Back On The Ocean !!

USA - Here We Come

Today (Monday Oct 18) around noon at high tide, we will take Remedios out through this gap, turn right (to starboard) and head southwest with Madeira as our first destination. Our plan is to make Madeira in about 4 days, stay there a few days, then head to the Canary Islands and make a couple stops there before the final leg from the Canaries to Florida. Here we are on the breakwall on Sunday.

We'll be sure our pants match next time

We had a great time with our spouses touring around Portugal. Here we are at dinner in Lisbon a couple weeks ago. It was great having Peggy and Michele visit us but the time went by way too fast!

Peggy and Michele got to fly home...

As we leave Oeiras, Portugal, Pat and Tom will be sailing and handling the boat, and our third crewmate, Rob, will be providing email weather advice and moral support from his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Rob also plans to meet us shortly after we land in Florida in mid December. We talked to Rob last night and ended our call with phone fist bumps and hugs. We will miss Rob but the fact is we have filled his cabin with other stuff; we are using his dog bowl to hold peanuts, and I’m glad I don’t have to sweep out his long gray hairs any more.

Last night at our farewell dinner we set a place for Rob and bought him a beer.

We have loved our time in Portugal and the marina here in Oeiras is a fun place and hard to leave. Here are the crowds that gathered yesterday, a pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon. I suspect they will all be gone tomorrow, but I am going to pretend they are here to see us off…

A beautiful day to be outside

Our latest friends from Norway (four young guys on one dad’s boat) left for Madeira this morning and we hope to meet up with them and other folks we have met along the way in either Madeira or the Canaries. If we get the right winds we might even catch the four Norwegians and then pass them since we have a spinnaker. Pat has promised if we both catch them and pass them that we can moon them as we go by. Please oh please…

We have a couple extra challenges on the return leg. One is that the night will be three hours longer and we will have to divide the night watches between two people instead of three. So, each of us will stand two three-hour night watches on the way back instead of one on the way over. Crossing the ocean with two crew members is often referred to as sailing short-handed. We plan to handle all the other chores and tasks with a mixture of grit and smarts (Pat) and perversity and stubbornness (Tom). And even though we both get along well, it won’t really matter because I think half the time one of us will be asleep. I bought a new pair of shorts in Lisbon and I’ll let you know how long it takes Pat to even notice…

We have lots of entertainment options for night watches. There really is too much going on to watch a DVD, but podcasts are a great option. We have the usual NPR downloads and interviews along with the New Yorker weekly commentary, Bob Edwards Weekend, and to balance all that out we have Savage Love, Dennis Miller, and Marc Maron with his weekly WTF web show.

We are done with our boat chores, fixes, and improvements – here are a couple we can show you.

Moving the antenna lead away from the backstay should improve radio performance

Two grab straps in the cabin for when we are bouncing around

A few straps on deck to tie off halyards and other lines

The blue thing is a bag to keep a smaller jib on deck for easy deployment

A pull-up bar because we plan to come back with muscles

The new splash cloth may keep some waves out of the cockpit

We’ll try to do some blogs from the ocean through our SailMail program and some help with postings from Peggy and the Courneyas.

Hey, what about the hurricane season? Good question. Here are two pictures that tell it all.

This picture shows all the hurricane tracks for the last 160 years. This graphic shows where they start and end. It also shows that when we leave the Canaries, that we have a couple extra weeks before we actually get into the hurricane belt. It also shows you why the people that build big expensive houses on the North Carolina coast have more money than sense.

This next graphic shows the monthly breakdown of hurricanes during the defined hurricane season. You can easily see that the historical chance of a late November hurricane where we will be is remote. And if you have a big screen TV, and have ever seen a man change channels, you know that remote is our favorite word.

So, off we go. We’re sure there will be drama and we promise to report and of course exploit it for our personal glory. We’ll let you folks vote on whether or not you want puke and weight loss stats or other fun facts.

And, if you were wondering when the heck we were going to get back on the ocean, the answer is now!!

