The sail from Porto Santo to Madeira was an easy day sail past the Deserted Islands arriving at Quinta do Lorde Marina at the northern tip of Madeira just as the sun was setting allowing us to nip to the bar and have a double gin and tonic. It is a place that evokes the TV series 'The Prisoner' which was set in Port Merrion [sic], down to the emptiness and electric golf carts. You can't spend a day I'm Madeira or any island for that matter without trying to get to the top of it. I failed in Porto Santo but here we hired a car and set off for a tour. What an amazing place it is, steep tropical forest with sudden openings allowing views up valleys to cloud draped sharks teeth peaks, and down to nest villages and farms where every bit of land is put to use growing everything from beans to bananas, including sugarcane and taro or 'Elephant ears'. I was particularly interested to find tea growing, which I am sure does, but failed to see any. It was interesting to s...
Having waved goodbye to Niall in a Coruña, Paul and I set off, 09:35 on the 28th Oct, for the journey south down the Iberian peninsula to Porto. The forecast of little wind proved accurate and as a consequence we motored, occasionally motor-sailed, the 194 nm between our ports of call in Spain and Portugal. As we rounded the corner of a Coruña we passed the impressive tower of Hercules, reputable the longest continuously operating lighthouse in he world. Once again we found ourselves in company with Tormalind for much of the journey but again managed to put some miles between us. In the late afternoon we had a following wind of 10-15 knts and decided to break out the Parasailor and give it an airing. Once it was set up it required no input from us to keep it full and pulling us along at a respectable 6 knts past the rugged coast north of Cape Finnisterre. We rounded the cape as the light was fading and made a course along a bearing of 169 degrees 12 hrs. Paul and I took 4 hr watc...
Comments