Good bye Lisbon at 11 knots
11 July 2015 | 40 Nm NNW of Cabo Sao Vincente
Ulric N6
Lisbon
Saturday July 11th 2015
I am back on the boat! Geertruida joined Hans in Lisbon earlier in the week. We left Doca da Alcantara at 3.55pm and went to the fuel berth in Doca da Belem. It was a fresh Northerly breeze on the river Tejo hitting more than 30 knots at times.
It is an amazing night! No moon but a myriad of stars. The Beaufort force 6-7 breeze is getting a little bit lighter and touching force 5 at times. We set a speed record for this trip of 11 knots of boat speed earlier tonight. The sail configuration with full main, poled out genoa and stay sail is very stable. However, the seas are quite boisterous so we have a fair bit of rolling. Definitely back with a bang!
We had some repairs carried out in Lisbon. The most important being changing the engine mounts and one of the belts for the generator. The VHF in the cockpit and aerial to the SSB radio were also fixed. Hans kindly waited in and dealt with the engineers and indeed help them to hoist the 200 kg (?) heavy generator. It is a huge rilief, touch wood, that the autopilot works faultlessly, last year we had so many problems with that!
Geertruida had made pumpkin soup for dinner, followed by sausages and melon by Hans; different courses! Both the Portuguese pumpkins and melons are very sweet. A couple of cruise ships bound for Lisbon are passing by. The Portuguese coast guard warns for an abandoned sailing boat not too far away from us. That would certainly be horrible to hit. Not sure it has any lights on or we would even pick it up on radar, howver its position is more inshore than ours.
Next way point Cabo Sao Vincente!
Ulric Almqvist