Traveling up north

Over the last couple weeks Tom was traveling around northern Portugal and Pat was enjoying some peace and quiet and doing boat chores. Then we managed to mesh our schedules and Pat took a train to Viana do Castelo so we could do some hiking together and get out into less developed areas.


Viana do Castelo is a nice seaside town with an imposing cathedral overlooking the town.



You can see the church on the hill

 We thought it would be a good training exercise to hike up to the cathedral and then we took a VERY narrow stairway up to the top and then took a VERY narrow spiral staircase up to the very top of the dome. Pat was quite comfortable up there, I was a quivering mass of protoplasm so the picture you see here was probably shot by Pat. I do not like heights.

We were way up at the top...

Here is the city from the top of the church - what a view!

The next day we took a rental car off into Park Peneda Geres – the largest and first national park in Portugal. It is a great place to hike. We went to a small town and stayed in an old granite inn.

Here are some shots of us hiking and goofing around for a couple days. Our first day we climbed 2000 vertical feet up these kind of trails and through these kinds of woods and rocks.

I wouldn't walk under this rock until Pat agreed to help hold it back

Part of our hike was on this road which we shared with cars and goats

Here was a nice waterfall and pool

We made a hiking buddy - Joachim - an airline pilot

At the top I claimed the valley for, well, Remedios ...

Pat just never stops working. I sat down for a minute to have some water and a candy bar and before I knew it - look what he did!

Some of the terrain was very open and moon-like

Some of the trails went through the forest



Remember sharing the road? Pat told me he would go ahead and if anything happened - I should keep shooting pictures. I readily agreed.



Don't tell Pat, but my money was on the bull if it came to that.

OK, I am not making this up. We missed a turn on this hike and ended up in Spain. We kid you not. Just like those hikers in Iraq. Except we were smart enough to take a wrong turn in the EU so all we had to do was come back across the Portugal / Spain border.

Here is the border sign

Here I am coming back from Spain...

We had hiking sticks to fend off wild dogs if needed. They weren't...

The second day we hiked 18 miles up and down with a vertical gain of 1900 vertical feet. Part of that hike was on the path of an old Roman road more than 1500 years old.

Roman mile markers more than 1500 years old!

Our reward after four hours of hiking!

Now we are off to meet Michele and Peggy at the airport and then we will split up for some spousal re-acquainting and travel time. More in a couple weeks!

Dinner with the Nilsens

Last Monday night, as I sat reading a book, I heard a tapping on the deck of the boat and a hearty, “Hello!” It was Bengt and Stefania Nilsen who had come to ask me over to their boat for some chips and conversation. I was the start of a great “sailor in far flung places” experience. They own a Dufour Classic 38 built in 2002, one year later than Remedios and they were anxious to compare notes. For this lonely boat guy, the answer was an easy, “You betcha!” I told them I had to freshen up and I would be right over. I changed out of my day shirt and shorts, grabbed a bottle of chilled Vino Verde and off I went. It was the first of three special evenings spent with them and their children, Martin, who I met the first night, and Cathrine who flew in to Lisbon to join them for part of their trip.

The first night we sat in the cockpit of their Dufour, learning about each other and talking about sailing. They were on their way to the Canary Islands for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, which will leave in late November from the Los Palmas on Grand Canarias sailing to Rodney Bay in St. Lucia. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
We share the same start but different destinations. Bengt is a retired police officer who met Stefania in Italy while he was there questioning “persons of interest” in one of his investigations. She was serving as the interpreter and I asked if he made up a lot of unnecessary questions so he could spend more time with her. His response was, “Not while working, but later, maybe.” Stefania is a writer who works for a power management technology firm and also writes articles for Norwegian sailing magazines. Both of them have a lot of sailing experience, but I thought it was neat that Bengt’s first sail across a large body of water was when he sailed their brand new Dufour from Belgium across the North Sea to their home in Norway in 2004. Stefania has actually sailed the Atlantic Rally before on a catamaran with an all woman crew.

After we had finished the wine, I got a tour of their boat and we had a great time comparing notes on the quirks we had found in our boats and the modifications we had made. As the happy hour wrapped up, we agreed to meet at Remedios the next evening for a repeat.

