At last. After a long, and for Algarve, very wet and cold winter, we took off at low tide ( 2 PM) to go to Ferragudo. We motored the 4 miles since the engine could well need to be ran under load after it's winter sleep. During the winter months we have ran it 3-4 times to charge our batteries when we had no su at all for several days. Our battery bank works very well otherwise together with the solar panels. Normally we have all the power we could ask for without resorting to running the engine.

The sea was lumpy with 2-3 meter swells from a Levante wind down at the Gibraltar Strait.

We felt good about seeing Ferragudo once again, we left it in mid November for Alvor. A ggod decision that was, since Alvor definitely is the best protected anchorage at the Algarve coast, even if iit's relatively shallow draught makes it difficult to enter for yachts deeper than around 2 meters.

We stayed on the boat all evening to get underway tomorrow for the 40 miles sail to Culatra where we plan to stay at least a few days to explore the marshlands and the towns Olhao and Faro. The latter with the only international airport in the Algarve.

On the picture is the lovely little watercolour painting of 'Röde Orm' that Ludo made in our guest book after having dinner with us a few days ago.