Shearwater

We spent 4 days in (mostly) sunny Lagos and set off for Lanzarote at 9 am on Monday 4th June. The weather was kind to us on the majority 4-day sail down and we sailed on a broad reach, with winds between F3 and F7, all the way until the last day when the wind deserted us and we needed help from the iron sail! We arrived in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote at 12:30 on Friday 8th June.

A particularly magic moment came on Thursday afternoon – we spotted a whale blowing about 200 metres off our starboard bow and a few moments later we were joined by a large group of dolphins playing around us, the whale crossed our bow about 50 metres ahead and immediately after that a turtle paddled past us just 2-3 metres away; all this time shearwaters (very apt) were circling around us!

We have booked our flights home for Friday 15th of June and, in the meantime, we have hired a car and we are acting like tourists, seeing some of the island. We hope to return to Shearwater for a week or so later in the year for some more sailing around the Canaries, but we do not plan to continue our trip until January 2013, when we expect to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

Shearwater at Puerto Calero

After a pleasant couple of days in Cascais, we left on the morning of 30th May to sail down to Lagos on the Portugese Algarve. We had a pleasant sail overnight but the wind dissapeared completely around dawn so we had to motor for the last few hours, arriving in Lagos around lunch time on 31st. We will be here for 2 or 3 days preparing for the trip on down to the Canary Islands.

We stayed in La Corunna until Sunday 20th May, enjoyong some good restaurants and strolls around the city, before continuing our journey south when the weather was right. Our first step was a day sail to Camarinas, we were once again entertained by a number of dolphins playing around Shearwater for perhaps 45 minutes; lovely to see once again. Camarinas is a pretty little town where we met an English couple (Gillian and Graham) who are just finishing their world circumnavigation after 5 1/2 years away – something of an inspiration for us!

On 23rd May we set sail for Leixoes (pronounced ‘layshoinsh‘), near Porto in nothern Portugal. We arrived on the morning of 24th, but about 3 hours into the trip our main halyard broke at the shackle, which meant we were motoring most of the time again. Leixoes is primarily an industrial port and we stuggled to find the charts we needed for the next part of our trip, but we got them in the end. On Friday 25th I managed to splice the shackle back on to the Halyard, climb the mast and get it back in place – I did ache a bit afterwards though!

We left Leixoes on the morning of  Saturday 26th May and arrived in Cascais on Sunday afternoon. We are enjoying a couple of days in this lovely town, in very sunny and warm weather, preparing for our next leg, which will be to Lagos on the Portugese south coast.

After waiting 6 days in Falmouth for a good weather forecast, we left for Spain on the morning of Saturday 12th May and made good time to La Corunna, arriving on the evening of Tuesday 15th. The trip was mostly uneventful, with not enough wind for a lot of the time and then a Force 8 gale for the last few hours – Shearwater handled the conditions very well throughout. The highlight of the trip was around dusk on 14th when we were joined by 10 or more small dolphins playing around us for at least 30 minutes; a lovely sight to see!

We will be in La Corunna for 3 or 4 days before moving on.

Left Dartmouth on the morning of Friday 4/05, there was practically no wind so we were motor-sailing on Friday afternoon when we picked up a big chunk of fishing net around the prop! I went in the water and tried to cut it off put it was so COLD I had to give up and, since we could make no progress under sail, we had to call for assistance. The lifeboat came out from Fowey and towed us in – what a wonderful job they do, but I had hoped that I would never have to use them!! On the afternoon of Saturday 5/05 (which was Inger’s birthday) we finally made contact with a diver and he was able to cut the net away. As the picture shows, it was a fair size! We left Fowey on Sunday morning and finally made it to Falmouth after a great sail in a F5 wind. Now we wait for good weather to head south for northern Spain.

The net after it was cut away.