Portugal and Sailing to the Canary Islands

Cascais and a visit from family

There is always boat work, no matter what. I went up the mast for the gazillionth time to try to figure out the loud creaking when we fly our downwind sail. Our first fix was to replace the badly chafed halyard with a dyneema line, not cheap. That immediately showed evidence of chafe and on the sail to Lagos it was creaking so loudly that we pulled the sail down for fear of causing bigger problems. The chafing is occurring right where the halyard exits the mast so our current best solution is to take the halyard out of the mast completely so it has nothing to chafe against.

For landlubbers, Cascais is Lisbon’s seaside resort town with hotels, a few beaches, restaurants, and more souvenir shops than grains of sand on the beach. For sailors like us it was a meeting up point on the way to the Canary Islands. Portugal is rightly known for its long surfing beaches, so it follows that small boat harbors are few and far between along the west coast of the country. Cascais is a prime stopping point for sailors with both a big marina and an anchorage.

Our other masthead problem is the main halyard sheave that is wearing fast and furiously. We replaced a very worn sheave in August and this one has clear signs of wear, already. We bought a new one, hopefully made of more durable material.

Cascais's fantastic weekly produce market.

There were already quite a few boats at anchor when we arrived and the harbor continued to fill up. About half the boats were heading southwest to the Canaries and the other half were going to Madeira first. A few were also heading to the Mediterranean. Talk in the harbor was all about where and when and thank god we’ve made it this far without losing our rudder to the orcas. There was a cruisers’ happy hour on the beach one night which was very reminiscent of our first days of cruising in the Bahamas back in 2007 when people were excited/nervous and gathered to talk about where they had been and where they were going and what was broken on the boat and about the toilet.


Getting lots of love from Farmor and Farfar.

Dinner in Cascais

We weren’t in Cascais, however, to talk boats and toilets. Hans’s parents had flown from Sweden to visit us for a week so we were there as tourists. We did a mix of busy tourist activities like a day trip to Lisbon and another day trip to the national palaces in Sintra, Lisbon’s mountain resort town where the wealthy built huge palaces to escape the heat and hustle and bustle of the city in the summer. The rest of the time we relaxed on the boat and watched the action in the anchorage while the kids did some schoolwork and Hans did boat projects. It was a fun week and great to share a little slice of our cruising life with family.

Riding in a tuk tuk in Lisbon

A tired kid on the train home from Lisbon

Looking at the map at one of the palaces and determining the route.

The kids of course found a cave.

Yes, Doggy came with us.

Just half a km away from the palace we found amazing gardens and secret forests.

Before leaving Cascais, we did a couple epic things: first a vertical down and vertical up hike to a beach; and second, a real deal UEFA soccer match between Lisbon's Benfica and Germany's Bayern Munchen. It was...epic.

After Hans’s parents left we had a few days to sail down the coast to Lagos, Portugal where Hans was leaving us for a couple weeks to go to work. The sailing was gorgeous and very fast. We had northerly winds blowing around 20 knots that pushed us easily south. We had to keep a constant lookout for fishing pots, though they weren’t nearly as many as there were around Spain and Porto. The scenery was absolutely spectacular when we sailed around the southwest corner of Portugal toward Lagos.

Lagos

Lagos is another big resort town, though more populated with foreigners than Cascais was, especially Brits. We heard more British than Portuguese, even the servers in a lot of the restaurants were British. It was like Britain’s Florida. Much more modern and fresh than Lagos, but also felt a little artificial. Still, the town was clean and had all the conveniences we needed. Just a stone’s throw from the marina was a massive grocery store, massive wine/beer/spirits store, and a warehouse sized pet supply store. Yes, we’ll take all the hamster bedding you have! President Periwinkle also got a new cage (sorry, “enclosure”) with an actual white house. The kids and I all went to the dentist for regular cleanings and Freja had a couple loose but stubborn molars pulled. Better to do it now then mid-Atlantic with a pair of rusty pliers.

Hans caught a nice tuna, a "bonito," on the way to Lagos.

Unfortunately he left before he could enjoy the sushi!

the cliffs outside Lagos

Pres, eating a walnut.

post-dentist fun!

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween in Lagos with a big group of kids from other boats and then had a potluck party afterward. Lots of boats in the marina helped us celebrate by signing up to pass out candy; one person even decorated their boat by turning a bucket into a ghost and playing spooky music. Costumes were creative and all handmade. It was an impressive evening and a solid coordinated effort by the boating community.

Freja sewing her Halloween costume.

