Saturday 15 Oct - Sines to Cape St Vincent and Sunday 16 Oct – Cape St Vincent to Lagos (no, not the one in Nigeria)

Saturday 15 Oct - Sines to Cape St Vincent

To bed after our slipway antics at 0030 for a few hours sleep broken by regular hull checks. Up for the tide on the slipway at 0330 and start refloating preps. Heavy fog outside. Attempt to stay alongside wall at first but swell a bit too much. Move out to a finger pontoon for a few hours sleep until fog goes. Leave Sines 0745 for VERY long day of southward plodding with variable winds and sloppy swell. Engine on and off rather a lot and now seems happy giving 5.3Kts at 2Krpm. Swell and wind rise towards evening as we approach the great Cape….the SW-most point of the European mainland. We round the Cape just after darkness and look for a suitable bay or cove to drop a pick beneath the wild and remote cliffs. Eventually we anchor in pitch blackness below and in the lee of towering cliffs within the sound of the pounding surf. Good proving ground for old CQR type anchors!

Sunday 16 Oct – Cape St Vincent to Lagos (no, not the one in Nigeria)

Up at the crack of knackered and rolling gently at anchor just off the frightening surf and craggy cliffs to the East of the Cape. Thank god for GPS and strong anchors. At getting up time, fingers of sunrise stretch over the ……right enough of that cliché ridden stuff. Gobsmacked to see madmen fishing OFF THE TOP OF THE 200FT CLIFFS in high winds. Sheer drop into boiling sea and all that stuff. Like fishing off, well very tall dark cliffs with a sheer drop into the sea (please supply your own simile/cliché). Wonder if their mummies/wives know what they are doing. ..or perhaps they are mummies/wives. Up anchor and course for Lagos along the Algarve coast. Not very Algarvey as overcast and blowing its socks off from the East, the very direction wot we want to go in. This means gut tumbling tacking for severeal (sic) hours over a rolling wave crossed swell. I’m afraid certain of the crew succumbed to what is properly known hereabouts as marmalade of the black bucket, and continued to do so for many hours. Also caught one ginagorous mackerel the size of a small horse. Got into a bouncy Lagos harbour entrance at teatime and were parked in nice big marina type place by friendly staff. Harbour full of other travelling types. 1^st night free courtesy of ARC rally. So that’s .00001% of my entry fee back!