The first night from about half an hour after sunset the wind started to blow off the land quite hard, and by about an hour and a half after sunset it was blowing a near gale. That put paid to any plans to go ashore for a meal or drinks, so we ate on board and wondered at the amazing holding power of the anchor. A good juncture to tell about our ground tackle, at the moment we are using a cheap Dan forth copy which seems to dig in and hold quite well, but does not like weed. Our previous first choice of anchor before I bought the cheapy, is a standard cqr 15kg. Both are on twenty metres of chain followed by 80 metres of nylon rode. I have a third anchor but it is only a smaller kedge really.
For power we are supposedly self sufficient. I have three battery banks, one for the engine start, one bank of three batteries (235ah total) that provides all the domestic and navigational equipment, and one single 110ah battery that supplies the inverter, which we use to charge all the electronic gadgets of the twenty first century, ie mobile, laptop, mp3 players and so on. The engine can charge the domestic and engine battery if required to, but they all have their own independent charge supply apart from the engine. The engine battery is connected to a 5watt solar panel which trickle charges it nicely and keeps it topped up ready to fire up the engine when needed. The domestic bank is supplied by a duogen which is a wind and water towed generator and provides many many amps, unless we are at anchor with no wind when it does nothing, this makes me edgy the longer we have no wind at anchor. The third bank is charged by a 70 watt solar panel which keeps it very nicely topped up. This panel can also be switched over to charge the main domestic bank if I need it to ie in times of need when there is no wind at anchor and we want to run the fridge for a cold beer which is an absolute must.
For communications we are carrying a vhf (dsc) radio, a satellite phone on prepaid tariff, bought second-hand just for this trip, mobile phones of course and my laptop for emails and such when in harbour. In emergency we have the epirb which sits on the wall and looks pretty in yellow and will hopefully still be unused when we return, touching wood . . . . . . now.
Anyway enough of that stuff, back to Cascais the second morning we awoke to a flat calm which gave us the confidence to jump on the train into Lisbon to do the touristy thing and have a good explore. I wore the wrong sandals and ended up with very painful blisters, I shall beware of that in future and only walk as far as the bar!!! Even so I think we just about covered all the culture spots and also found a fantastic cake shop, delicious.
We got back aboard by about six pm with the wind just threatening to come up again so we stayed aboard and ate again, but it did not blow as hard this time. The first bottle of port has been thoroughly tested for quality and it passed, it also passes the price test at 4.50 euros. That one was bought at Nazare and finished at Cascais so I had to replace it with some more I found which cost 3.49 and 3.99. It’ll be interesting to see if they match it for quality.
Cascais was certainly geared up for your average brit tourist, the first place I saw when I stepped ashore to go to do the paperwork was O’niells Irish pub. For a moment I thought my navigation must have been way out, as Irish pubs are in Ireland surely,. We did not venture in to test the theory, being here to sample the delights of the country we are in, and not ones we’ve left behind. If I want a full English breakfast I’ll cook it myself. Other than that Cascais had a lot going for it, probably because we have missed the main rush of the tourist season, but the bars and restaurants were still priced to fleece the tourist.
There were a good number of other yachts anchored and all seemed to be heading south, and for all you single girlies there was a yacht there called ’Hunk - around the world’ from Sweden with two young blonde Swedes aboard, I reckon they could be in for an interesting trip.
Time to get ready now for the next leg to Sines, leaving tomorrow 27th September at 0700.
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