The view from the office

First day light at 05.30 am. The official sun rise is still not until 06.31 local time. When should you give up? A SOG (speed over ground) of persistently below three knots, seems to be a good rule of thumb. The wind picked up soon enough. We are power reaching at almost eight knots on flat seas. The distance to Oporto is coming down fast. It is very grey but pleasant day; 225 nautical miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, my favourite sea.

As the day progressed it become sunny again and the wind picked up further. We have to get use to a heeling boat again. I have got used to the stable platform of late. We saw true winds speeds of 13-17 knots from North North West. This provided for a close reach, but not being closed hauled i e apparent of wind angles of 55-70 degrees. Duoro Marina confirmed a berth for us; calling us twice on the sat phone which except for them has been quiet.

When I started my watch at midnight, there were both the light from a small vessel and the light of the moon; quite different from the moon less empty seas of late. I will miss both of them when they disappear, but then I will still have the stars as company. I think it has gradually become a bit cooler. I choose not to wear shorts for the first time for ages.

There is a very long job list, but nothing is very critical for now. It is difficult to leave the boat away from home for more than one winter at a time. Maintenance tasks don’t get done. My plan is to have the boat in South East England this coming winter. Exact location is not yet determined, but somewhere between a Suffolk/Essex river and Shoreham West of Brighton. Chatham Historic Dockyard on the River Medway could well be a favourite due to the proximity to home.

Under explored cruising grounds close to home would be the West coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Challenging and pretty cold weather conditions, but immense natural beauty and both natural and men made interesting harbours a plenty. I may need to update some of the communication’s and computer systems which are both running a bit on overtime, but work reliably and are cheap. I understand that Inmarsat Mini-M eventually will be phased out. The onboard PC is still running Widows XP which is not compatible with for example my preferred weather routing Predict Wind. Other points are the teak decks that really need annually new teak plugs and caulking, as well as the red stripe on the side that has faded to some cloudy red resemblance colour.

Upon arriving in Oporto, we will have done a bit more than 5 days at sea. The models predicted a bit less than 5, however our dirty hull probably made us lose 0.5 knot of boat speed; that is close to 10 per cent or half a day. The distance traveled will have been far greater than the crow’s flying distance of 610 nautical miles; we have done 506 Nm so far and have 162 Nm to go; i e 668 in total. We have only motored 129.2 Nm and not at all since 4.45am on Tuesday morning. That would mean that we travelled 127 Nm per day (assuming 5 and a quarter day) or 5.2 knots of average boat speed. Normally 6 knots would be a realistic average.