During our happy hour the next night on Remedios we spent more time talking about our families, work, and homes and I gave a full tour above and below decks. Before it was done I had an invitation for a third night, dinner at the Nilsens!

The finale came on that third evening. We had a lovely dinner of “Fisherman’s Risotto” prepared by Stefania with fresh cut parsley they had growing aboard, and a lovely wine to complement the dish. Cathrine and Martin even made a run to the local patisserie to get some sweet baked goods for dessert, which we had with some coffee and aguardiente, the Portuguese version of Brandy. Cathrine and Martin capped off the evening by showing photo montages, set to music, each made of their sailing experience this summer. It was a real treat and left me a little homesick. The evening was great fun with all of us speaking English(except for an occasional flourish of Norwegian) with Minnesotan, Norwegian, and Italo-Norwegian accents. I will not forget the Nilsens and the time I shared with them. In case anyone is wondering, they definitely got one of our gifts of Minnesota grown wild rice and Shakers vodka, also from Minnesota. When we get to the Canary Islands we will try to reconnect with them for dinner or happy hour again before we both head west across the Atlantic.

Cathrine, I wish you good luck with that new job. Martin, don’t break too many hearts. Bengt and Stefania, thanks for showing me a wonderful time with your great family. Have a safe adventure!

The first picture below shows Stefania and Bengt seated at the dining table in Remedios. The next two pictures show the Nilsen family in their boat the next night. A quick look at the background shows how similar the two boats are inside.

Remedios High and Dry

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High and Dry

From time to time, though built to be in the water, a boat needs to come ashore for a little spa treatment. Remedios, feeling as if she had worked hard getting us safely across the Atlantic and needing some work on her underside, asked if she could spend a couple of days fully exposed to the warm, dry air of Portugal. She needed some paint on her drive unit (think pedicure), a new zinc ring on the drive unit to prevent corrosion by the salt water (think sunscreen and a wide brimmed hat), new gear lube in the transmission (think fancy drink with a paper umbrella), and a general inspection (think health maintenance including colonoscopy). Tom and Pat elected not to tell her about the colonoscopy before we got her out of the water where she couldn’t get away.

So, last Tuesday morning, around 10:00, the crew at the Cascais Marina wrapped slings under Remedios’ hull, gently lifted her up in the air, drove her to a pleasant corner of the yard where she had a view of the city and the beach, and set her carefully in a cradle. She was now ready for the aestheticians, Pat and Tom, to go to work. The biggest job was painting the drive unit. Over the following 48 hours, we sanded it to bare metal in spots where paint had failed then primed and painted. After that we applied two coats of anti-fouling paint to prevent growth of algae and other marine nasties. Remie (she lets us call her that when she is feeling relaxed) chose black for her drive unit color – very goth.

The condition of the zinc, which is meant to sacrifice itself and corrode away as protection for the other metals in the engine and transmission, was a surprise for us. Living her first nine years in cold fresh water, we had become accustomed to very slow dissolving of the zinc. Saltwater is a much better conductor of electricity than fresh, meaning the current that causes the metal to dissolve is much stronger. When I dove under Remie to cut away the rope that had fouled the prop near Horta in the Azores, I was shocked that the zinc I had installed just a few weeks before had melted like a breath mint to less than half its original size. In the picture, Tom is holding three zincs and the zinc on the left is the one just removed from the drive unit. The one in the middle is one we used to hang off the side of the boat to temporarily help the smaller one protect the drive until we could do the change(sailors call this a zinc fish). The one on the right is the new one. This is what the smallest one looked like when I installed it. It was a great relief to put on the pretty new one to continue the protection through the rest of the trip. To get at the zinc, we had to remove the folding propeller giving us a chance to completely disassemble it and give it a good cleaning and lubrication. This also provided a good opportunity to replace the gear lube in the transmission. After our work was done and the paint was dry, Remedios slipped quietly and gracefully back into the water with the help of the Travel Lift crane, ready for the next phase of the trip.

