It will be an early start tomorrow morning. We are heading east from Lagos to Tavira, only about 60 miles but the entrance to the Tavira harbor is supposed to be tricky. The pilot guide says "it would be prudent to assume that some silting has taken place...the leading marks can be difficult to identify...do not enter before half flood... best time to enter is 1 hour before high tide." And the high tide tomorrow is 12:15pm. So we set our clocks for 3:30 am, berthed the boat outside the bridge to the Lagos Marina (the bridge doesn't open until 9am), and will put heads to pillows pretty soon.

The next few days will be super interesting. Beyond Tavira is the Rio Guadiana, the border between Portugal and Spain. The entrance to that river will also require care, and there is a suspension bridge shortly upstream which we may or may not be able to get under at low tide. Different pilot guides have differing stats on the height of the bridge - anywhere between 18 and 22 meters - but if we can get by it the trip up the river is supposed to be gorgeous. We are 20m to the top of Ithaca's mast, yikes. Beyond the Guadiana is Spain. We hope to jump over to historic Cadiz before heading back to Villamoura to join our friends Maggie and Bill.

We had a great time last week with Kitty's brother Brian, who left a couple of days ago. More on that in a later post. G'night.