Why So Quiet?

Well, for starters, we're resting. And we are fixing stuff. And we are seeing all we can of Portugal.

Hey Pat! I think Rob's gone!

Rob Courneya is currently touring Portugal with his wife, Mary, and is having a great time, or at least he will, til the country runs out of beer. They are up in the northern part of Portugal and will head to Paris soon and then home to St. Cloud where Rob will, gasp, go back to work on September 13. We miss him already.
Pat is currently in France where is he traveling with his two daughters and plans to visit La Rochelle and pay his respects to DuFour, who built Remedios.
Tom, (ok, me) is currently in Cascais, Portugal where I am doing some boat chores and projects and making sure the beer in this town doesn't go stale.

When Pat gets back here to Cascais in a week, we will do more boat chores here and repairs and then move the boat back to Oeiras, a nearby town with a cheaper marina. Pat will stay in Oeiras while Tom goes north to visit some more of Portugal for 10 or 12 days.

We will both be back in Oeiras around Sep 25 to get ready for our spouses to visit during the first two weeks of October where we will go our separate ways and see the sights. We will bid our spouses farewell around Oct 16 and head out to sea around Oct 20. We will most likely head to Madiera, then a couple stops in the Canary Islands before we head to Florida around Nov 1 or so.

But enough about us...

To match our dinner with the French, we arranged a dinner with the Brits. Here we are in Oeiras with Ted and Kay, who are sailing around and happened to meet us in two different ports. We thought it was fate. They are from a town close to Birmingham, England.

Dinner on the outdoor deck at Peter's

And he was just getting going!

We filled an evening with sailing, storm, and poop stories. As for storms, we were invited to their boat for after-dinner coffee where Ted showed us the place on the floor of his boat where he laid and prayed during a Force 10 storm with 60 knot winds. Kind of made us feel like weenies about our Force 8 experience but perhaps that was his point. Here is Ted during another one of his funny stories.

Oh, the poop part... We were discussing the relative merits of different waste storage and removal systems when Ted told us that some boats have no holding tanks. Given that pumping your toilet overboard in a marina is bad form I asked him what he did when coming into a marina and nature called - too late to pump at sea and too close in to pump now. In his best British accent he replied " Well, that's when you just have to clench your butt cheeks in rather tight now, isn't it?"

Here is Ted's, I suspect, long suffering wife Kay, sometime after the poop story. We hope to see them again as we head further along the cruising path. Here is a link to their gps log

http://blog.mailasail.com/moorglade

Captain C gets high

Now for some fixing stuff. Just after we landed, our anemometer quit. This is the guage at the top of the mast that tells us which way the wind is blowing and how hard. I tried to tell Pat we could just use his beard but no go. So someone had to go up and take the old one off so we could source a new one. Now the truth is, both Pat and I have been to the top of the mast on differernt occasions. I offered to go up, but we agreed Pat was the better mast monkey because when he gets up there he can actually function whereas I just cling to the mast with both arms and whimper like a treed cat. Here is Pat at the top of the mast and lest you think I got off easy, who do you think had to winch him up there????

That orange square is my towel

Here is what the boat looks like from up there, and yes, we remembered to send up a camera... The boat next to us is from Gdansk, Poland. After I get the new part, I hope tomorrow in Lisbon, we get to do this again next week.

Life in this part of Portugal is awfully nice. There are lots of cafes, restaurants, great views, narrow cobblestone streets and shops, and plenty of museums and historic places to visit. Here are some sights from the area:

Cascais during the day with the bandstand for concerts

Same place at night with LOUD music

View from my first dinner alone - Pizza!

Our day in Lisbon when we went to get Mary at the airport

My new favorite guitar player who plays and whistles for Euros

Pat found this neat building while out running with his camera

What a neat view!

Nazare'

This is a wonderful place. It is both a working fishing village and a vacation resort. The fishing fleet is working all the time and they have buyers around all the time and periodic auctions when a big catch comes in. Here are some guys - mostly old guys - who are unloading sardines at 11 PM. Two minutes after they finished, they went back out for more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPkXS5qpBYI

Here is a shot of the three of us after we landed and sobered up the next day.




Here is a shot of the city from a big hilltop. We took a cable car to the top.

Fishing is big here so there are lots of fresh fish. Here was our dinner selection one night.

They also dry fish here, right out on the beach!

Here is a close-up

The resort part is pretty - it is a big wide beach, colored umbrellas, and narrow streets.

A sunny day at the beach!

Some of the restaurants go all the way through the building.

Some apartments are small and many people use these portable cookers out in their street.

