Our Lisbon days are almost at an end now as a weather window appears to be opening to let us sail south again. We've had some lovely lazy days in Lisbon enjoying the en suit swimming pool, the local beach & a few days of seeing the sights in Lisbon central. Audrey has been in her element at the pool & beach befriending everybody & anybody in her path, and the locals have been super friendly to her advances, taking delight at having this crazy blond haired little girl play with them; And Bertie has as always signaled his approval with his big smiles & laughs. We've enjoyed the custard tarts too much, the very cool yellow trams, and i've managed to somehow to give up smoking cigarettes and have a humador full of Cuba cigars instead.... The southern life style is certainly very pleasing, as the sun tans take hold & the pace of life slows, we have enjoyed our short but very aimable stay in Lisbon. To those who might follow in our path, we highly recommend the Oeiras Marina with their wonderfully friendly & helpful staff, and the free bread deliveries in the morning will be missed for sure as well as the cheap cheap laundry too.

Its not been all lazing around, we have been busy too, but at slower pace, and in between all the relaxing we were able to get a surprising amount of small boat jobs completed. The Autohelm arm was re-drilled by a local mechanic and new 12mm bolts, rather than 10mm ones now added. This has now been remounted & the hydrolic ram & rudder reference re-attached. We now need to re-calibrate when we set off tomorrow to make sure all is working well.

Our Staysail also arrived from Saunders sails in Lymington, (thanks for the tip Matt) and we've had fun hoisting it in the marina. Looks great, cant wait to use in anger on our run down to the Algave...

Ive also made it a mission of mine to get the old Tinker Tramp to Australia..... Unfortunately two of her boards have already cracked, one in Dartmouth & one in the Ria. We had talked about buying a new tender, but i couldn't part with our super sailing tender without at least a try to save her. I managed to seal the cracks & the bolt two pieces of ply to either side. I then sealed the edges inside & out and added an epoxy cover coat. So far it seems to work and she is staying dry, and still folds.

I was also able to repair most if not all the teak deck screw dowels which were missing, although a few did elude me on closer final inspection. Hopefully this will go some why to stopping some of the minor leaks.

We were able to get our cockpit sunshade re stitched, Berties lee cloth also reinforced (mainly due to Audrey swinging from it!) & a bridal for the outboard also made from a sail tie, all for the very reasonable price of 60 euros. The diesel tank leak will have to be managed until Sicily, when we can pull them out over the winter, and run some pressure tests on them to see if the seals have gone.

After a few days in La Coruna catching up on sleep, restocking & stretching our legs, we looked at our options for heading down the Spanish & the Portuguese coast... Having had so many people tell us about the beauty of the Galician Rias we decided we should visit one before heading further south. To those not in the know a Ria is basically not dissimilar to a Fjord i.e. it has no running river feeding out from in land. We plumbed for Ria Camarinas, which lies between La Coruna & Cape Finisterre, and what a beautiful place this was to drop the hook get the tender out and enjoy some sunny R&R. Time for bbq on the back of the boat, and visit the Monday empty beach. Audrey & Bertie enjoyed eating sand & dipping in the still pretty parky Atlantic waters. With such a lovely day behind us we had decided to leave that night for a night passage south, but with the wind blowing up to 25knts SSW on the clock, we decided to see what the morning brought us, and sit tight & get a good night sleep & reassess. As it was the wind in the morning had died down so we made an early start for Finisterre, and beyond....

We were undecided when we left Camarinas if we would head for Vigo, Porto, Peniche or indeed Lisbon. My desire to get us south as fast as possible meant my preference was Peniche with the beautiful islands of Belinga & its stunning beach or Lisbon a city which has it all. As we passed Finisterre, Nicky was in agreement that Vigo was not really an option & Porto is a beast to get into due to its lack of decent marina facilities & when she read that all the cities raw sewage runs out and into the sea & that crews had been known to get sick from handling ropes after being there we laid a course for the latter two. Although the weather had been over cast off Finisterre, this soon blew over & we were under blue skies & unfortunately little breeze. With the tanks full & another 100ltrs in gerry cans on the back, both Peniche & Lisbon were well within our range. We decided a watch system of Nicky taking the 7-12pm watch & my going down when the kids go to bed & then my taking 12 till morning watch. With us both being able to do the mornings together as the kids wake up, and my being able to catch up on sleep as the kids take their naps throughout the day. Although this is not really sustainable over a longer period for 2 days & 2 nights it is just feasible before fatigue becomes dangerous. 

