A Lady trip
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Tue 13 Oct 2009 08:59
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FRIDAY 2nd October 2009
Weather was again poor enough, Denis and Stephen
did some boat work and at lunch time we drove to st Jorge to collect the seat
which Louis
had recovered. while there we had lunch in a sweet
restaurant owned and operated by Louis's wife, excellent.
later we toured around for a while and returned to
" A Lady " for dinner.
An early bed.
SATURDAY 3rd October
Again it was another poor day,so we went off to
Funchal to watch the start of the mini transit race to Brazil. The little 21foot
sailing boats, being sailed single handed across the ocean. Denis took lots of
photo's from the peir. later we did a little shopping for provisions as we
decided we would leave
Medeira the following day.
In the afternoon we travelled to Matchico, Denis
and Vera went to the Beach, Stephen topped up the shopping and Aileen went to
Mass.
By 19.00 hrs it was pissing out of the heavens, so
back to the marina and had another lovely dinner in the marina restaurant.
The Bunk was welcome at
midnight.......zzzzzzzz
SUNDAY 4th October 2009
Up at 08.00 hrs and had a light breckfast, plus
taking a few anti sea sick tablets, The blooming weather was still very poor and
blowing skittles to boot.
and of course not exactly from the direction we
would have wished for.. Any way we were going, once we cleared all the paperwork
at the
marina office, which opened at 10.00 am.
Finally we Departed " Quinta de Lorde " at 11.30 and headed S.E. towards Lanzarote in the Canary Islands Within 30 minutes, hte wind had reached 46 knots ,
on a tight starboard tack, needless to mention we were well reefed down, and to
top it all it started
rain, that got so heavy we could hardly see the bow
and we still had our new Bimini cover up whitch did not exactly help the
situation.
One of those days, you know, how did we get this so
wrong, Anyway the skipper had always said things would improve as we got away
from Madeira
and they did, but not for a 100 miles. Despite all
this, we made good progress.
Sunday night, we took turns on the night watches
and a lovely night it turned out to be ..full moon and millions of dancing
stars,
Monday 5th October 2009.
A lovely day, what a change from the last few days,
wind still giving us a tight starboard fetch ,but had moderated to a modest 35
/30 knots
Progress was still very good sailing along at about
anaverage 8 knots.
Later on the wind went westerly and by 20.00 hrs it
had got very light, so we turned on the motor.
22.00 hrs, We arrived at the small island just
north of Lanzarote called " Isla del Graciosa " and anchored in a little sandy
bay called
" Playa Francesa ". part of their national
park.....just magic and specially as the moon was playing in the sky with all
those magical stars.
This makes the whole trip worth while.
Had dinner on board washed down with some lovely
wine , all in the cockpit and candles for the local light..
Because the place was so beautifull, there was no
mad rush to the bunk.
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