Monday – 6 August 2018

As we had feared, the music was long and loud.  We think it ended up at around 05:00 in the morning. The main bands were fairly heavy rock music, but after they had played, the stage switched to a DJ playing Europop style music.  Later in the day we discussed which was worse.  During all of this we had all had a very disturbed night sleep, but some of the wakeful time was spent checking the weather forecast.  This had moved on since we had looked at it earlier in the day, and now indicated that the wind would build during the day and stay strong for several days.  We concluded that well rested or not, we had to progress to Cascais, our next destination.  We sprung out of bed and set a new record for getting the boat away from the dock in 37 minutes. 

This whole area has been covered in lobster pots with their associated floating gear.  We have seen them in much greater depths of water here than anywhere else before.  There were some as we came over the trench while leaving Navare in 120+ metres of water. We have had to keep a sharp look out all of the time just to make sure we don’t get entangled in their lines.

The day started slowly with little wind and we were mostly motoring although we did get the spinnaker out to see if that would help, but we were still not going fast enough to get to Cascais at a reasonable time. We got a 20 minute dolphin show, which is quite unusual when we have the engine on.  We never tire of seeing them.  Gradually the wind increased, although it was never at a great angle.

As we reached the most westerly point on mainland Europe the wind was really starting to build, and we had about 10 miles of 25 knots of wind, with gusts up to 35 knots.  The debate about whether we should put out more sail shifted to when we should reduce sail and by how much.  We decided to put in a reef to use less sail, and the wind was building so fast that we put in 2 reefs straight away and were still being hard pressed by the wind.  We absolutely flew down this but of the coast, working hard to keep the boat under control in the increasingly choppy sea and spot the pots, which was becoming ever more difficult.

Eventually we arrived in the shelter outside of Cascais and found our way to the Reception pontoon. Marinaros sprung out to take our lines and after we had checked in, showed us to our berth and again helped with the lines.  They were super-efficient and a great reassurance as there was still a lot of wind even in the marina. 

This place is really quite something.  It’s a very large and very posh marina, full of boats of all sizes.  There are some which are considerably larger than us, and if I say that there is a heli pad in the marina, you will get the impression of the level of some of the clientele and the type of super yachts that they inhabit. We are in with a group of similar sized boats, and are parked next to the Finnish Offshore Racing Team, in a boat by the same manufacturer as ours.  There are also boats, just on our pontoon from Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, France Germany, Sweden, Italy and Portugal.  It is all very international.

Distance covered today	46	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	1083	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1803	nautical miles

Steve (and Tricia and Teresa)