During our time on the hard, we got some advice and help from the folks at the Cascais Marina and we were also able to send pictures to Eric Thomas and the rest of the crew at Barker’s Island in Superior, Wisconsin. They were great about reviewing the pictures and giving us advice on removing a stubborn part of the propeller assembly and other feedback on the drive unit and keel. It was a fun way to use the internet for some very practical advice and to connect again with the crew that gave us so much help in the preparation for the trip. We send many thanks to you, Eric, Scott and the rest. The picture shows the Cascais yard master giving me some opinions.

As an aside, both of us get creeped-out and our legs get a little shaky when standing on the deck and seeing concrete below instead of water. I think it actually makes us even more careful, with an immobile deck, than we are when we are bouncing around on the waves. In our minds, there is a significant difference between the sound of a splash and the sound of a splat. We are much more at ease now that we are floating.

To see an edited video that we shot during these heavy machinery episodes check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQU-fHcCla4

Seeing the sights

A quick update from the boys on the boat -

Rob had a nice time in northern Portugal and when last heard from was boarding a train, hopefully with Mary, for Paris. He is due back in the USA Wed Sep 8. Rob - call us when you get home safely!

Pat had a busy and exhausting week with his daughters and a couple grandkids in France. He sent this intriguing message (which he did not approve me posting...)

All is going well here. Yesterday we went to Bordeaux and saw beautiful old churches and other buildings. Then we went to visit catacombs in a more rural area. No vineyard tours, but with the kids in tow, that would have been a challenge. We left at 0800 and got back a little after 2100 and the all five of us collapsed. The next day was spent touring the famous "Three Towers" of La Rochelle and walking the streets of old town. Nicole made us a nice dinner and now we are all ready to collapse again. The babies were great but they add to the workload a lot and wear out the three of us quite completely. Tomorrow we are going to a nearby national park/nature reserve where we plan to release the babies into the wild.  See you Sunday.

Did you know Portugal was neutral during WWII? I didn't. Since Portugal was neutral it became a home for exiled rulers, deposed monarchs, overthrown governemts, spies and counter-spies. A lot of them settled around Estoril, the village next door where I had dinner the other night. Estoril also has a big casino and for a time was where Ian Fleming worked chasing a German spy. He was inspired by his time here to write the James Bond novel Casino Royale. Here is the casino and some shots of the surrounding area.

Don't they look retired?

I should have brought a book!

This is the best city park/plaza around

One of the things that I just love about Europe is how everyone parks their cars.

Park like your pants are on fire.

Walk away from the vehicle.

Don't look back.

It's like this in lots of places (OK, except Germany)

This is a sidewalk, the street is to the right of the photo..

Do small cars get small tickets? Those are not tickets by the way, they are menus for a local Chinese resturant. Seriously.

OK, we'll share the sidewalk.

That car is parked on the tram line - he is in big trouble.

I'm sure he's saying "Nice pants, and love the shoes, but YOU CAN'T PARK HERE!"

As for me, I have been living the idyllic life of an unemployed sailor whose cash card still works. Not a bad life. Run in the morning. Read and do boat chores in the day. Visit museums in the afternoon. Eat dinner in the evening. Repeat. This is a pretty place with a wide variety of architecture.

Remedios is about 100 yards to the left!

Looking towards the ocean - remember the ocean?

This is an old house, an art museum, and a lighthouse - all together!

I always take my camera to dinner - it's fun to take some pictures I call "Views from my table."

Italian place in Estoril

Under the umbrellas in Cascais

This is next to the marina - those are sailboat masts outside!

Check out the hat on the ice bucket

Nice place but the neighbors need to paint!

Restaurants and shops in Cascais

Now that I am done eating the place starts to fill up!

Pat comes back today so I have to clean the place up. This week we have big boat repairs. We will have the crane lift it out of the water and we will spend a couple days on land with the boat on stands while we fix stuff. Pat will get to go up the mast again and we will replace the zinc on the motor housing and in general check stuff out. Next update will have photos of Remedios IN THE AIR !