Update from Pete

Surprisingly, having celebrated the repair of the engine leg, we were up fairly early on Friday morning. We went into the marina and filled the water tanks then back out to the mooring whilst we came ashore to shop and pay bills. Having done the shopping I made a last visit to the café Monterey with the laptop to get the latest weather grib files downloaded. So far these have proved to be really quite accurate up to a few days ahead. Once the final emails were sent it was down to the marina office to pay for the mooring and to settle the bill for the mechanico.
With all the chores done wed went back aboard and got ready for sea, and had a really nice big lunch. It was absolutely flat calm inside the harbour with hardly a breath of wind. We cast off at 1pm and headed out under motor (a pleasant change) and once out of the shelter of the harbour there was indeed a good breeze blowing, it is surprising just how sheltered it is in Bayona. We already had the main up so just hoisted the genoa to go with it and we were on our way. The wind was not blowing to great so early progress was quite slow but it was in the right direction and after the shelter of the harbour it felt quite chilly in the breeze, I had to reach for my fleece by mid afternoon. By early evening we had a good breeze from the north, up to force five, and we were going along nicely. This wind held throughout the night until the early hours of the morning when it started to die away again. By daylight we were poodling along at 3 to 4 knots which put our eta at Nazare back to sometime in the evening but after sunset for sure, great joy another night-time entry. Every now and then the wind would pipe up and the boat would get going at up to six knots and we would revise our eta and think well that’s ok in before dark, only for the wind to drop off again. We were teased like this all day long and eventually just before sunset when we were only five miles off we put on the engine to get the speed up a bit. We arrived at 8.45pm in the dark but it is an easy entrance and they very kindly had a very large hammerhead berth free as we came in and there was the marina manager and his wife waiting to take our lines, only to be told they were waiting for a 19 metre yacht to arrive, he was three hours late but if he turned up we would have to move to another berth, all Chris and I wanted to do was scoff the curry warming in the oven and then fall into bed, we were certainly knackered enough. We found it more wearing with just the two of us to handle the watch keeping, we’ll have to work on that and change the system to suit.
After being dragged off by Mike the marina manager to do the paper work at the office and with the Brigada Fiscal I got back and had the curry accompanied by a bottle of beer. This was closely followed by the promised slumber and they could have parked the Scillonian III alongside nothing was going to wake me up.
Sunday morning started off a bit misty but soon cleared to give the now usual wall to wall sunshine. We put on two loads of washing and bedecked the boat with it all to dry out, (its not all lounging around in the sun you know) I reckon we could have sailed quite fast with that lot up, it was certainly flapping like mad as the wind got up. There were a few other little jobs that needed doing and then it was relaxing as usual. The marina is a very long hike from town but we’ll have a wander up there for dinner tonight.