Out for a walk

The local market where we bought fixings for a boat dinner

We leave today, Wed the 18th, for Lisbon and plan to arrive around noon tomorrow. Forecast is for moderate winds!!!!

On The Continent !

We were eight days out of Horta and one day away from mainland Europe. The ocean only had one final hurdle for us to get over. There is a band of wind that comes out of the Bay of Biscay, sweeps around Finestere, France, and hurtles down the coast of Portugal. It varies from 10 to 25 knots and is usually 90 miles wide or for us, 15 hours wide. Thursday morning we looked at the latest forecast and knew we were in for a faster ride than we usually like.

We could have elected to heave-to and wait a day, but the forecast for the next day was even stronger and when these winds get going they do last for several days. We could have turned back to Horta, but after eight days that didn’t get any votes. So we had our hot meal at 2 PM and got ready to go. Here is Rob in the galley next to the gimballed stove.

We put up our smallest jib and brought the mainsail down to its third reef point. After a couple hours we brought the mainsail down to its fourth reef point. Here is a photo of Remedios with the small rig. The main with four reefs is about ½ the size of the storm jib. It’s a ridiculously small amount of sail, really. So we were rigged up and ready. We agreed (with some remarkable foresight) to shorten our watches to two hours each to lessen the time under duress for each of us while out there in the dark.

The good news is that we were ready. The bad news is that the forecast was wrong. The wind built to over 40 knots at its peak and just howled all during the night. It was the roughest night any of us have ever had on a boat. Our intruments logged the wind at Beaufort Force 8 (Gale Force). Here is what they say about Force 8:

Moderately high waves with breaking crests forming spindrift. Well-marked streaks of foam are blown along wind direction. Considerable airborne spray. Some twigs broken from trees. Cars veer on road. Progress on foot is seriously impeded.

We each used up one of our nine cat lives that night and I think Pat used up two. He got the worst of it. I stuck my head out into the cockpit around midnight to see what was happening and was momentarily confused. The stars were all out in the clear dark sky, but Pat was back by the wheel getting sprayed by horizontal rain. Where was the rain coming from?

When the wind gets over 40 knots the waves, of course, get huge. When the tops of the waves start to break, the wind blows them off and what you get is horizontal salt rain. It was not a pretty sight. I hollered at Pat that this just didn't look good and he hollered back “I know, but think of the story we’ll have to tell if we make it.” I went below to ponder my shortening future.

A bit later I heard Rob poke his head out. He hollered out asked Pat if he wanted some company out there (something I was way too smart to ask…). Pat just said he was fine and told Rob “Get some sleep, you’re next.” Rob, who really does like being out there in the wind, ducked back down and he got kind of quiet, too.

We didn’t have any smaller sails. And even with the sail plan we were using, we still were going 7 knots with these little hankies for sails and hitting 10 knots down the backs of waves.

And finally, we entered the shipping lanes of all the north-south freighters along the European coast and we got to match radar blips with freighters in all that mess and dodge them, too. We saw seven freighters that night. And we didn’t hit any although several were within a mile or so. I have no idea what they thought about our madly bouncing red and green bow lights that illuminated the spray as we mashed into the waves. We must have looked demented.

So, enough drama. We made it, although we would never want to go through that alone, or again. It blew like stink til around 9 the next morning and then the winds moderated to 25 knots and we made it into our planned port. Here is a link to a video shot after it got light and things calmed down...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wYLtJ89w-g


We are nestled up against the pier in a small Portuguese fishing village called Nazare. It’s about 100 miles north of Lisbon and is a wonderful natural harbor with a local fishing fleet and daily fish auctions. We hoisted the storm jib to hose all the salt off of it...

We only have one regret.

We really wish you could all be here for the party we are going to have tonight. We’ll miss you!

Tom, Pat, and Rob

Rockin' on Remedios

A short update from our sailors - apparently in these conditions, it's rather difficult to type!

We've experienced three days with wind on our nose and without seeing the sun. No fun. Yet, now we are almost at our next destination. We should arrive in Nazare on the Portugal coast sometime Friday, although it's still hard to tell. This leg has been a struggle almost all the way. Even the boat is creaking and groaning more than we've ever heard. We are back on hot meals, although they are on the light side. There is a certain point of sail that is quite uncomfortable and noisy, and we have been on it most of the last four days.


The good news is that the whole leg from Horta has been cooler in temperature and we are no longer hot all the time. The other good news is that Rob kept us from "meeting" a ship last night. He said our paths would have crossed if he hadn't turned Remedios. At least we would have made some new friends and had a change of boat scenery. Assuming they stopped to pick us up...

