Algarve - Alvor

…. And now we find ourselves in the Algarve. Full on tourist destination. The place we are anchored is based on an old small fishing port

Not too painful at all. In fact we have become grockles, while we wait for the parts to arrive to fix the new, but newly broken roller-furler.

Had a reasonable sail down here from Porto, losing the wind for the last 30 or so miles, but out of 300, I guess that’s not too bad. We are currently anchored in a lagoon at Alvor, where we hope not to hit the bottom, as it gets pretty shallow at low tide.

Had a beach day today, so reading and sunburn are the fashionable things to do. Took some photos of beach vistas and the sunset back on Lusty Wench – The photos show the lighthouse at Cape St Vincent - the SW corner of Portugal, and the sunsets mentioned, and the beach.

Porto

We stayed a couple of days in the home of Port wine. Lovely old city with oodles of character. The station was unbelievable, all the pictures on the tiles made it more like a church than St Pancras!

Some photos below:

...I'm sure we beat the world record for crossing the Bay of Biscay....we were over in 2 days and 19 hours covering 553 miles.....it was a case of sit down and hold on tight, winds didn't drop below 25 knots until the end of the journey with gusts exceeding 40 knots at times......the crossing was made easier due to the fact we had 'Roger the Cabin Boy' with us and willing to take his turn at doing a night watch.....

...We found a safe anchorage in northern Spain, a small fishing town called Camarinas which played host to us for 3 days before lack of fuel forced us to move on to Porto; about 100 miles down the coast in Portugal....during this short voyage we were entertained by a few dolphins, which Tim photgraphed and these are posted below, leaving out the other 70-80 photos of the water where the dolphin was/should have been!!

...Our next passage will be down to Lagos, starting on Sunday if the weather is good but in the mean time we're chilling out, drinking vinho verde and eating squid...mmmmmm

We'll be off tomorrow!

Given that the wind is due to be from the East, it seemed a good time to enjoy the Bay of Biscay!

Heading off tomorrow, with loads of new rigging, a new sail and cushions, and a clean bottom.

We will aim straight for Spain, and hope that the climate is a little kinder than England was, this summer (I am told there was a summer - one day in June at 3:15pm).

Captain Whiplash has her crew in order, Seaman Staines on the Navigation and Roger the Cabin Boy at the helm.

Best wishes to all, next update from NE Spain.