A dead bride and Ronaldo

Most of the time in Lagos was spent trying to knock out a bunch of schoolwork and I spent most of my time working on boat projects to get us ready for the crossing to the Canaries. Some sewing projects are for further across the ocean—awnings that will provide precious shade once we hit the always sunny and hot Caribbean. One of our buddy boats, Leia, was in Lagos too and they had a much bigger project: swapping out their lead acid batteries for lithium. They knocked it out with insanely fast efficiency, but I was certainly glad my jobs were sewing and purging stuff from lockers instead of a massive rewiring project.

I usually keep dinner pretty simple when it's just me and the kids, but I guess I was inspired and we made corn dogs from scratch one night. They were delicious!

New sails

Hans arrived back home after a couple weeks with piles and piles of stuff we ordered from Amazon—all transatlantic crossing prep, including…a second headsail! Since the transatlantic will be nearly 100% downwind, we decided to fully commit and buy a second spinnaker pole and a second headsail so we can fly two headsails, both poled out, instead of sailing wing and wing with the main on a preventer. Both headsails are furled together so we won’t have to deal with jibing the main or need to reef the main before a squall whilst running downwind. Our main concern will be chafe so we’ll sew on some dyneema sleeves at chafe points and watch them carefully throughout the passage.

With the new gear on board, we prepped for the five day passage to the Canaries—food, booze, a final cleaning. (Booze not for the passage, just re-provisioning since the store was close by and cheap!) We (Hans) installed the hardware for the new spinnaker pole, we (Hans) put the wind pilot back on the transom, and, after a few rolly nights at anchor outside of Lagos, we were ready to go!

We spent an afternoon and evening with Emma and Lewis on Artemis, exploring the caves outside of Lagos and sharing dinner, then it was onward to the Canaries!

Canaries passage

The passage to the Canaries is over 500 nautical miles, we planned on around 4 days, definitely our longest passage yet. As usual, we prepped some meals in advance—spaghetti bolognese (a passage classic), meatballs, and white chicken chili. I stocked other meat in the freezer to make meals underway including ground beef for tacos and pork chops.

We left Lagos in high spirits and within half an hour we were all sitting in the cockpit reading and celebrating that we were on our way. Soon enough Matilda was hungry so I was down below frying up bacon and scrambling eggs. All was smooth and easy until we came out from the protection of land and into ocean swell. The motion on PW increased, not uncomfortably, but definitely moving. I put my book away and focused on the horizon.

The four day passage was really good. We had steady winds, never too much, sometimes too little, we had to motor for a few hours here and there, but we mainly sailed. The motion was comfortable, our twin headsail rig worked beautifully. Food prep was enough and we ate well despite seasickness. Our kids love routines so we tried to implement some patterns into our days. Matilda and I had “morning music,” where she brought her iPad into the cockpit, connected to the boat’s speakers, and we had a pop music dance party. After lunch we turned the stereo on again and listened to a kid’s podcast. This passage we listened to :\ Six minutes, a story told in six minute segments. Hans called us all into the cockpit every evening for sunset then we all ate dinner together. Small routines helped give rhythm to each day and I think will work well for the Atlantic crossing.

Despite the daily routines, the days still ran together. I’ve asked so many families, “what did you do all day for 21 days across the Atlantic?” And their answers have always been frustratingly vague. There isn’t much activity on a passage, at least you really don’t want there to be much activity apart from catching a fish or seeing dolphins, so the hours and days really do run together. We read a lot, listen to audiobooks, and stare off at the horizon. Preparing food and eating and then doing the dishes takes much much longer underway than when moored. You’re constantly needing to find balance and moving slower and taking your time to be sure that you don’t spill something in the boat or on yourself. You can’t leave food just sitting on the counter, it’ll slide off, so you have to really think through the steps to cooking and serving food. It’s different, but it’s doable. A friend recently went down below when we were sailing and imagined that the motion is what it would be like inside his RV when he was towing it on the highway.

We arrived in the Canary Islands mid-morning almost exactly four days after we left Lagos. We were completely unprepared for how huge and volcanic and otherworldly the islands are. As with most things in life, words and pictures can’t describe what it is actually like to see something in person. The islands rose straight out of the sea. Vertical rock cliffs were at least 300 meters tall. The rock walls were jagged and sharp and in places you could see the path the lava made when the volcanos last erupted in the early 1700s. Then there was the actual shape of the islands—they were literally like text book volcano shapes. Or clip art. Or preschool drawings. Imagine the most stereotypical volcano shape and that’s the eastern Canary Islands. We motored into the anchorage north of Lanzarote, off the island of La Graciosa. There was already quite a few cruising boats at anchor, many of whom we’d seen since Cascais or maybe earlier. The kids put on their swimsuits, we took a bottle of wine ashore, and we sat on the beach and congratulated ourselves on a successful passage.