Sunday – 12 August 2018

It was time to move on and the weather was forecast to be much more helpful today. We set the alarm for early and broke all records for preparing the boat for departure. Unfortunately our readiness was undone by the marina guy not turning up at the time we had requested.  There was an electronic card to open the various doors and an adaptor for the shore power system than both had to be returned and a deposit to be repaid to us.  For an “Out of office hours” departure, you arrange for the someone from the marina to meet you and make the exchange.  He was late!  Anyway not too serious, we were away within about 10 minutes of our expected departure time.

There was no wind initially so we motor sailed for a couple of hours, before the wind started.  We had a couple of dolphin visits, but they were not interested in us and quickly left.  A bit more exciting was seeing what we think were 3 pilot whales swimming past.  They also seemed to be completely disinterested in us and went past a couple of hundred metres away.

We crossed another of the ocean trenches today, similar to the one at Nazare, but considerably deeper this time.  The chart showed that the depth would fall from about 100 metres to over 1400 metres and it did this in about 2 minutes of travel. The depth sounder cannot read correctly over about 200 metres depth and we have now grown accustomed to getting odd false readings when we are in these depths.  It showed 0.1 metre for a couple of minutes before reverting to “---“.

Once the wind did start, and eventually came around to the forecast direction, we had a couple of hours of glorious downwind sailing with the spinnaker up, making good speed.  Eventually the wind increased a bit more and then seemed set to stay like that, so we decided to go back to white sails.  You can always tell when the wind is getting to be too much for the spinnaker, as it is a little more difficult to take down, and so it proved today, although we managed it without any problem.

The wind continued to build and we shortened sail more, but were still making good speed.  The swell increased with the wind, and was coming from behind at an angle which made the boat roll and the steering more difficult.

The pilot book had warned us that there were a lot of pot buoys in this area, and given how many we have already seen, we arranged ourselves to be able to scan both sides of the boat. Remarkably, we didn’t see any in the vicinity of Sines, despite the warning.

The view of our back garden today

We have stopped in the marina at Sines for 2 nights.  There is a large commercial port here, but it is hidden from the marina, and so we have a great view of the beach and the castle.  The facilities seem really good, and from what we have seen so far, the town is not as commercialised for holiday makers as the last few places we have been.

An early night tonight, we are both tired after a long days sailing.

Distance covered today	58	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	1141	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1861	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)