donderdag 20 oktober 2011

Hello and goodbye Lagos

It was a nice trip to Arrifana anchorage. The wind picked up enough to sail and we hoisted the spinnaker. With only 12 kts of wind we did better on speed then when motoring :-)

Also the swell picked up and by the time we entered the bay, the swell was as in the pilot book, … making the bay the place to be for surfers …

The boat was swinging like a roller coaster but the waves were spectacular!! Rutger regretted very much not to have taken his surfboard with him … :-o


We could not barbeque in this kind of movement and Andy managed to fix an easy dinner. We couldn't stay for the night, the anchor alarm kept going off and the rocks didn't look too comfortable .. So we decided to move on after dinner to Lagos.
When I came on watch at midnight, we had just passed Cabo de Sao Vincente. Actually we were just south of Sagres with a nice and sheltered bay where we could anchor.
It would be nice to get to Lagos in daylight, so we headed North and dropped the hook for the rest of the night.

After a nice swim, Rutger and Monique, we left for Lagos, with... 15 kts of wind :-)
The wind died again after an hour or so....

Anyway, Rutger went back to fishing again and caught a beautiful fish. It looked like a tropical fish and we could not find it in the book.

We arrived at Lagos around 4 pm and planned to stay there for a couple of nights. When I checked in at the marina, I asked if they would know someone to look at my furling system. They gave me the number of Antonio. He was in fact working on a boat on the next pontoon and came over to have a look. He went up the mast and when he came down again, it was fixed :-) He told me to use the uphaul as a genoa halliard because of the better angle and that was it.

When we were moored, our neighbors told us there was a big storm forecasted with massive rain for coming Sunday. A very deep low at the Azores was heading due East, which is a bit out of the ordinary. They're supposed to go North-East. Anyway. I downloaded the gribfiles at Ugrib and Zygrib and they were consistent with the forecast. So we decided not to stay in Lagos but leave the other day. That would give us time enough to go South and West to Madeira and avoid this bad weather.

So unfortunately we won't get to see much of Lagos … It looks like a very nice place. Anyway we had a very nice dinner in the old center. It was Monique's last night onboard .. :-(
She did manage to get the card of Pedro the fado singer though, so she'll have something to dream about on her flight back :-)