Porto Santo to Madeira 28nm
Thursday 3 September
It’s just the two of us now and the forecast is for light or no winds as we leave pretty Porto Santo.
The forecast is pretty accurate and we have to motor – which is dull. Wind is light and what there is is pretty much behind us.
However, less than halfway across, the wind angle changed to our advantage and it filled in to over 10 knots. So we furled out the Yankee and then added the stay sail for good measure.
This had us whooshing along at 7-8 knots – very nice!
It even inspired the motoring catamaran near us to furl out a head sail.
I haven’t quite got to grips with catamarans, every time I see one, no matter what the wind conditions, they seem to be motoring. Maybe one of their hulls is a fuel tank. Here we have a perfect broad reach with strong enough winds and they are motoring with the main not even out of its bag.
In Porto Santo David had a look at the configuration of the hydro generator and discovered that it had been stuck in a mode that made it think that the batteries were already fully loaded so it mustn’t put more than a trickle charge into them! This explains a lot.
So once the wind got up and we were clipping along nicely, David tried the hydro out and it is working much much better, we are finally seeing the numbers we would expect. So it looks like David has solved one of our 3 issues already!
Porto Santo got smaller as Madeira got bigger – it is huge in relation to its little sister, with dramatic rocks looming straight out of the ocean. On the way the elegant shearwaters were arcing over the waves.
We rounded the corner and hardened up with the wind angle so perfect we didn’t even need to tack. The flying fish led us to the shore – they fly for hundreds of meters!
We are staying in the northern most marina on Madeira, Marina da Quinta Grande, because Funchal is full due to a sailing regatta coinciding exactly with our dates here. There isn’t much here, just a private hotel we can’t go in (unless we pay) but the marina staff were very helpful with 2 men taking our ropes as we came in. Unfortunately the single washing machine is out of order…
We are very impressed with the Spanish and Portuguese marinas who always come onto the dock to help with mooring.
The further South French sometimes help, but the British never do unless you specifically ask, and coming down from Sweden last year, none of Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium or France would be on the dock to take a rope.
When there’s only 2 of you it’s a very nice thing to have someone there. Other boats will always come and help you if they are around, but often it’s just me, my rope and the dock with David steering beautifully of course. If the wind is bad it can be a bit stressful.
So thank you Spain and Portugal! And every marina here is cheaper than the UK ones.
Unfortunately our crew Sam, who was hoping to join us on the 5th is stuck on Alderney with planes cancelled by bad weather – you know what it’s like on these remote islands with poor connections… (says I on an island out in the Atlantic with an airplane flying over every 20 mins!)
If he can’t make it in time, we will have to go to Lanzarote with just the two of us on Sunday – those Schengen days are counting down (bloody Brexit) and we need to get home. We will be fine as it’s only 2 nights with a very nice wind angle.
We are going into Funchal tomorrow to take a look at the big town.
Boa noite