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...
The cry of 'Land Ho!' went up at 10:16 GMT on the morning of the 26th October. Skipper, 1st mate and deck hand Niall had made the crossing of THE bay whiteout so much as a hint of it's reputation. This brings our voyage total mileage to 613 nautical miles. As we approached land we wondered how far ahead of Tormalind, an Estonian boat which left at the same time as us and who we kept pace with until the second night of the crossing when we suspect that they reduced sail for the night which we did not! We have an advantage in that we can reduce our fore sails without having to leave the safety and comfort of the cockpit whereas Tormalind have to venture out and manually remove one sail and bend on another. maybe they were just tired of us being in such close quarters!!? Thanks to the wonders of modern telecoms we were able to put out a request to the Tin Tin WhatsApp group and sure enough the answer came back that they were about 27nm astern.. Satisfying for us! (Photos wil...
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