24th Feb 2009 - Long-awaited Update

22nd Feb 2009
OK – here we go again – first sail of the year and a start at heading back home. After being in VRSA since mid November last year it’s time to be moving; we had spent Christmas and New Year back home in Scotland and were back in Portugal on the 21st Jan and stayed with Fran & Richard in Castro Marim (5km up the road) for the first 3 weeks back. So we didn’t have to get straight back into ‘boat mode’; which was great. After moving back onto the boat we did a few jobs and had to change back to the ways that suit doing the various day-to-day things that are specific to living on the boat.

We left VRSA at 7:15am and arrived in Vilamoura at 3:30ish so that wasn’t bad – I was surprised that the paddle-wheel log (tells the speed through the water) actually worked – it normally gets a growth of weed or barnacles and stops working if the boat has been stationary for a couple of weeks or more. But we did have a moment of concern when the engine overheated – when I checked it out we found that the saltwater was leaking into the freshwater side of the engine cooling at the ‘Bowman’ heat-exchanger. The result was overheating and also the filler-cap (same as on the car radiator) was venting all the extra water into the bilge. “Pump ‘til you lose suction, Ballast Pump!!...” The good news was that it wasn’t a burst pipe in the heat-exchanger – just the ‘Jubilee’ clips on the end connectors - 45 minutes and the engine was back in action.

23rd – walked to Quarteira, about 3km away and will do the same tomorrow to see the Carnaval parade.
Internet and WiFi are not easy to get here either so we have to go to ‘O’Neils’ and suffer the beer / wine and comfy seats while we check the weather forecasts and e-mail.

All being well we will move to Albufeira on Wednesday but it’s only about 7 miles.