Offshore Portugal
Suzie Too - Western Caribbean
David & Suzanne Chappell
Thu 30 Sep 2010 19:23
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Today we left Baino after spending 2 night in the
Deportivo (Town Marina) having changed a few things on the running rigging which
we felt we could improve to make sailing easier . We spent some time walking
around the bars of the old town, made a few purchases at the local Fereteria
(Ironmongers) and then spent our last evening walking around the ramparts of the
Parador (Old Castle) watching the sun go down, before heading back to Suzie Too
for the usual gourmet meal that Suzanne dishes up and a glass of my favourite
red.
As we walked back Suzanne said "Wow that is big you
know", well she says this most evenings, but I have to say even I was
impressed with how big it was, not the biggest yacht in the harbour, but plenty
large enough for the 2 of us.
This is our first real sail since we got her and I have
changed all the self tailers on the Harken winches to run the tails into the
cockpit, 3 different pairs of winches and each one was different to change. We
found our trusty dyneema preventer and are now running that as the multibraid
line we used chaffed on the shroud and had far too much stretch in it, now the
main is put to bed and as quiet as anything.
We also changed the way we do the sail covers and ran
the topping lift to the winch on the mast. We also discovered that we
had chaffed the main halyard on the sheave where it goes into the mast, I
think we had the boom too low and the leech was tight, but the luff was too
loose and the halyard moved in the sheave and wore through the sheath covering.
I have whipped it, but we may get it respliced and turn it end for end, if we
can find anyone that can splice dyneema, co 50 metres at £8 per metre is a an
expensive problem.
Now the air is a little warmer we have folded back the
bimini and get a much better view of the sails and can make sure all is well as
we head into another night at sea without our extra crew, so it should be
Cascais (next to Lisbon by the Estoril race track) for lunch.
We filled up the 3 tanks with diesel, and it wasn't as
bad as we expected, 525 litres, Euros 615 on top of the £200 we put in at
Dartmouth, maybe we should have got a Sunseeker instead, at least today we
only motored out of the bay, so should only have used about 5
litres.
We have overtaken a few yachts going down the coast and
we are romping past them doing around 9kts. It is very strange how this yacht
feels, she is so Moodyesque we almost feel she is one and the same boat, blue
hull, white topsides, teak decks, cutter rig, center cockpit. We just have a
little more room, to suit our living onboard, entertaining our family and
friends and a boat more suited to warmer climates,
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