Storm on Madeira

N 32° 44.504', W 16° 42.709'

We believed that Quinta do Lorde is a safe marina. We are still safe, but it was a close call.

Yesterday morning it was kind of fun to watch the waves hit the breakwater and fly high in the air. In the afternoon all hell broke loose. Tons of water was flying over to the marina. When the big ones came, it started a little tsunami in the harbor. Quite a few pontoons broke down and some boats were in really big trouble.

We all got evacuated from the boats to the hotel. Local fishermen came to help the marineros and they worked really hard to keep all the boats safe. A couple of boats got some really serious damage, but all are still floating. What we heard is that in all the other marinas on Madeira they lost boats. The worst news is, that in one place a fisherman died while trying to rescue someone from the boat.

We had some tiny little damage, some broken lines and a broken navigation light. Our boat had hit the boat on the other side of the pontoon and there are some little scratches and bumps in the bowsprit, but since it's metal there's no real damage.

The wi-fi is not working anymore so we can't add any pictures. It was still working when we wrote our Finnish blog so you can go and see the pictures there (www.kauaspois.fi). This blog will be sent using our SSB radio.

We are back on board and we hope we never have to experience something like yesterday ever again.

Madeira

Johanna

N 32° 44.504', W 16° 42.709'

When we left from Porto Santo we had decided to go to Quinta do Lorde Marina. We had heard good things about it and then we also have this STW membership that gives us a discount of the harbor fee.

The marina has good facilities and also good shelter. The swell has come from an unusual southern direction, but it has not been a problem here.

The marina is a part of a new resort. The resort (and the marina of course) are quite in the middle of nowhere. The nearest little town Canical is some kilometers away. The marina offers free supermarket shuttle to Machico (about 10 kilometers from here) twice a day, which is a pretty good service.

The resort itself is very beautiful, but otherwise like a ghost town. There's no one to be seen. It's completely empty.

Last week there was some heavy rain. This is what the beach of Machico looked like on Monday morning. I believe that normally all these tree trunks get washed out to the sea, but now the southern swell had lifted everything onto the beach. 

The weather system on the Atlantic seems to be quite confused. There's a low pressure stuck near the Azores and it'd be head wind or no wind for us to go to the Canaries. We'll wait some more for a bit better weather window.

Cascais - Porto Santo

Johanna

N 33° 3.721', W 16° 18.942'

When we left Cascais the weather forecast was 20 knots from north. We knew that it's just the average, but we were quite surprised when it was blowing 40 knots or more. We do not have a wind indicator so we can not be exact. But we do know that when we are going full speed with just about 2 square meters of genoa, it's really blowing...

After the first night, it was nice sailing for a couple of days, until the wind died completely. We knew that a low pressure was lurking around the corner, so we motored the last 24 hours before the expected headwind.

Empty, but beautiful beach of Porto Santo.

Marina from the nearest viewpoint. It was a good exercise to walk to the hill after 4 days of sailing. It was an easy walk on a road, not any real hiking.

Tomorrow we plan to sail to Madeira.

Getting there, but not far away yet

Johanna

N 38° 41.439', W 9° 25.164'

I don't want to badmouth Galicia, it was great, but... It was raining a lot.

We sailed for 2 days from Bayona to Cascais (right outside of Lisbon). We have now been here for about a week and there hasn't been a drop of rain. Here are also a couple of other boats that have come the same way. We were just wondering with the others the other day how wonderful it is to have a nice blue sky.

The temperature is not very high. The water is about 15°C and that's about the same for night temperature. But during the day, if it's not too windy you can manage in t-shirt. But the most important fact is that there's no rain :)

But anyway, we have not found eternal summer yet, so we have to go on. Our goal is to get to the Canary Island for the winter.

Marina de Cascais.

We finally rounded the Cape Finisterre

Johanna

N 42° 7.154', W 8° 50.682'

I don't think I have to find a roller coaster for a while, we just had our own for about 24 hours. We did not do a loop upside down, but I think everything else was there...

So, we ended up spending 18 days in La Coruña. It was a very nice city, but we are still very anxious to go on, so it was kind of a pain to be stuck there.

A kind of good weather window opened up for us yesterday morning. The strong winds were gone, but so were the winds all together. We motored almost all the way to Baiona, 122 nautical miles.

A couple of days ago a very big storm hit Europe. We didn't get the winds, but we got the waves. The day before we left the waves were 6 meters. The morning we left they were 4 meters. And yes, 4 meters does not sound much, but they were STEEP, something I've never experienced before.

Life on board was quite unpleasant, but we are happy we made it. Now we rounded the tip of Spain and are one step further down south. There was no telling when the next and maybe better window was going to open so just had to go. And we were not the only ones. There were at least 7 boats that left the same morning than we did. Some have waited for the weather window for 3 weeks.

I think the surfers have enjoyed these waves along the coast for a couple of days.

Stuck in La Coruña

Johanna

N 43° 22.055', W 8° 23.148'

When we first arrived to La Coruña our plan was to stay here for a few days and then continue down the coast.

Well, that was two weeks ago. It's not that we are not eager to go on, but because of the constant low pressures that keep hitting the Cape Finisterre. Every morning we download the grib-files and every other morning we say "Hey, after two days there could be a weather window for us". And by the next morning it has closed down. 

But I don't want to complain too much. We are already in Spain. Our friends in Finland have hauled up their boats and are scraping the ice of the car windows in the morning. We can still go out wearing t-shirts. 

Now it looks like we might be leaving on Tuesday, but we'll see...

And looks like we are not the only ones to wait for the wind to be more favorable. If you go to Mini Transat 2013, you see that they were supposed to start on the 13th, and they are still postponing the start.

Bay of Biscay

Johanna

N 43° 22.055', W 8° 23.148'

I've heard so many stories about the Bay of Biscay. Usually they consist of strong winds and monster waves. We didn't meet either of these.

We believe that the main reason was our lack of schedule. We can wait for the good weather prognosis (and then hope for it to be accurate).

We were not alone with our plans, since quite a few other boats left Brest the same day. 

Swedish "Rose" leaving Brest

All the boats that we new that headed for the Biscay left during the day. We waited for the evening and high water so we had the advantage of the tidal current to begin with.

The first night and day we saw some fishing boats and other sailing boats. We also saw some dolphins, I just love to watch those creatures to swim around us.

The second night was pitch black and all we saw was stars. There weren't even any AIS targets on the chart plotter. Just for the reference, when we passed Rotterdam there were 421 AIS targets on our system.

On the North Sea and English Channel we also got quite use to the constant voices on VHF. Now there was no sounds for over 24 hours. It's easier to sleep when it's quite, but there's also sometimes funny things on the air. Like in the English channel when there were "securite" messages warning the traffic about cross channel swimmers. There were three swimmers at the time we were there.

On the Third night we got some AIS targets again, Spanish fishing boats, passenger ship and some cargo ships.

Most of the way we were only using our main sail. For the first day it was hoisted all the way, the second day we had one reef and the third day we had it down to two reefs. In the end we opened our head sail a bit (while the main was still reefed).

Crossing the Bay of Biscay took us 69 hours for the 357 NM.