Friday – 10 August 2018

As we had been site-seeing yesterday, this had to be a cleaning and maintenance day, to prepare us for when we leave Cascais. We wanted to get on with the laundry as early as possible, before the machines were in use by others. Even so, there was one in full flow by the time we had walked to the other side of the marina, a round trip of 1.1 km.  Fortunately, there was an unused machine so we got the washing in and then had to make a number of return visits to move our various loads through the process.  While Tricia was waiting for one step, a young Spanish guy came in, anxious to get his laundry done.  It transpired that he was professional crew on a yacht that was leaving for a transatlantic trip later that day, and he had limited time left to get prepared. He was finished and gone before we had completed our laundry, so hopefully all was well.

Excitingly(?) we also went through the boat, cleaning it and topping up the water tanks etc. and then in the afternoon we walked up to the supermarket to buy food for the next few days.  We trudged back fully laden with provisions, getting slightly frustrated with the other pedestrians, who were meandering around in their holiday mode.  No lane discipline at all.

To break up the days chores we went running along the coast.  The road has separate footpaths and cycleways and so we were able to make good progress. We went through a couple of even more up-market satellite resorts, with small beaches and large imposing hotels.  It was great to be away from the more intensely populated seafront area at Cascais itself.

As the replacement zip heads have arrived, I set to replacing them. I really don’t understand why anybody would put cheap metal parts on something that was going to be in a damp salty environment. Inevitably the zip heads had corroded and were stuck fast to the plastic zip. I had to cut off the old heads with a hacksaw, although in places the metal just crumbled away.  Once this was done it was just a matter of putting the new zipper heads on, and I had instructions from the internet as to how this should be done.  The first 2 new zips went on much quicker than the old ones had been removed, before I ran out of time. I’ll do the remainder tomorrow.

The wind has still been howling all day, 25 – 40 knots, and the boat has been bouncing around a bit even in the marina.  The forecasts say that it will drop tomorrow, but there are differences of opinion about when and by how much, between the different forecasts we use.  In the absence of evidence of this drop starting to happen, we have decided to stay here for at least one more day.  It should then be 2 hops to the Algarve.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	1083	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1803	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)