Ola from Cascais, Portugal! We had a mixed bag of sailing on our first leg from Cork to La Coruna. Thursday morning we took off into the bumpy Irish Seas. The plan was to head out west until we ran into the strong northerlies, then head south. The next day the wind went behind us and we had a nice downwind sail. Things got interesting when we ran into the southerlies. The next two days were spent doing some beautiful sailing but enduring frustrating wind angles. We may have been sailing at 8 knots of boat speed, but we couldn’t sail directly at our target. This meant our velocity made good (how quickly we were sailing towards La Coruna) was only at 3 knots. When our VMG reached zero it was definitely time to tack. Different pods of dolphins escorted us almost all of the way down, and Iani spotted a couple of false killer whales.



The crew quickly shed layers as we headed into warmer weather. We spent a couple of days in La Coruna. Iani has a cousin who lives there so we were treated to insider info on the best tapas around.



This was a short stop and we were soon heading south again. Our first day out was beautiful, but very light wind. That night on watch, Iani and I were startled by a massive exhalation right next to the boat. A huge whale had come to check us out! After that we had a very challenging upwind sail. The weather was squally and we saw gusts up to 40 knots, with steady thirties at times. Nights were spent watching lightning march towards us, a few times striking a bit close for comfort! The plan was to get as far south as the weather would let us, but we were all tired of getting beat up so we put in at Cascais. There were a few low pressure systems heading our way, so after some discussion we decided this was a nice place to hole up. Unfortunately Marko didn’t have enough time to wait for the next weather window, so he flew back to Slovenia. There was plenty of sightseeing to do in the area (and work to be done on the boat) so we weren’t short of things to do.






Guardian of the palace entrance


Guincho beach, Cabo da Roca in the background is the westernmost tip of continental Europe.

Just north of us, the Sintra area boasts Moorish castle ruins, a palace, and enough hiking trails to keep you busy all day. There are beautiful beaches and lighthouses, and Lisbon is only a 40 minute train ride away. Grant will rejoin us again tonight, and tomorrow morning we are off for Lanzarote!