19th April 2009, Cascais

The guessing game of ‘When do we Go?’ finished in a rush on Friday 17th - we had been following the weather forecasts during the week and on Thursday morning, Sunday looked like a reasonable day to head north, then in the afternoon it had changed and Saturday looked the better day; but on Friday it had changed again Sunday was ‘out’ Saturday was marginal but we would make Sines OK during a day sail. We still preferred to try for Cascais and Di from Sheer Fantasy suggested ‘is it possible to leave Friday afternoon and go overnight to Cascais’ – this was just after midday – it was possible – so we put ‘Plan D’ into action and had got organised, paid the bills, said some quick ‘Cheerios’ and were on our way (in company with Sheer Fantasy) by 15:15.
I know it was Friday and the superstitions etc but if we didn’t go it could have been another month – everyone was ‘itching’ to get the first long one over with. As we rounded the capes at Sagres and Sao Vicente the wind was picking up from about 12 to about 16 – 18 and moving round further on our port beam, the seas were also building so we dipped the flag in salute to Sao Vicente on the way round the cape and the seas settled to a more comfortable level and the winds steadied. We also got time to have a quick chat with Jan (on Dutch boat J&B) on 12353kh – he was still in Lagos but we couldn’t make the contact on 8101. The weather was very wet and miserable but the whole trip varied between some good sailing, reasonable motor-sailing, bright stars, blue skies and heavy rain with limited visibility. We didn’t see too much traffic during the night but had the radar on a couple of times to check out some of the lights we were seeing.
We arrived in Cascais about 16:00ish on Saturday, topped up with diesel, checked in and came round to the berth in some miserable heavy drizzle / rain – very Scottish ! So we tidied up the boat and got ready for an early night seeing as we didn’t sleep much during the overnight passage; but that’s the first major step in a northward direction and we are very pleased to have covered the 124 miles in a good time.

Not sure how long we are here for but will up-date the route map and get the photos ready for the next post on the blog.