Atlantic Adventure News

Follow the attached link to see a few pictures from the trip:

Travel to Lisbon demonstrated the difficulty in communication despite all our modern technology. To start with the crew managed to arrive in Lisbon on 3 different flights on 2 separate days. DLS was first to arrive with no real hassles. Susan managed well by phoning DLS on the mobile (she doesn’t use texting!) as soon as the taxi driver got lost and quickly found the correct marina. Iain and Paul travelled together, but decided to use text messaging when the taxi driver got lost, which doesn’t really work in these circumstances. An expedition then occurred which is best told over a beer.

Once all was on board we had the traditional welcome refreshments, i.e. it was a late night.

On Sunday (17^th August) we left Lisbon  for Porto Santo at 1.0pm, after a little excursion up the mast for DLS to fix the spinnaker halyard from the last trip. After 30 minutes we decided that we needed diesel, ice cream and beers (small!!), not necessarily in that order and sailed to Cascais along the coast. We left Cascais at 4.0pm with a good F4. After 30 mins we had to reef in in a F6, which lasted for about an hour. We then had a F5 from the North throughout the night.

On Monday we had a fair bit of motoring in light winds, and we settled into ocean routine. We had 4hr watches from 9.0pm until 1.0pm the next day and had relaxed afternoons with communal lunches and dinners. Paul and Iain excelled themselves again on the galloping gourmet stakes.

We had a couple of  great dolphin shows with up to 7/8 dolphins at a time. Susan managed to sleep through both, she was competing with Paul and Iain for the sleeping prize. We made an average of 5.5 knots  and arrived ahead of schedule at Porto Santo, around 10.0am on Thursday.

We then had the customary 2 hours of bureaucracy, i.e. customs, police, marina, with questions like:

• How fast does your boat go (i.e. are we drug runners)
• Do you have a rudder ( we later realised he meant radar!)
• Do you have animals on board – we weren’t sure if this meant Paul and Iain
• What colour are your sails ( white, green/white, red/black!!)

The form filling was compensated by a helpful (and rather attractive) harbourmaster assistant.

After arriving at Porto Santo we fell into shore routine:

• Stroll along the beach – refreshing the feet & admiring the view
• Cold beer in the shade
• Tour round the supermarket
• Cold beer
• Meat barbeque at the wonderful  Restaurante O Forno
• Cold beer
• Taxi back to boat
• Coffee & night caps e.g. Madiera

On the second night we were treated to a local cultural dance display before the call of cold beer made us move on.

On Saturday we left Porto Santo & sailed to Madiera and found a secluded anchorage in a rocky bay surrounded by steep cliffs. We then found that there were about 20 teenagers setting up camp on the beach. We decided to stay however and had a bit of fun snorkelling, flapping and floating. We then managed to make the sort of noise we had expected from the remarkably quite teenagers. We enjoyed the Best Air Guitar Album and other notable albums, which IJN and PC managed to do some Granddad dancing to, while preparing yet another gourmet meal.

On Sunday we moved to a new marina in the North of Madiera. The marina had been open for about a year, but was extremely empty and we had about 200 berths to choose from. The facilities were very poor, despite the extortionate cost. The marina staff however made up for this by helping out when we managed to miss the very infrequent bus to Funchal, through a number of Monty Python type incidents. The marina came up trumps by providing the marina bus to take us to Machico, including a scenic guided tour with spectacular views over the coast & the amazing airport, where the runway is built on a viaduct over the sea.

We then took a taxi to Funchal, which was a noisy, brash town whose only attraction was the supermarket. We took the bus back to Machico, went for some cold beer and then to a fish restaurant. The fish soup was fantastic, with a seafood selection which any main course would find hard to beat. The rest of the food was also excellent, including the best giant prawns DLS had had in living memory, i.e. that day. The ice cream and apple pie was to die for (rip). The meal was enhanced by the amazing sexy, Hittlerite waitress – we gave a good tip.

On Monday we set sail for Las Palmas and quickly got back into the usual ocean routine. Susan demonstrated that despite her considerable blue water experience she can still throw up given the right conditions ( sea conditions, not excessive drink!!).

Gourmet food included fajitas and corned beef hash – not at the same time. We had a great sail with the genoa poled out most of the time, the goose winged arrangement proved ideal for the rolling following wind. We once again made a quick incident free trip.

We arrived in Las Palmas at 10.0am on the Wednesday and met the chaotic arrangements of the Las Palmas Marina, e.g.

• No reception pontoon or arrangements
• Marina office miles from the available pontoon spaces, which was on a pontoon with a locked gate. We had to climb over a fence.
• The marina superintendent was on holiday and the marina staff couldn’t allocate a berth or provide a key to the showers and toilets.
• The showers and toilets were miles from the available pontoons
• The showers are in a very mixed state of repair – why does the ARC start from this marina.

After the crew fantasising over a full English breakfast, we managed to find a café that did egg, bacon, sausages (frankfurters) & chips and of course cold beers. We moved the boat to a pontoon with an open gate, which like all the rest of the marina is totally insecure, however Las Palmas is nice and the weather is great.

We again got excellent advice on restaurant selection from a local taxi driver, who provided a scenic tour of the old town, with Spanish comments and hand signals, all for 3 Euros. At Restaurante El Herreno we had great fish soup, paella and kid – a must to go back to.

Travel arrangements were then sussed out in the usual confused manner. Eventually Susan decided to go for the certain direct flight to Aberdeen on the Monday. Iain and Paul decide to do the airport standby routine and got flights to Manchester after a day at the airport – hopefully they got appropriate brownie points!

Author: DLS Assisted by SD