Nothing in Lexios, the commercial port of Oporto, recommends leaving a boat there, particularly unattended. It is open to the S-SW winds with a real slop building up in the rather dirty marina. There are few shops and restaurants nearby, but the city of Oporto makes up for that. Tony and I flew home as I had promised to help David move out of his flat in Kuala Lumpur. When Sarah and I arrived back on 14th November, having paid Ryanair £85 for excess luggage, it was with great relief that we found Moonbeam undamaged, but in the following gale, even the pontoon was uncomfortable.
David arrived back on the 15th and Rory McCleod on the 16th. Rory had kindly offered to join us for the trip to the Canaries. The weather was awful, so we had lunch in Oporto and got drenched waiting for a taxi to take us home. Saturday was no better, so we spent the afternoon sewing jack stays, with Rory taking the sewing prize for neatness. We finally left for Cascais on Sunday and then had the best sail so far down to Lagos, where again we needed to wait for a better weather window.
We waited two days in Lagos before we decided that the weather was good enough to set off. I lost track of the number of forecasts we printed off! However, when we did get going it did not take long to get into a routine. David and Rory took a short while to get their sea legs but by the end of the second day our trial watch system was voted a success. It ran from 2100 to 0900 in 3-hour slots, one crew member on standby before going on watch themselves, followed by six hours sleep and nine hours every fourth day. By the time we got to Gran Canaria we felt as though we could go on as long as necessary and I have to say that I was a little sad to arrive! This was the longest leg for all of us so far at 643 nms. We are now over 2100nms from Ipswich.