
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06/12/2009 | JohnMorr (john att nlmorrison dott demon dott co dott uk)
And happy birthday Ednund!
And happy hippy day today for Rosy - back from her hip replacement on Tuesday and forging ahead on crutches. No driving for six weeks, mind you... |