We had a good run down the coast with little shipping & fishing boats being either well inside or well out side of us. I experienced an phenomena i have never had in all my days sailing which happened on the first night out. In the black of night, suddenly all i could hear around me was the splashing of water, slight,y perturbed i switched on the high beam flash light to see hundreds if not thousands of fish jumping all around the boat. If i had had a net we'd be eating fish for the next month. Truely incredible... With the fish came the late night dolphins to keep me company on my watch. Always welcome guests to have jumping around the boat on a dark night.

The next day brought more dolphins by the pod load, and Audrey was beside herself with excitement as they came to play around, performing their acrobatic tricks.... All was going well except we have discovered what seems to be either one or more of the diesel tanks are leaking into the bilge or we have a fuel line which has split. Monitoring the situation we seem to be loosing around 4 litres every 5 or 6 hrs, although we cannot be sure as it is mixing with water in the bilge. But now being in port, it does appear to be an amount which needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. And i have earmarked time tomorrow to investigate. If it is indeed the seams in the stainless tanks, we may need to patch or replace the tanks. If it is one of the lines, which i hope it is, this may be a quicker, cheaper & less laborious problem to fix. Added to this on the afternoon of the second day, we were all sitting in the cock pit when we heard a clunk. Followed rapidly by the auto helm alarm going off, as it ran off position. Quickly diving underneath our bed i found the bolts on the heavy cast steel arm which connects the ruder to the hydraulic arm which steers the boat when the auto pilot is on had sheered clean off due to age & fatigue... Now there is a saying im German 'Glueck im Umglueck', which quite literally means 'luck in unlock', or perhaps blessing in disguise would be more correct. For not only were we over half way through our passage, but we were also in dead calm seas, as this now meant we lost our auto pilot & would be manually steering the boat till we got to Peniche or Lisbon. But more over like our gearbox this did not happen mid Biscay or Atlantic & can be addressed now. However. this would now add an additional burden as it totally takes one person out of the equation of looking after Audrey & Bertie. We took some time out, stopped the boat, went for a dip, had some lunch and did some maths. Based on these two new dimensions & the fact that we would run into Pencihe at 2am, which we could not vouch on their facilities for fixing the auto helm issue, decided the run for Lisbon instead, where not only we could take some time to relax but also get the boat bits we needed. We were lucky in that the wind had picked up a little and we were able to sail nicely round the back of Belinga and on, to Lisbon.

Coming down the final part of this part of the Portuguese coast can be interesting to say the least. You have a mine field of Lobster pots to contend with, which really is a case of luck rather than skill at night, and then a wall of fog which greets you as you come round Cabo Roca in the morning. We managed to come through both this tests fine, only to be hounded by a 735ft Moldovan Supertanker as we wanted to turn left up the river to Lisboa.... Needless to say we gave way grudgingly, and made our way to our chosen marina of Oeiras. 

And what a cracking place it is, i would highly recommend this place to anybody & everybody. The Marina, offers access to an amazing swimming pool complex behind, which was our first port of call following a sea food lunch in the cafes beside the marina. The staff are on the ball and super friendly. The washing machines are good the wifi works, and we are 30mins by train from Lisbon town centre. So today we have been lapping up Lisbon. Aside from Barcelona this place rocks for me in Europe. The city is super cool with its cobbled streets, old yellow trams & totally delicious custard cakes. Nicky had not been here and is loving it, the people are super friendly, the sun is shining, its lovely & hot & now the beating (in miles anyway!) has ceased, moral of the crew has definitely improved. Audrey is being touched by all the locals as i don't think they have seen anybody so blond or curly in their lives & Bertie just smiles and all the girls seems to fall about themselves. I think we are finally in the hot sunny place we want to be. Next stop Largos & the Algarve, but for now a few more days of Lazy Lisbon......

boa noite Lisboa!

