Postcard From Cascais

It isn’t all sailing on the voyage from Portsmouth to the Canaries. Where possible the crew will find a port to visit and enjoy the ‘amenities’. This blog is from Cascais in Portugal, a former royal summer retreat it has the country’s most expensive real estate markets.

Even in port, the sea will always find you.

It’s always the last few miles to port that seems to take the longest when sailing and this trip is no different. The continual rain and spray being driven back to the cockpit didn’t help either.

With great relief, we were relieved by the starboard watch but warned not to get too comfy as we would be flaking the mainsail within a couple of hours.

And so it was we were called on deck to join the other watch in the small bay behind the Cascais harbour.

Being a brand new sail there were concerns that it would not flake onto the boom well, but I think we made a pretty good job of it and by 01:25 we were on the pontoon.

The only minor difficulty was the halyard having become entangled in the mast spars.

This necessitated Dan to take a night loft 90 foot up the mast in the climbing harness to clear it and enable the last feet of the mainsail to be neatly tucked away.

All that remained to do was to shake the Skippers’ hand, wish him a happy birthday and go to bed in a strangely still and silent cabin.

The only noise that could disturb one now was the industrial strength snoring coming from the crew.

Time To Explore

The Old Town – Cascais

After a few hours spent making all onboard ship-shape, it was finally time to get off deck and feel firm ground again and explore the cultural delights of Cascais.

For all crew though, the first port of call was the showers and then the conveniently located Skippers Bar for a few swift pints and something tasty to eat. The old part of Cascais is very pretty.

I wandered around the old town for a while before meeting up with the rest of the crew in the Irish bar and then we all headed out for a crew meal in one of the many restaurants.

The second day in port saw the crew tackle another important shore task: clothes washing!

Once this was done I went for a stroll along the cliff tops next to the harbour. Here impressive waves were breaking sending up spray being beautifully backlit by the sun.

It was a great photo opportunity so I edged forward to get a better shot. At that moment an extra-large wave broke on the cliffs, soaking me head to foot in salt water:

It seems that even on your day off, the sea will always find you…

Note from skipper Paul:

Overall it has been a quiet 24hrs on board CH3 since we left Cascais. Due to the wind direction and strength, we have had to motor sail, but since 0900 this morning, we have been sailing along nicely.

During the night we were requested to alter our course slightly by American Warship 75, so we could pass port to port.

As we passed in the dark, discussions turned to what ship it was and where it was heading. It looked like an aircraft carrier, but there were no escort ships, so we will have to wait until we can look it up on Google.

The crew have settled quickly back into watches and are enjoying life at sea again, but thoughts of how CH4 are doing are never far away.

Lunch today is pizza wraps and dinner tonight is chicken curry.

More blogs about this Atlantic Adventure can be read here: Portsmouth to Gran Canaria

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Posted by: First Class Sailing