The last couple nights have been completely overcast and there is no moon. That means we are sailing along in inky blackness. The first night watch, from 9 p.m. to midnight, is hard because you go blind during the watch. The middle watch is all blind and the one of us on the third watch gets to see the sky lighten and sight is restored. And, another sailing day begins!

Posted by Peggy, on behalf of Pat, Rob and Tom, aboard Remedios, Atlantic Ocean

On the Really High Seas

We have been fighting Mother Nature the last couple days. The winds and waves in this part of the ocean are mostly going from northeast to southeast. That is the opposite direction that we want to go, so we are going against the wind. And waves. If we had gotten to this point and still wanted to go northeast to France as we originally had planned, this would have cured us.

Even though the wind is only 20 to 25 knots, when we add our speed upwind (maybe five knots) the apparent wind, which is what blows over the boat, is then even higher. It makes the wind howl in the rigging, the boat bangs into the waves, and our stomachs are churning. Even sleep comes hard at times.

But, the forecast says it will get better in a day or so, and we are getting closer to mainland Europe - yet we just are not making 125 miles per day like we did on the first leg. It's also more lonely out here on this side of the Azores. We are seeing far fewer birds and sea creatures. We even put our fishing pole out for a time until we decided none of us really wanted to eat a fish...

One of the challenges of sailing is managing the size of the sails you have up and their ability to catch the wind. The bigger the sail, the more wind you catch. Sometimes we have too much wind and it really helps to have less sail up there catching it. There are a lot of ways to reduce sail. Pat prefers that we don't use our sailing knives so we have what's called roller furling.  The top photo shows the mainsail fully raised. If you look inside the boom you only see the furling rod because all the sail is up in the air - and it's not catching much wind if you look at the water! The next photo shows it all rolled up into the boom. It stows neatly (and we are all about neatness on Remedios...) and is easy to manage. It is a little tricky to get all lined up correctly on the roller, but when it works, we love it. Tom likes to say he doesn't worry about getting hit in the head by the boom any more. It won't hurt at all. With that sail in there, it's the old "we won't know what hit us."

The jib follows the same priciple, but it rolls up on the forestay. That makes it really easy to roll and unroll. Both of these systems are also designed to make it easy to have part of the sail rolled up and part out there catching wind. There are lots of ways to manage sails, including just using line to tie up the excess but we really are into cool here on Remedios, and these are cool. We also have spare sails. We have a solent jib, which is a smaller jib that fastens to its own forestay. We also have a storm jib, which is made from very strong cloth and gets hoisted up on that same forestay. And, finally we have a storm mainsail, and a tough, small mainsail that we can hoist when Rob tells us a really big low pressure system is coming and he expects high winds...

Posted by Peggy, on behalf of Pat, Rob and Tom, aboard Remedios, Atlantic Ocean.

Back on the High Seas

Left Horta 2 p.m. on Wed, August 4 after errands and fueling up. What a nice place to visit! And to visit there during their annual Sea Week was a blast. Beers on the street were $1.25 and we ate outside almost every night at local restaurants which set up satellite kitchens and tables right out on the quay.


We motored for about seven hours to get clear of the channels and islands and into favorable winds, then set the sails and headed northeast. We expect to head more easterly after a day or so and then catch the Portuguese trade winds which blow from north to south from the Bay of Biscay down towards Morocco. These should carry us nicely to coastal Portugal. Our first choice as port of call is Nazare, a smaller fishing village north of Lisbon. We will stay there a few days and then move south.


We have a couple things to repair and replace on the boat, including the "zinc" that fits on to the motor and exists only to be eaten away by electrolysis - so other metal parts on the boat won't get eaten. On Pat's dive to clear the lines from the prop he noticed an alarming rate of zinc decay so it is time for a new one. We will have the boat lifted up on a sling so we can work on the underwater part of the motor. Don't worry, we'll post photos.

We just put our fishing pole out today and we'll see what, if anything, we catch. We have lots of other food just in case. We'll try to do another update in a few days. We are 740 nautical miles from Nazare as I write this so we are a good six days away, more if we don't have good winds. We all re-adapted to sea life easily and we can report no cases of first-day-out queasiness.


Speaking of repairs, ever wonder what happens when something breaks out on the ocean? Well, if you are on Remedios, you fix it! Sailboats are high stress environments, and we don't mean crew-wise. Sailboats are designed to withstand all reasonable events and stresses but two things can happen. Items can simply wear out or weaken and then they need to be replaced. The other is that items can be stressed beyond their design point and then they fail. Here is a visit to the Remedios Hardware Store where we keep our spares. Not shown are the other drill, the battery drill, the complete tool kit, the tape and adhesive kit, the electrical kit (which Rob says is better set up than the one in the printing plant where he works), the plumbing kit, and of course the ultimate tool kit - the Ditch Bag and life raft...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ct1M96nHM

Posted by Peggy, on behalf of Pat, Rob and Tom, aboard Remedios, Atlantic Ocean

Leaving today !

