Back to Portugal (#14)

After living in Gibraltar for about a month we were going back to Portugal to celebrate New Year's Eve together with my parents who were visiting us from Belgium. After celebrating Christmas in Gibraltar we left the marina on the morning of December 26.

Sailing to Portimão …

We would have to sail for approximately 30 hours to Portimão. The trip started out smooth, the sun was shining and the wind was favorable. We sailed out of Gibraltar with full mainsail and gib. After a while, the swell became larger and the wind increased. Our autopilot switched off a couple of times, which caused our boat to turn into the wind, losing all speed and bumping on the waves. We had to use both engines to get her back on course. We might have been overpowered so it was only when we reefed the mainsail and furled in the jib that we could sail smoothly on the large waves. At some point we were really surfing on the waves, we could see the speed over ground increase with every passing wave. Turned out that sailing downwind with the waves coming from the back was very comfortable.

During the night the circumstances stayed pretty much the same until the next morning when the waves had become noticeably smaller. The sky was clear and the sunrise was beautiful as usual. There was little wind so we turned on the port side engine for some extra speed.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and everything was calm. A perfect day for some fishing. We were not very lucky though; it didn’t look like we were going to catch anything soon. We just left the fishing rod in the stand and waited.

After hours of very little wind, we decided we would drop the mainsail and start preparing to arrive in Portimão sometime later.

The catch ...

A few moments later we caught something large but it wasn’t a fish…

Can you already guess what happened? We forgot about the fishing line while steering the boat into the wind to lower the mainsail and that’s how we caught our own boat!! Our fishing line got caught in the starboard propellor; we were lucky that the engine wasn’t running at the time. Sven cut the line loose and tried to get as much as possible out of the prop. We recovered some of the broken line but there was still some of it wrapped around the starboard prop.

We arrived in Portimão just after sunset and anchored in the river. We tried anchoring with only one engine but due to the current, it was too tricky. We had to start the starboard engine to get positioned in between the other boats and avoid a collision. It was only for a short moment so we hoped it wouldn’t do any damage to the sail drive.

Beaching our catamaran ...

It was an extremely cold evening and night in comparison to what we were used to in Gibraltar. It was only 1°C that night and because our solar panels weren't connected yet, we didn’t have enough power to run the heating. We lighted some candles to provide us with a little warmth and cosiness. We would move the boat to the Marina before my parents arrived so they wouldn’t have to be cold. But first, we wanted to get the fishing line out of the prop and check if there was any damage. Since it was so cold the best way was to beach the boat so we wouldn’t have to go in the water. Together with François who was also in Portimao with engine trouble, we were going to beach our boats on the side of the river. We met François when we were in Les Sables d’Olonne and stayed in contact ever since. He is such a great guy, always happy and ready to help us. We were happy to be of help to him this time when the engine of his dinghy came loose and fell off in the middle of the river. He was guiding us to the place where we were going to beach the boat when this happened so we quickly dropped anchor in the middle of the river and Sven hurried over to him with our dinghy. François dinghy was already filling up with water and drifted away fast with the current. They managed to recover the engine and tye his dinghy up to our boat.

Beaching the boat was so easy, I now understand why people do it with their catamaran all the time. We were so worried about this in Porto and decided not to do it then, but we felt so much more confident now and familiar with our boat that it wasn’t any trouble at all. Of course it’s important to watch the tide, you don’t want to be stuck for a month after beaching during the highest tide.

While waiting for the tide to fall we took the dinghy up the river to pick up a rental car for the next week. As we were on our way our dinghy suddenly stopped very abruptly in the river. It took us a moment to realise what happened, it turned out we hit a sandbank and got stuck. Sven had to get out of the dinghy, into the water to get us out. We made it to the shore eventually but had to hurry to arrive at the car rental office in time.

When we got back to the boat the tide was low enough to see if there was any damage to the prop from the fishing line. A lot of the line was wrapped around the prop, on the starboard side and the portside. Maybe 100 meters. Sven got it all out, but it was a hassle. He had to stand in the ice-cold water while it was already dark. But we were lucky and very happy that we didn’t damage our props or sail drives.

Family visit ...

The next day we had to wake up early to pick up my parents at the airport in Faro. It was so great to see them! We drove back to Portimão and took the dinghy to the anchorage before moving the boat over to the Marina. We had a lot of catching up to do and we discussed our plans for the next week and for New Year's Eve.

We ended up visiting Lagos and Portimão, we walked along the beach and did some fishing and we had a fun New Year's Eve. We also went out sailing for a day. But our sailing trip ended soon. From one moment to another there was this big wind gust that caused the autopilot to fail again which made our code zero shift to the other side. While steering the boat back we tried to furl in the code zero but the furler got stuck and we couldn't get it loose. We didn’t want our code 0 to rip so we loosened the lines and tried to lower the entire sail causing it to fly into the water. It took us a long time and a lot of strength to get it out of the water again and back on board. What a first sailing experience for my parents. We planned to go out again another day and show them how nice it can be but we didn’t have any luck with the weather, unfortunately. Our time together flew by and we had a lot of fun. We were so happy that my mom and dad came to visit us.

Future plans ...

We hadn’t yet decided what our plans for the next weeks or months would be. We initially wanted to cross the ocean but weren't sure if it was a good idea considering the Covid pandemic. So we were thinking about going to Cape Verde and staying there for a while until we could do the crossing.

Until one day we just decided that we had enough of all the bad weather and we wanted to be in the Caribbean together with our friends who were already there and kept sending us these amazing pictures.

So from that moment on, we started preparing for our ocean crossing. The plan was to sail straight from Portimão to Martinique without any stops since we would already be leaving a bit late in the season. The trip would take us approximately 30 da. We took about a month to prepare and planned to arrive in the Caribbean in May. We had to make sure we had all the necessary equipment on board and that everything was working perfectly. We also looked for crewmembers and had to do a lot of food shopping.

Read all about our preparations for the ocean crossing next week…

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