Fender Step Bunny

Today the water is smooth, the sun is high in a cloudless sky and we are making a gentle 6 knots in a light westerly breeze. We are sailing along the south coast of Portugal heading east towards the Med. On Jamie's birthday we went for dinner at Don Sebastiao in Lagos where they managed to rustle up a cake which was delivered to our table to the strains of happy birthday played over the PA system and accompanied by a round of applause from our fellow diners.

 

After dinner Beth and Jamie went off to explore the bars of Lagos, and Tom, Caroline and I returned to Juno. I felt completely exhausted. I think the effect of early mornings, long days in the hot sun and fitful sleeping for the past three weeks had finally caught up with me and the next morning i awoke with a thumping headache from a mild dose of sunstroke. Outside it was a scorching hot day on the Algarve and we regretted having taken down our bimini sun shade a few days earlier when the wind was howling on the Atlantic coast. So we turned on the air conditioning, closed the hatches and spent most of the day just reading and catching up with sleep. It was the first day of rest in the past three weeks since we left Ipswich and it was delicious just to potter around the boat and look forward to a leisurely day and the blissful prospect of a lie-in.

Beth and Jamie surfaced at midday having gone to bed at 6am and then it was time for Beth to catch her taxi to the airport to get back to the UK to prepare for her first term at university. She has been great company and we shall miss her quirky sense of humour as well as her duties as fender step bunny. Juno has very high freeboard which means that it's a long way down to the pontoon. To accommodate the short legs of some of our crew we have a Fender Step. This is a small fender in the shape of a step which is suspended from the guard rails and provides an intermediate level between boat and dock. It soon became Beths responsibility to deploy this vital piece of apparatus prior to docking - which she did with great aplomb.
 







Refreshed after another night in the marina at Lagos, we leave for Vilamoura serenaded by Tom on the guitar. We hope to catch up with Sophie in Vilamoura and Mat joins us on Thursday for the leg to Gibraltar and on to the Costa del Sol.

A land of contrasts

From the lavish architecture around the port it is obvious that Cascais is a wealthy town. On arrival at the reception pontoon at the marina, a smartly dressed assistant catches our lines and in perfect English asks us to check in at the marina office with our papers.





The air conditioned offices and marble floors are in stark contrast to Peniche, the charming fishing village where we had spent the previous night. Tom arrives looking very dapper and unloads electronic gadgetry onto the boat. There is a music festival in town and when we walk in for supper there are throngs of people cramming the streets, eating at the pavement cafes and sitting on the beach listening to a local band who have an amplifier that rattles your bones.






We leave Cascais the following day in strong winds and sail on a broad reach to Sines, with bright sunshine and winds on the quarter at 20 knots. Sines is un unattractive town next to an oil refinery but the marina staff are charming and as the wind howls outside we have a cosy dinner on board. Fatty and i have an early night because tomorrow we have to cover 75 miles to Lagos.

Our plan was to slip out of Sines quietly at 7am but in our haste we leave fatty on the dock so i have to go around again and pick her up, using Juno's powerful bow thrusters to manoeuvre in the limited space. The downside of the thrusters is that they make a deafening blast and they just happen to be sited under the berth on the fore cabin, giving Beth a loud and alarming wake up call. By 2pm we round Cabo de Sao Vicente, once the end of the known world and a springboard for the great Portuguese discoveries in the new
world.



Once round the point the change is dramatic. No more Atlantic rollers, no cold wind from the North - although technically still the Atlantic we are definitely now in the Med. The sun is hotter, the sea is calm and all along the coast of the Algarve there are boats at anchor and beachside hotels with bodies covering the sandy beaches.







We finally arrive in Lagos at 5pm on 27th August. Jamie's 18th birthday and for us another milestone. When planning this voyage two months ago my ambition was always to celebrate Jamie's birthday here in Lagos and somewhat to my surprise we made it. Fatty and i go ashore for a cold beer to celebrate and we marvel that it was only in April that we sat here with the Oxenham's looking at an Oyster in the marina when this trip was only a distant dream.