Today, Wed Aug 4, we leave Horta to cross the last of the ocean. One of the traditions in Horta is to paint your boat name and logo on the sea wall. Rob did this for us and it will bring us good luck, Rob assures us.

Here is a short video of the seawall and the thousands of paintings done over the years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uvrirkHTvA

We have updated our itinerary page and are now planning to skip France  ;-(

We never did hear back from Dufour on our factory visit plans. In addition, the input we got from lots of sailors is that we were adding two pretty big legs to our trip in going to La Rochelle and back. There aren't many other sailing ports along that section of France and their advice was strongly in favor of skipping France and spending more time on the Portuguese coast.

So we will head to the Portuguese mainland and aim for some spots north of Lisbon. We will report back in as we go!

A Minnesota / French Dinner

Last evening we were invited over to dinner by our neighbors, Claude and Claude (I hope I spelled those correctly.) As is usually the case, the invitation was made by the husband, and the dinner was cooked by the wife. Here are Rob and Claude relaxing before dinner. In the background you can see some of the artwork on the seawall that is a tradition in Horta.

Here is our chef for the evening - it was amazing to see (and eat) the meal that Claude prepared in that small galley. A couple days ago we gave them one of our Minnesota gift bags of wild rice and Shaker's vodka and guess what - that's what we had for dinner along with local shrimp and an olive tomato sauce. The other Claude even used the vodka to flame the pan of shrimp but I am not used to taking pictures of fire on a boat so that photo did not turn out...

After a couple bites, we realized we were missing a lot with our dog bowl meals. After dinner we had Portuguese cheese, huge grapes and of course, too much wine.

Our offer to help clean up was declined and all in all, we had a great time talking and sharing stories. C&C have traveled extensively since retiring a few years ago. They have toured the US in an RV and have visited more than 30 states and Canada. They live in Nice and even go back there from time to time!

 Here is our group just before dinner. Remedios is right behind Pat - it's the shortest distance we have ever walked to dinner!

We will miss our new friends and we will miss Horta. We will probably leave here Wednesday if the weather is OK and head for Portugal. Here are a couple looks at Horta from some vantage points we traveled to on scooters a couple days ago.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UGNBBmXATo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xI3NRpPAs

And here is the top of the island - the volcano caldera

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjzHNlFR_xk

Horta - city of the world

Horta is indeed a city of the world. We have seen more sailboats here from all over the world than anywhere else. And, these are not posers, they all got here the hard way.

 Here is a look at a few from Norway, Finland, Germany, the US, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Belgium, France, Spain, New Zealand, Indonesia, Canada, and more!


This is called a canoe-stern boat.

This is an aluminum boat. Notice the knurling on the metal hull.

A lot of boats have hard dodgers, the part that protects you from the elements. We have a cloth dodger and jackets...

We don't use duct tape on Remedios.















This next boat wins the beauty contest.
 We are all in love with the wooden sides and the overall lines.












Not to pass judgment, but this next boat is really a mess. But it got here just the same. But, it is kind of scary to look at up close.














Some folks like their privacy. These guys like to drink all night, get out their guitars and sing classic American rock songs badly.

Ben Courneya, you think your dad is anal - this beautiful boat has an inflatable dinghy colored to match the boat name!!!

Here is another boat with a hard dodger.

This next boat is so well named. The little pilot house does look like a turtle. I bet it is cozy in there.

On the other hand, it looks decidedly un-cozy out by the wheel of this boat!

We are rafted up here 3 and sometimes 4 boats deep. When a marina gets too many boats this is what they do. You make friends quickly and try not to step through someone else's hatch when you come back late at night and walk over their boat. Here is Remedios snuggled in between two boats from France.

There are several big cats (catamarans) here.

Another view of us and our two French friends. We brought some gift bags for people we meet that contain Minnesota wild rice and Minnesota made Shakers Vodka. We gave one to our dockside friends as thanks for letting us walk all over their boat. We think they invited us to dinner tonight but we are not totally sure. (update - it is dinner at 8 on Monday night - we will wear our Remedios t-shirts)




Here are some videos we shot at sea. The first is a Sunday morning funeral we conducted for a flying fish we found on deck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZLktrYsksg

Next is the morning after a stormy night. It is still icky but the worst is long past. We don't have video of the storm because we don't shoot video during storms...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mvUi1wFiAE

And here you can join one of us on night watch. There isn't much to see, because it is dark...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frvi2Jig9Ok