So we made it out of England to Spain!!! Yay us! However we must digress a little as we had a few other events, sails, moments worth commenting on before we arrived  in Spain. On our last post we had just arrived in Salcombe. It really did live up to everything we had hoped and I would argue to say that it is the most beautiful place we have visited and most relaxing part of our journey so far. We stayed 2 nights at anchor in the bay which was absolutely lovely. One slightly worrying moment (as the fear of anchoring was clearly placed at the forefront of our minds on our last catamaran charter in Croatia!). As we enjoyed our absolutely lovely beer and lunch at the Salcombe yacht club watching the boat as both the tide and wind kicked in to full force it looked as if the boat was starting to drift.... oh dear....!!! Rolfy jumped up quite spritely leaving us behind, ran all the way down the hill through the town, onto the tender and razzed it back to the boat. We certainly didn't want to have our trip ended so soon, as we joked after about the headlines of young family on round the world voyage, ending their trip tragically in Salcombe, 2 weeks in, as there boat crashes onto the rocks!! HA. We still do not know if we were dragging or the boat in front of us, but we decided to lift the anchor and reposition and all was fine for the following night. It was unfortunate that our lunch at the yacht club was cut short as it is a fantastic place to watch the goings of the bay and have a nice pint and bite. We were also extremely welcomed by the Commodore and her husband who wanted to know all about our trip, sat down and had lunch with us, and even parted with a rather large burgee, much to Rolfs happiness in his quest to get a burgee from every yacht club we visit along the way. 

The only other slightly worrying moment in Salcombe was when the RNLI (ironic I know) sped so fast up to Maya only missing us by what seemed like a couple of meters. Being slightly put off by it, Rolf found the RNLI crew the next day and they explained that they were performing a blind navigation exercise and as our yacht happened to be the first in a line of yachts it did not show up on the radar and so the captain performing the exercise did not know we were there. Lucky the crew on top took over and diverted the rather large rescue boat from our path! Apart from these two small moments, we really enjoyed Salcombe. Pretty little beaches to swim from, lots of sand to play and roll in, dips off the back of the boat (although this was kinda cold!!), super cute little high street. Highly recommended as a place to visit for a Uk holiday - obviously better if the sun is shining!

We left Salcombe on a scorcher of day, and had a rather flat sunny crossing onto Falmouth, although with no wind, so it was a motor crossing. Passing Eddystone light house on such a calm day was stunning. Rolf put the fishing reel out for the first time but we didn't catch anything. Arriving in Falmouth late afternoon we rafted up along side a raft of boats at the yacht haven. A couple of days here to get ready for our crossing of Biscay to Spain. We met a super lovely dutch family here who are at the end of the circumnavigation of 3 years with there 2 kids, now 6 & 8. They sailed from Holland to NZ and Aus and back again, even going around the Horn of Africa. Was so nice to take all their advice and stories. Shame our sailing paths were heading in different directions but hopefully we may cross paths again. 

Alex met us Sunday afternoon, for our early morning departure from Falmouth. The weather looked perfect for a crossing of Biscay, however, a low and not so nice weather over Northern Spain meant our intended port of Vigo did not look possible so instead we landed further North at La Coruna. We left Falmouth with good winds and had a great sail for the first part. With a windy west leg out to just south of the Isle of Scilly the sailing was fast and bumpy, especially for all those down below, but as soon as we turned south the conditions improved all round. Maya seems to handle all points of sail beautifully, although we did find a few leaks we didn't know we had. And so it was, all down wind, until the wind disappeared half way across Biscay. The most taxing thing was probably the amount of traffic in the form of very large, fast super tankers, and fishing boats and their lack of navigation lights. A bumpy last night as the wind picked up to 30 knts just before La Coruna, but all in all a great passage across the dreaded bay... 

It was a long sail with the kids without any stops. When the sea is rolley it makes life aboard with the kids somewhat more challenging both at daytime and night. Our first long passage (4 days) and we couldn't have done it with out the invaluable help of Alex. The kids are too small and need too much attention for us to be able to happily and easily do long passages on our own at this stage. While some good moments have been had on the whole trip, the trip so far has also brought about a lot of hard moments and feelings of whether it is going to work and how to make it better and easier. We have found so far that doing this kind of thing with the kids as young as they are can be quite hard, as it can mean that basically Rolf is sailing the boat on his own most of the time and I am stuck down below in what is sometimes a floating washing machine looking after the kids! Kids under 3 need constant attention and with 2 of them it requires even more! The boat also requires a lot of attention both when sailing and also so far little repairs in each place... not quite what we had in mind. We are all having to make adjustments and work out how it will work, what is the best options and how do we enjoy it all as a family. Hopefully it should get easier now that we least reach warmer climes with beaches and swimming fun at each stop. However we have a lot of distance to cover this Summer and engagements to get to, which means a lot of longish sails..... however it will mean next Summer we are were we want to be to cruise in a relaxing style the Adriatic and Greece. Lots to figure out but for the moment we all want to stick at it, make it work, and have FUN!